“Please mister, buy this painting so we can buy bread,” three dirty triplets begged. The billionaire mafia boss stared at the canvas, his heart stopping. The woman painted on it was the wife he mourned for years. With shaking hands, he pulled out a black card and whispered, “Take me to her.”

The rage that suddenly spiked in my chest had nowhere to go, no clear target to obliterate. “And Elena refused?”

“The clerk said the woman panicked the second your name was mentioned on the news playing on the wall TV,” Nico explained cautiously. “She wasn’t angry, Dante. She was terrified.”

That word—terrified—struck me harder than a physical blow. continue reading …