Chapter 1 - The Blood on the GoldThe familiar scent of polishing compound, silver dust, and lavender soap had always been my sanctuary. Upstairs from my late father’s old jewelry shop, the small, cluttered apartment felt like the only place in Chicago where I could breathe. But when Maso Greco gently set that small gold circle onto my wooden workbench, the air instantly turned to ice.
My wedding ring.
Except it was no longer the pristine band I had slipped into Camila Marino’s trembling palm just hours earlier at my birthday dinner. A dark, tacky smear of fresh, oxidized blood stained the polished inner rim, catching the pale morning light through the dusty window.
Leah Ferraro stepped closer, her navy surgical scrubs swishing softly against the floorboards. As a trauma surgeon at Cook County, Leah was no stranger to blood, but the look in her eyes was pure dread.
“Maso found it on the floor of Alessandro’s private study,” Leah said, her voice tight and clipped. “The guards were washing down the marble when Maso intercepted this. He said nobody is allowed inside—not even the capos.”
I stared at the metal, my chest tightening as a sickening realization washed over me. When I had handed my ring to Camila last night, I thought I was simply walking away from a cruel, calculated humiliation. I thought Alessandro had grown tired of me, traded me in for a younger, more compliant trophy to parade before his syndicate captains. But blood on the ring meant Camila hadn’t just replaced me.
She had been hurt. Or worse.
“Where is Alessandro?” I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm even as my pulse thundered in my ears.
Maso swallowed hard, his burly shoulders tensing beneath his black coat. “He’s locked himself in the compound office, Signora. He hasn't spoken to anyone since midnight. But... there are whispers among the boys. They say the girl tried to run after you left the party. They say she found something in his safe.”
I picked up my father’s heavy jeweler’s loupe, snapping it into my eye socket. With a pair of precision steel tweezers, I lifted the ring under the high-intensity magnifying lamp.
The blood smear was heavy, but wedged deep inside the engraved inscription along the inner band—A. & A., Forever Bound—was a tiny, microscopic fragment of something silver and fibrous. Not flesh. Not cloth.
It was a sliver of brushed titanium alloy. The exact material used in the micro-casing of high-security flash drives and encrypted hardware wallets.
Camila hadn’t just stumbled into an affair. She had stolen something from the heart of the Chicago Outfit’s financial empire, and Alessandro had punished her for it with the very ring I had just handed her.
“He thinks she was working for me,” I whispered, the cold truth clicking into place. “He thinks I orchestrated her infiltration, that I sent her into his house to crack his safe while he humiliated me in public.”
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Leah’s eyes widened. “Adriana, if he believes that, you aren't just a discarded ex-wife anymore. You’re a target.”
“Let him come looking,” I said, setting the loupe down on the bench with a sharp clack. I pulled open my father’s heavy oak tool chest, my fingers brushing past jeweler’s saws and diamond files until they wrapped around the cold, heavy steel of a Smith & Wesson .38 Special—a gun my father had kept hidden behind the wall panels for emergencies just like this. “If Alessandro wants to play war, he’s about to find out why the daughter of a master craftsman doesn't break under pressure. We melt down the gold.”
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