Chapter 1 - The Blood on My Cuff
The marble foyer of my Long Island mansion usually greeted me with a suffocating, dead silence. For fourteen months, that silence had been my private torture. As one of the most feared mafia bosses in New York, I was accustomed to fear, to obedience, and to the heavy weight of absolute power. But none of my money, my syndicates, or my armed enforcers could buy a single word from my daughters, Olivia, Sophie, and Nora. Their mother, Isabelle, had been murdered outside a Garden City preschool, and the trauma had locked their voices away behind an impenetrable wall of grief.
That afternoon, six hours before anyone expected me home, I stepped through the front doors with a loaded gun hidden beneath my wool coat and dried blood staining my cuff from a messy dispute at the docks. I expected the usual tomb-like chill. Instead, I heard the impossible: laughter, and three small voices singing “You Are My Sunshine.”
I froze, my hand instinctively dropping toward the firearm beneath my coat. I followed the sound to the kitchen. There, perched on the counter and shoulders of our new housekeeper, Grace Bennett, my girls were smiling, singing, and completely alive.
When my briefcase slipped from my hand and slammed against the marble floor, the singing stopped instantly. The warmth drained from the room. Grace slowly set little Nora down, and Nora scrambled to hide behind Grace’s skirt. That instinctive retreat pierced my heart sharper than any blade.
Grace looked at me, her eyes steady despite my reputation. “Mr. Romano, you’re home early.”
I stepped forward, the blood on my cuff hidden by my clenched fist. “What the hell is this?”
Before Grace could answer, seven-year-old Sophie stepped out from behind Grace’s apron, her tiny hand gripping Grace’s fingers. She whispered something so quiet it barely disturbed the air.
Grace’s face turned stark white.
I stopped dead in my tracks, my chest tightening. “What did she say?”
May you like
Grace looked down at my trembling daughter, then lifted her gaze to meet mine. The air in the kitchen turned freezing.
“She said,” Grace whispered, her voice dangerously steady, “that the man who killed their mother is still inside this house.”
