Chapter 1

Every time I took new territory, I ordered my second-in-command to place a black flag on the operations map.

The flag carried the Vieri family's gold snake. I believed that once the last shipping route in New York belonged to us, Lorenzo would finally come and bring me home.

Seven years earlier, I had been the only heir to the Moretti family.

Lorenzo Vieri had been a collector at an illegal casino in Brooklyn. He had no powerful name, no territory, and no right to sit in a meeting with New York's major families.

My father told me Lorenzo was not worth my crown.

I gave it up anyway.

I left the Moretti family and brought Lorenzo my contacts, my money, and the men who still answered to me. I helped him take his first casino. I removed the first capo who betrayed him. I used my family's influence to open talks with the unions at Port Newark.

Lorenzo stayed in New York and climbed until men called him Don Vieri. I spent most of my time in Detroit, Boston, and Chicago, protecting the business that kept him in power.

We had lived apart for three years.

After every operation, I still placed the Vieri flag on the map. I told myself that Lorenzo wanted to come, but New York could not function without him.

At one in the morning, a gun deal at an old slaughterhouse on the South Side of Chicago turned into an ambush.

Gunmen opened fire from the second floor. I covered the trucks while my crew moved toward the south exit. A bullet slipped under the edge of my vest and entered my left side.

Blood soaked through my shirt within seconds. The south exit was blocked, and another crew was moving in from the street.

Victor Russo, my second-in-command, told me to call our emergency team.

I passed every operational number and called Lorenzo's private phone.

It was the first time I had ever asked him to save me.

The phone rang long enough for me to think he would not answer.

Then I heard his voice.

"Isabella?"

He spoke quietly. He did not want someone near him to hear.

"I was shot. The safe house is exposed. Send the medical team and the jet."

He waited several seconds before he answered.

"Does it have to be tonight?"

For a moment, I thought the blood loss had affected my hearing.

"They are still looking for us."

"You are in command of the Chicago operation," he said. His patience was already gone. "I cannot leave New York every time someone at the front gets hurt. Use the field medic. I will come in the morning."

A woman laughed near him.

"Lorenzo, the champagne is getting warm."

I knew that voice.

Sophia Vieri was the widow of Lorenzo's older brother, Marco. She had also been my closest friend since we were teenagers.

After Marco died, several Vieri capos wanted to take Sophia's house, money, and protection. I stopped them during a sit-down and made it clear that anyone who touched her would answer to me.

She cried in my arms that night and told me I was the only person who would never abandon her.

"Are you with Sophia?" I asked.

Lorenzo paused.

"Today is the anniversary of Marco's death. She lost control. I could not leave her alone."

"But you can leave me under gunfire."

His voice turned hard.

"You have twelve armed men with you, and you are questioning me over one wound. Keep your private feelings out of an operation, Isabella."

More shots hit the metal wall behind me.

My fear disappeared.

Every war I won for him had convinced Lorenzo of the same thing. I would survive anything. I would forgive anything. I would never leave.

I ended the call and ordered Victor to break through the north loading yard.

Once our vehicles cleared the slaughterhouse, I pulled the Vieri flag from the map tube and threw it into a burning oil drum.

Victor stared at me.

"Boss, are we not putting this territory under Vieri control?"

I watched the fire consume the gold snake.

"From tonight on, everything I win belongs to Moretti."