THE MAFIA KING’S FAKE FIANCÉE: A DEBT OF BLOOD AND SILENCE

The doctor patched my shoulder in the estate’s medical wing. It was a clean through-and-through graze, painful but not life-threatening. Yet Dante refused to let me stay in the mansion.

“The house is compromised. Lucia has been detained,” Dante said, his voice hard as iron as he wrapped a fresh linen handkerchief over my bandage. “We are moving to the safehouse. Now.”

Within the hour, we were in an unmarked SUV, driving deep into the heart of the city’s industrial district. We pulled into an underground garage and took a private freight elevator up to a penthouse that didn't exist on any city grid.

I expected a sterile fortress of concrete and weapons. Instead, when Dante unlocked the steel door, I stepped into an apartment that looked like a time capsule. It was decorated in warm 1990s furnishings, with old jazz records on a shelf and faded Persian rugs.

But what stopped my breath were the walls.

Pinned to a corkboard in the kitchen were old newspaper clippings about the Chicago Police Department. And right in the center was a photograph of my father in his uniform, smiling.

“What is this place?” I whispered, walking slowly toward the board.

“This was my father’s secret apartment,” Dante said softly, locking the deadbolts behind us. “I kept it exactly as he left it the night he died.”

I turned to him, confusion fighting the throbbing pain in my shoulder. “Why are there pictures of my dad here? I read the journal, Dante. Your father killed my mother. Why would he have a shrine to her husband?”

Dante walked over to an old wooden desk in the corner. He opened the top drawer and pulled out a faded piece of paper. He handed it to me.

It was a child’s drawing, done in crayon. It depicted a dark car smashed against a bridge railing, and a police officer pulling a small boy out of the backseat. At the bottom, written in wobbly, childish letters, were the words: Officer Chen saved me.

I stared at the drawing, my vision blurring with fresh tears.

“I was in the Cadillac that night,” Dante confessed, his voice breaking. “I was eight years old. My father was drunk. When he hit your mother’s car, he panicked. He grabbed his gun and ran, leaving me trapped in the wreckage as the engine caught fire.”

I covered my mouth with my hand.

“Your father was the first responder,” Dante continued, stepping closer. “He didn't care that it was a mob boss’s car. He reached into the fire and pulled me out. When he realized who owned the car, he knew a gang war would erupt if the media found out my father murdered an innocent woman. So your father hid the dashcam footage. He saved my life, and he spared the city a bloodbath.”

The pieces finally clicked into place. My father hadn't been a corrupt cop covering up a crime for money. He had sacrificed justice for my mother to save a terrified eight-year-old boy.

“He was a hero,” I choked out, clutching the drawing.

“He was the greatest man I ever knew,” Dante said, reaching out to wipe a tear from my cheek. “That is why I swore to protect you, Mara. Not out of guilt. Because you are his daughter. And because I—”

Before he could finish, my new cell phone buzzed loudly in my pocket.

I pulled it out. It was a text message from an unknown number. Attached was a photo.

My stomach plummeted. It was a picture of a cemetery at night. The soil was completely overturned. A tombstone lay shattered in the mud.

It was my father’s grave.