The Mafia Boss Burned Every Shirt Touching His Scar — She Sewed One From His Mother's Fabric.

My mind reeled. The room seemed to tilt on its axis.

I stared at Victor Sabatini. The towering, terrifying mob boss of Philadelphia—the man I had spent my entire life hating, the man I believed was a cold-blooded killer—was the teenage boy I had seen through the crack in the priest hole doors eighteen years ago.

The boy who had tried to save me.

“Kill every Moretti,” Marcus Sabatini had roared that night.

And I remembered now. I remembered a teenage boy screaming, fighting against two heavy-set guards, trying to kick open the burning wooden door of the library while the roof caved in. I had thought he was trying to break in to kill me.

He had been trying to get me out.

"You..." My voice cracked. I choked on the word, forcing myself to swallow hard before I betrayed everything. "You tried to save her?"

"I failed," Victor said quietly, walking over to the window that looked out over the misty Villanova gardens. "The roof caved in. I dragged myself out through the terrace with my skin melting off my back. My father told the rest of the family that I was burned in an enemy ambush. I let them believe it because it was easier than admitting my father was a monster."

He rested his hand on the glass, his fingers leaving a faint smudge against the pane.

"The girl died in that fire," Victor continued. "Her name was Isabella Moretti. She was six years old. When my father died six years ago, I took over this family to make sure that kind of senseless slaughter never happened again. I turned the syndicate into a business. No women. No children. No burning homes."

He turned back to face me, his eyes dark with ancient grief.

"And now, someone is using the Moretti falcon to start a war in my city."

I stood by the cutting table, my fingers numb, my head spinning. The entire foundation of my revenge, the burning hatred I had nursed in my heart for nearly two decades, was crumbling into ash.

Victor wasn't my enemy. He was another victim of Marcus Sabatini's madness.

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked softly.

"Because you have the same eyes she had," Victor said, his voice barely a whisper.

My breath hitched.

"When you looked at me last night," Victor continued, taking a slow step toward me, "when you cut my mother's silk and looked into my face without fear, I saw the same stubborn, terrified fire I saw in that little girl's eyes before the library caved in. I don't know who your parents were, Tessa. But I know you aren't my enemy."

He stopped two feet away from me. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a key—a brass skeleton key with a intricate crest carved into the handle.

He laid it on the cutting table beside my shears.

"This opens the rear entrance of the estate," Victor said. "There are no guards on the south gate between two and three in the morning. If you want to leave, if you want to take your thirty thousand dollars and run to Chicago or West Coast where my family can never touch you... take the key and go tonight."

I stared at the brass key lying on the maple wood.

"And if I stay?" I asked.

Victor looked down at my hands, at the fine needles and silk thread resting beside my shears.

"If you stay," he said softly, "you finish my shirts. And you help me find out who is using that falcon to destroy my city."

He didn't wait for my answer. He turned and walked out of the studio, closing the heavy oak door behind him with a quiet click.

I sat alone in the silent room for a long time.

I looked at the brass key. I looked at the rolls of Italian wool and Mulberry silk. Then, slowly, I reached up to my collarbone, unbuttoned the top button of my denim blouse, and pulled out the silver falcon pendant.

The silver bird caught the morning light, gleaming softly against my skin.

I knew who was burning the warehouses.

I knew who was using the thermite.

There was only one person alive who had access to Don Eduardo Moretti's secret military armories—the same armories hidden beneath the old docks of South Philly.