The Mafia Boss’s Guard Dog Broke an Eight-Year Command for His New Cook—Then One Whisper in the Kitchen Made Him Question His Own Family

The library was bathed in the harsh light of a single desk lamp.

Julian Blackwood was pushed into the leather chair by Vance, his hands bound behind his back with heavy plastic flex-cuffs. His shirt was torn, his hair wild, his face slick with sweat.

"Adrian! This is insane!" Julian screamed, thrashing against his restraints. "You're tying up your own brother?! For what?! Because some hired guns breached the fence?!"

Adrian sat behind the oak desk, calmly loading heavy 9mm rounds into a steel magazine one by one. Click. Click. Click.

Genevieve stood in the shadowed corner of the room, Bruno sitting silently at her side like a dark gargoyle.

"The eastern sensor grid was turned off at 1:14 AM using administrative override code 0492," Adrian said, his voice eerie in its calmness. "Only three people have that code. Me, Vance, and you."

"I was asleep!" Julian yelled. "Someone stole my code!"

"We checked your private laptop, Julian," Vance interrupted, dropping a stack of printed financial statements onto the desk. "Three days ago, a private account registered to a shell company in the Cayman Islands received a wire transfer of two million dollars. The originating bank was Valenti Enterprises in Milan."

Julian stopped screaming. His jaw worked silently for three seconds, his eyes darting frantically around the room, searching for an escape that didn't exist.

"They were going to take the girl, Adrian!" Julian whimpered, his confidence breaking into pathetic desperation. "They didn't want you! They just wanted the cook! They offered me two million dollars just to flip the switch for twenty minutes! Why do you care about some servant girl anyway?!"

Adrian set the fully loaded magazine into his pistol with a sharp SNAP.

He stood up, walked around the desk, and stopped in front of his kneeling brother.

"She isn't a servant girl, Julian," Adrian said softly. "Her name is Genevieve Saint-Claire."

Julian’s eyes went wide as saucers. "Saint-Claire... Geneva? The dead family?!"

"She is the rightful owner of the European reserves the Valentis have been using to fund their expansion," Adrian explained. "And she is under the personal protection of Blackwood Manor."

"She’s a curse!" Julian shrieked, tears running down his sweaty cheeks. "The Valentis will bring five hundred men to Boston! They'll burn this house to the ground! You're sacrificing our family empire for a ghost!"

Adrian reached down, grabbed Julian by his collar, and pulled him up until their faces were inches apart.

"You sold out your own blood for two million dollars," Adrian whispered into his ear. "You brought murderers into the house where our father died. You are no longer my brother."

"Adrian... please..." Julian sobbed. "We're blood!"

"Blood means nothing without loyalty," Adrian said.

He looked over at Vance. "Put him in the basement cell. Stripped of all devices. He stays there until this war is finished."

Vance dragged the screaming, sobbing Julian out of the library, leaving Adrian and Genevieve alone in the quiet room.

Genevieve stepped out of the shadows, her gray eyes fixed on Adrian’s face. "He was right about one thing, Adrian. Don Valenti won't stop with a four-man hit squad. Now that he knows I'm alive... he'll send everything he has."