“Your daughter isn’t blind. Your wife has been putting something in her food.” Those words came from a homeless boy I had never seen before, but they shattered six months of medical diagnoses in seconds and forced me to consider something more terrifying than my seven-year-old daughter losing her sight: someone inside the home of Atlanta’s most feared mafia boss might be deliberately taking it from her.

The revelation hit me harder than a physical blow.

"What are you talking about?" I rasped.

Sophia tilted her head, her smile twisting into something monstrous. "Did you really think I didn't know about your little fling seven years ago in Chicago? With that sweet, quiet innocent little painter, Clara?"

My heart stopped.

Clara.

Seven years ago, during the bloodiest phase of the turf war with the Chicago outfit, I had spent three weeks hiding out in a safehouse on the north side of Chicago. Clara had been my landlord's daughter—a woman who knew nothing about the mafia, nothing about Vincent Moretti, nothing about the blood on my hands. We had a brief, quiet affair before I returned to Atlanta to consolidate my power. Six months later, I received news that Clara had died in childbirth, leaving an infant girl behind.

I had brought the baby back to Atlanta. I had told Sophia that the mother was a surrogate I had hired because Sophia's medical exams said she couldn't carry a child to term.

"I found the letters three years ago, Vincent," Sophia sneered, her eyes burning with a deep, toxic hatred. "In your safe in the basement. The DNA tests. The journal entries. The money you were sending to her family's trust fund. You brought her bastard into my house. You forced me to raise the child of the woman you actually loved!"

"So you poisoned a seven-year-old child?" I slammed my fist down onto the arm of her chair, shattering the carved mahogany frame. "She was an innocent baby!"

"She was a constant reminder that I was just your high-society accessory!" Sophia screamed back, her composure finally shattering into hysterical rage. "You used my family's name to legitimize your blood money in Atlanta! My father gave you the political connections you needed to buy the docks! And how did you repay me? By making me play mother to a bastard girl who has Clara's eyes!"

I pulled back, staring at her as if she were a strange, dangerous predator I had never seen before.

"Harrison Vance," I said quietly, connecting the remaining pieces of the puzzle. "The doctor. He wasn't just diagnosing her. He was supplying the compound."

"Harrison loves me," Sophia spat, tossing her head back with a bitter laugh. "He's been loving me since before I met you. He understood what that child was doing to my mind. He agreed to help me... eliminate the problem slowly. Painlessly."

"Painlessly?" I grabbed her by the front of her cream dress, yanking her out of the chair until she was standing on her tiptoes. "She’s going blind, Sophia! She cries herself to sleep every night because her head feels like it's exploding!"

"She should have died in Chicago with her mother!" Sophia snarled directly into my face.

I raised my right hand, my fingers curling into a fist, every brutal instinct honed over twenty years of mob violence demanding that I destroy her right there on the rug of my study.

"Boss," Frank’s voice cut through the rage like an ice pick. "Boss, don't. Not here. Not with the kid down the hall."

I took three deep, ragged breaths, forcing the violent rage back down into the dark corners of my chest.

"Frank," I said softly, without releasing my grip on Sophia's collar.

"Yeah, Boss?"

"Take her to the basement saferoom. Lock the steel door. Take her phone, her jewelry, and her shoes. If she tries to scream, gag her."

"Vincent, you can't do this!" Sophia shrieked, her hands clawing at my wrists as Frank stepped forward with a pair of heavy zip-ties. "My father is the State Senator! If I disappear for twelve hours, he'll have the State Police sweeping your warehouses!"

"Let him sweep," I said coldly, shoving her toward Frank. "Your father exists because I pay his campaign expenses. By tomorrow morning, Harrison Vance will be dead, and you will be sitting in a basement in South America."

"You monster!" she screamed as Frank pinned her arms behind her back and secured the zip-ties with a harsh zip-zip. "You dirty, murderous mobster!"

"I am a mobster, Sophia," I said, picking up the small brown glass bottle from the desk. "You knew that when you married me. But you forgot one thing."