The first thing Dante heard was not her voice. It was the door. A hard, splintering crack traveled through the phone before the woman on the other end managed to speak. Then came breathing.

The private apartment above Carmelo’s restaurant didn't look like a safehouse.

It was spacious, high-ceilinged, and filled with towering bookshelves, rich mahogany furniture, and large oil paintings that smelled faintly of old varnish and turpentine. Heavy velvet curtains blocked out the streetlights, casting the room in a warm, amber glow.

Dr. Vance, a quiet, gray-haired man who had patched up more mobsters, politicians, and broken souls than he cared to count, finished wrapping Emma’s fractured arm in a lightweight fiberglass cast.

“Clean fracture of the ulna,” Dr. Vance said professionally, packing his instruments into a weathered leather bag. “It’s going to ache when the weather changes, but it will heal straight if you don't do anything foolish like punch another wall.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Emma murmured, wincing slightly as she rested her arm against her chest.

“Get some rest,” Dante instructed from the doorway, his hands tucked into his wool coat pockets. “You’ll stay here until we find something permanent. No one enters this building without my direct permission.”

“I can’t stay here, Mr. Moretti,” Emma protested, shaking her head. “This is your home. Or your office. I’m just… I was a waitress at your restaurant.”

“You were an employee of an establishment under my protection,” Dante corrected flatly. “And right now, this is the safest address in Manhattan. Sleep.”

He turned and walked out of the room, closing the heavy oak door behind him with a quiet click.

Emma lay back against the soft cotton pillows, staring up at the intricate plaster molding on the ceiling. Her body ached in a dozen different places, but for the first time in four years, her chest didn't feel like it was being crushed by an invisible weight. The terror hadn't completely vanished—it lingered at the edges of her mind like smoke after a fire—but the paralyzing certainty of helplessness was gone.

Downstairs in his private study, Dante poured two fingers of amber bourbon into a heavy crystal glass.

Leo stood by the door, holding a manila folder. “Marcus signed the paperwork, Boss. He caught a bus to Newark twenty minutes ago. He won't be back.”

“Good,” Dante said, swirling the liquor against the glass. “And the apartment?”

“Cleared out. Her things are in storage. Anything that belonged to him went into the incinerator.”

Dante took a slow sip of the bourbon, letting the burn settle in his throat. His mind drifted back to the sound of that splintered door over the phone. A cold, quiet anger stirred beneath his ribs—the kind of anger that built empires and tore them down just as easily.

“Leo,” Dante said softly, not looking up.

“Yeah, Boss?”