Chapter 1 - The Weight of the Garbage Bag
They told Dante Cavallaro that Sophie Miller had stolen one hundred thousand dollars from his private safe and disappeared with the one ledger capable of destroying his empire. For six months, he believed them. For six months, he let himself hate the only woman who had ever looked at him without fear, because hatred hurt less than admitting that he missed her.
Then, on the coldest night Chicago had seen in years, Dante heard something moving inside a pile of garbage behind an abandoned warehouse.
Rocco kicked the black plastic bag once and claimed, “Probably an animal.”
The bag whimpered.
Dante stopped walking.
"Open it."
Rocco hesitated. “Boss—”
"I said open it."
The plastic tore beneath Rocco's gloved hands, and a pale arm slipped onto the frozen pavement.
Mut's breath disappeared.
Honey-blond hair, filthy and tangled. A bruised face he knew better than he wanted to admit. Bare feet blue from the cold. A body so thin that the oversized shirt around it looked as though it had been hung from bones.
For one impossible second, Chicago seemed to go silently around him.
"Sophie?"
Her one uninjured eye opened.
She saw him.
And screamed.
“No. Please. Please, I didn't tell them anything.”
Dante dropped to his knees in the filthy snow.
"Sophie, it's me."
She tried to crawl backward into the garbage.
“I didn't tell them,” she gasped. “I swear. Please don't burn me again.”
Dante stared at her.
Burn?
He reached for her wrist.
She cried out, and the torn sleeve slipped toward her elbow.
That was when he saw the branded mark into her skin.
A serpent curled into a circle.
The symbol used by Silas Vane, the only man in Chicago arrogant enough to leave his signature on someone he intended to destroy.
Dante had spent six months imagining Sophie somewhere warm, somewhere expensive, laughing at the man she had fooled.
She had not been living like a queen.
She had been surviving like someone the world had already thrown away.
His voice came out so quietly that even Rocco stepped back.
"Who did this to you?"
Sophie looked at him through tears.
Her lips trembled.
Then she whispered his name as though it was the last safe word she remembered.
"Dante..."
Her body went limp in his arms.
And in that moment, the most feared boss in Chicago understood that someone had lied to him.
Someone close enough to know exactly whom he would believe.
Someone had not simply stolen his money.
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They had stolen six months of Sophie's life.
And Dante suddenly knew that before the night was over, he was going to find out who.
