“You’ve been stealing from me.” Zo Rossi said it quietly. That made it worse. Men like Zo didn’t need to yell.

By January, the war in Chicago had settled into a quiet, uneasy truce.

Zo had completely restructured his organization. The traitors were removed, the South Side docks were brought under legitimate shipping management, and the Rossi family name was cleaner than it had been in thirty years.

I moved back to the main estate in Chicago—not as a maid, and not as a manager, but as the woman living in the master wing beside Zo Rossi.

The house staff, including Carmine, welcomed me with open arms. They didn't see a maid who had seduced the boss; they saw a woman who had brought laughter, warmth, and humanity back into a dark, cold house.

Mia loved the estate. She had her own playroom on the second floor, a golden retriever puppy named Barnaby that Zo had bought her for her eighth birthday, and a private tutor who made sure she was caught up in her schoolwork.

Watching Zo with Mia was something I never could have predicted.

The feared mafia boss—the man who could command three hundred men with a single phone call—spent his Tuesday evenings sitting on a tiny velvet chair in Mia's playroom, letting her put pink plastic hair clips into his dark hair while he read her bedtime stories.

"He's soft on her," I said one evening, leaning against the doorframe of Mia's bedroom, watching Zo tuck her under her unicorn duvet.

Zo kissed Mia's forehead, clicked off the nightlight, and stepped out into the hallway, closing the door softly behind him. He pulled three pink hair clips out of his hair and tossed them onto the console table with a faint smirk.

"I’m not soft," Zo said, wrapping his arms around my waist from behind and pulling me back against his chest. "I’m strategic. She's the real boss of this house. I'm just the muscle."

I laughed, resting my head back against his shoulder. "If your Commission lieutenants saw you right now, they'd revolt."

"Let them try," Zo murmured, kissing the sensitive spot beneath my ear. "I’ve cleared out the rats. The business is clean, Tessa. I’m transitioning our main capital into legitimate logistics and medical real estate."

I turned around in his arms, wrapping my hands around his neck. "Medical real estate?"

Zo looked at me seriously. "We’re buying the pediatric endocrinology clinic downtown—the one where Mia gets her treatments. We’re erasing all patient debt for low-income families and funding a free insulin distribution program across Cook County."

Tears sprang to my eyes. I stared at him, completely speechless.

"Why are you doing that?" I whispered.

"Because six months ago, a woman was eating cold rice off my garage floor so her daughter could breathe," Zo said softly, his eyes filled with profound emotion. "No mother should ever have to make that choice. I have more money than I can spend in ten lifetimes, Tessa. It’s time it did something good."

I pressed my lips to his, pouring all my love and gratitude into the kiss.

But deep down, in the back of my mind, a tiny voice kept whispering.