The Don’s Lover Vanished

The silk dress was ruined, soaked in Chicago rain and the oil of the gutter where Vincenzo had left me. Behind the tinted glass of his departing limousine, the man I’d killed for, bled for, and loved for ten years didn’t even look back. The cathedral bells were already ringing for his Russian princess, a hollow sound that signaled the death of the Rossi shadow and the birth of something much more dangerous. My studio was a pyre of sketches and secrets, the smoke rising to meet the gray sky as I watched my old life turn to ash. Vincenzo thinks he’s traded a secret asset for a kingdom, but he’s forgotten one thing: I’m the one who forged his crown, and I know exactly where the cracks are.