Chapter 1

I was at the door in a bunny suit. Tonight's client was my husband—the man who left us here three years ago. Julian. The Don.

"Three years, Nora," he said, cold as a gun barrel.

"Three years ago, you got your daughter Maya to safety but left Chloe on the gravel. You made a big mistake. Did you learn to be compliant now?”

Chloe. His true love Serena’s daughter. I hadn't known she was there that night.

I stared at the ring on his hand—the one that had replaced ours. "Yes, sir."

His face flickered—then hardened. "Nora, don't give me that dead look. You don't get to do this."

"Selfishness has no place in the Vance family, Nora. You and Maya deserved that."

He smoothed his cuff. "And I came here today to offer you a chance at redemption."

Redemption?

Was there such a thing for me anymore?

I almost laughed, that hollow kind. Then Serena stepped out of the car.

Her diamond rings caught the red neon of the bar.

"Nora, please. Chloe is in the hospital," she begged. "The doctors say she has weeks. We need Maya. We need her marrow. She's a match."

"That's it. Get the girl to the hospital. Then your punishment is over." Julian finished.

So that's what this was. A bargain.

But... it's too late.

"No, sir. You can't take her," I said.

Julian's jaw tightened. "Nora, I'm not asking. I'm taking my daughter back to Boston."

"She isn't going to Boston. She can't." I said. "Because..."

A choked sob rose in my throat. I swallowed it. Maya never liked to see me cry.

"Because...she's dead."

For a moment, The air turned solid. Julian didn't move. Then—

"Is this your play, Nora?" Julian's voice dropped. "You'd curse your own daughter dead just to keep me from saving Chloe?"

"Save your breath," he didn't blink. "Even if Maya's dead, I'll dig up her grave myself and see if her marrow can still be used."

I stood still.

He didn't know. Maya didn't even have a coffin.

In this flesh-eating underground, I couldn't even save enough to buy her one.

...

Julian's eyes locked on mine—the way he used to look at a bad ledger. Cold. Expecting me to bend first.

Before I was sent here, I always did—the apology, the lapel, the surrender. He was waiting for it now.

I wouldn't.

Neither of us moved. The doorway held a strange, frozen stalemate.

I didn't know how long we had stood there—my hands numb from the cold—before he finally spoke.

"You think I put you in this shithole just to punish you? " He sighed, "Truth is, I didn't want to. But I had no choice."

I looked up at him.

He looked away, jaw tight, reciting.

"Three years ago, the East Side was bleeding into a turf war. The Commission had my neck in a noose. "

"I had to marry Serena to stop the bleeding. And I sent you and Maya here to keep you out of it."

I said nothing.

He wanted me to understand. To see it the way he saw it—a chess move, a calculation, a necessary cruelty.

But I was there.

I was there when Maya asked me, in the back of that car, "Is Daddy leaving us?"

I was there when she fell asleep on a jacket in the corner of a room that smelled like bleach and old sweat.

I was there for every single day of the three years he called "keeping you out of it."

And I was still here.

In a bunny suit. At the door. Smiling at every man who came in.

With his wife's diamond rings catching the red neon from the car he arrived in.

So I said nothing. I just looked down at the frayed hem of my bunny suit.

"I sent crates every month," he said, taking a step closer. "Crates. Dry goods. Kerosene. Blankets..."

"I made sure the trucks ran. I made sure they found you. I made sure you weren't out in the cold."

"I did take care of you, Nora."

I remembered the kerosene. Two rusty cans that smelled like pond water—delivered by a guard who took my wedding ring in exchange.

I kept my mouth shut.

"I even started construction on the lot behind the estate," Julian said. His voice softened, just a fraction.

"A playground. Swings. A slide. Maya likes the outdoors."

"Trust me, Nora. I always wanted to bring you home—I just never had the right moment."

"Then Chloe got sick, and the doctors said we needed a match. It was the perfect reason to bring you home. But I never imagined..."

A pause.

His hand suddenly wrapped around my wrist, gripping so tight, the gold of his watch pressing into my skin.

"Now you're standing here, wearing this sleazy garbage, telling me my daughter is dead."

His chest rose and fell. "Apologize, Nora. Tell me where Maya is, and we go home. Right now."

With that, the grip on my wrist loosened slightly.

"Julian," I said, my voice flat like before. "Our daughter is dead."

"It was you who killed her," I said. My voice stayed flat, even as my ribs ached and my chest hollowed out.

"If you hadn't thrown us into the cold to play your gangland games, she would be breathing."

A beat of dead silence.

When he looked up again, his eyes were completely empty. The husband was gone. Only the Don remained.

"After everything, you're still lying to me?" He let go of my wrist and stepped back, his head dropping.

His hand went to the gun at his belt. The hammer clicked back.

A soldier ran up, snow clinging to his black wool coat. He was breathing hard.

"Boss," the soldier said, wiping frost from his forehead. "We found your daughter Maya."