Page 56 of The Kingpin’s Bride

Dario was sloppy when he felt powerful. He used the same two men. He moved the child only when the photographs needed updating. He liked ground floors and back exits and the kind of building where neighbors had already learned not to hear anything. He would not expect me to come for the girl. He expected me to come for him.

That was the opening.

I would not hit the house he used for collections. I would hit the place the photographs came from. Two teams. One on the street to pin the watchers. One through the rear the second the front went loud enough to pull every gun toward the wrong door. No speeches. No message for the Families. Camilla out first. Dario alive if he was in the room. Dead, if he made that impossible.

I was marking the second exit when the study door opened.

Morena stood on the threshold with the diary against her chest like a shield. The chain whispered when she took one step in. Her eyes went to the photograph, then to the map, then to my face.

“You’re going tonight.” Not a question.

“Yes.”

“You just found out she exists,” she reminded me.

“I found out she has been used as a leash on my wife. That is enough.”

She came closer anyway. Bare feet on the study floor. The white dress made her look like she had been placed in the wrong room. “He won’t be alone. He never is when he has her. And he will use her if he sees you. He will put her in front of him. That is what he does.”

“I know.”

“Then don’t go in like this.” Her voice frayed. “Don’t go in like she is a problem you can solve. She is four. She does not know your name. If she sees guns she will think you are just like him.”

I looked at her. There it was. Not defiance. Not the diary hate. Fear with my name on it.

“Are you worried about me,” I said. “Or your sister?”

Color hit her cheeks, angry and immediate. “I’m worried about her.”

“And me.”

She swallowed. “If you die in that house, I lose both of you. I get her back and there is no one left who can keep Dario’s people from taking her again. That is not love. That is math.”

I almost smiled. It would have been the wrong thing. “Come here, please.”

She did not. I stood and crossed to her instead, close enough that she had to tip her head back. I did not touch the chain.

“Listen to me,” I said. “I am not walking into a warehouse to make a point. I am going to get your sister. I have done this kind of work since I was younger than I should have been. I will not kick a door with her on the other side of it. I will not fire first in a room that holds a child. I will not leave her there because the timing is inconvenient.”

“And if he has a gun on her?”

“Then I put him down in a way that does not go through her.” I held her eyes.

Her hands had gone tight on the diary. “Take me with you.”

“Fuck no.”

“I can get her to come to me. She will not come to you. She doesn’t know you. She might run from you,” Morena insisted.

“And Dario will put a bullet in you the second he sees your face, because you are the only thing he has left to punish.” I shook my head once. “You stay here. Doors locked. Men in the hall. You can write I hate you as many times as you want. When I come back, Camilla comes with me.”

“You don’t know that,” Rena muttered.

“I do.”

She searched my face like she was looking for the man who had bought her, and finding the one who had decided the child on the dresser was no longer optional.

“If you don’t come back…”