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Right. He’s in killer mode and already knows we are surrounded. His body shifts, angling himself between me and the threat at our backs. His grip tightens once, a hard squeeze, then releases.

"When I let go," his voice drops so low only I can hear it over the rain, "get to the gun on the ground. The Sig, near the man to your left. You know how to use one?"

My father put a pistol in my hands on my fourteenth birthday and taught me to shoot tin cans off a fence post until my ears rang and my palms blistered. I nod once.

"That's my girl."

Vivienne takes a step deeper into the alley, her heels punching the asphalt with precision. The two bodyguards on either side mimic her moves. But what really has my attention is the small gun in her hand and the fact it’s pointed straight at my heart.

I see and so does Thane. The snarl on his lips and the scowl on his face tell me, if not my stepmother, the lady’s time on this earth is marked in minutes and not years.

Undeterred by Thane’s ire, she surveys the carnage around her with cold disinterest. Blood mixes with rainwater in long thin streams toward the gutter. She doesn't spare any of it more than a glance.

"You hired amateurs," Thane says with a terrifying calm that has my skin prickling.

Vivienne's gaze slides to him. "I hired you. The amateurs were the backup plan after my investment failed to deliver."

"Investments have a way of going sideways when you buy cheap, Vivienne. It would have taken a lot more than ten million for me to put your step-daughter in the ground."

My gasp comes fast. Burn. Thane throws me a fast wink and I’m not sure if I want to put a bullet in him too or not now. Damn, this mafia shit is treacherous to navigate. You don't know who to trust.

My step-mother bristles. With all the botox injections, her face only twitches with a micro-expression. But I know what to look for.

"Step aside, Mr. Cross. My business is with her." Her chin lifts toward me and the gun stays trained on my heart. Those cold blue eyes lock onto mine and I am looking at a stranger wearing my stepmother's skin.

"Go to hell, Vivienne." The words come out steady, precise, laced with every ounce of Castellano steel I've spent years pretending I don't have.

One sculpted brow lifts. "There's that fire. Your father had it too. Shame he couldn't put it to better use."

My jaw tightens. "Leave my father out of this. He died in peace, so let’s leave him there."

"Your father." Vivienne laughs, a single hollow note. She takes another step closer. "You poor girl. You still believe he died peacefully. A heart attack in his study. The stress of the empire weighing on his tired old heart. Such a tragedy."

Cold spreads down the back of my neck. And the chill crawling through my body has nothing to do with the rain.

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying your father was a problem, Neve. The same way you are a problem. He refused to put my name on the will. Twenty years I gave that man. Twenty years of playing the devoted wife, hosting his associates, smiling at his soldiers, enduring his late nights and paranoia. And his reward for my loyalty was to leave everything to the daughter who abandoned his legacy to bake pastries."

My fingernails cut crescents into my palms. "So you killed him."

Her lips press together like I'm slow and she's tired of explaining.

"Digitalis in his evening brandy. Three weeks of gradually increasing doses until his heart gave out on its own. The coroner ruled it natural causes. Because technically, it was. Natural consequences for a man who undervalued the woman beside him."

The alley tilts beneath my feet. My father's face surfaces. Warm brown eyes. His palm on the top of my head when I was small, telling me I was the best thing he ever made. Flour on his expensive suits because he let me practice my first loaf while he worked nearby. The phone call from the hospital where a woman in blue scrubs told me his heart stopped and there was nothing they could do.

Digitalis. She poisoned him. Slowly. While she kissed his cheek and fixed his collar and sat across from him at dinner, she measured his death in milligrams.

Thane stays silent at my side. I feel his calm reach for me and lend me strength. I am not alone.

"You murdered my father." My voice holds steady while my grief-stricken heart runs wild.

"I removed an obstacle. I assumed his death would settle matters and the empire would pass to me as the surviving spouse. And then the lawyers opened that mahogany box and read his will. Everything to Neve Adriana Castellano." Vivienne's nostrils flare. "Everything. To a girl who chose an oven over an empire."

"It was never yours. The only thing you deserved, if anything, was a comfortable life. You married into wealth and never once helped build it. Then you poisoned the man who loved you all because of greed."

Her composure fractures. Raw anger flashes through those blue eyes, real and ugly. For the first time I see the woman underneath all the polish. She didn't come from money. She clawed her way out of poverty and sank her fingers into my father's world because she swore she'd never go back. I understand hunger. I understand survival.