A single mom thought her daughter drew an innocent stick figure, until a ruthless mafia don realized the sketch revealed a classified breach in his luxury hotel.

Dante leaned in half an inch closer, his breath held tight, his entire world narrowing to the words about to leave the lips of a six-year-old child.

"What did he say, Sophie?"

Sophie looked directly into his pale gray eyes, completely unaware of the mountain of blood and power that hung on her answer.

"He said Mr. Moretti would never find out."

The air inside the penthouse office flatlined.

Across the room, Marissa Lane let out a strangled, weeping gasp, her hands flying to her mouth. She was not a criminal; she did not know the politics of the Five Families; but she was a mother, and she knew the look of a man who had just received an execution order.

Dante slowly rose to his full height.

The warmth that had softened his features over the past ten minutes evaporated completely. His posture shifted, the dense musculature of his shoulders locking into the terrible, ancient alignment of a sovereign preparing for war. His face turned as white and unyielding as a marble headstone beneath the chandelier light.

He turned toward Vincent Russo.

"The board of directors," Dante whispered.

The words were so low, so devoid of inflection, that they sounded like dry leaves scraping over concrete.

"Marcus Delacroix," Vincent said, his fingers flying across the tablet with frantic speed. "He’s the only trustee with single-signature authorization for the twelfth-floor archives. He’s the only one who had the codes for the analog junction."

"Delacroix," Dante repeated, the name tasting like ash on his tongue.

Marcus Delacroix had been his father’s personal attorney for thirty years. He had stood beside Dante at Don Vittorio’s grave; he had handled the probate of the estate; he had kissed Dante’s signet ring when the council had ratified his succession.

And for three weeks, Delacroix had been sitting in his law office on Madison Avenue, selling the family’s transport routes to the Chicago syndicates, using a ghost in a gray coat to siphon the records out of the heart of the Moretti Reserve.

Dante reached across his desk.

He picked up the gold Montblanc pen and the drawing Sophie had made on the hotel stationery. He did not fold it. He slid the drawing into his interior breast pocket, resting the paper flat against his ribs, right over his heart.

Then, his hand hovered over the cherry lollipop resting on the leather blotter.

He picked it up by the white paper stick and slipped it into the small coin pocket of his tailored vest.

"Vincent," Dante commanded.

"Yes, Don Dante?"

"Lock the exterior gates of the garage. Tell the front desk to announce a localized power outage on floors ten through fourteen. If a single elevator moves without my biometric scan, drop the emergency cables."