Four days after taking a job in a mob boss's mansion, an innocent kiss on his cheek made his hand slam into the wall beside my head.

The Mediterranean wind hit us like an open palm, whipping our hair and chilling our sweat-drenched skin. We stood on a narrow goat trail carved into the sheer limestone face of the promontory. Above us, the storm clouds were breaking into ragged, fast-moving scuds of gray; below us, waves crashed violently against black sea stacks.

Ahead on the ridge, tucked beneath an overhang of wild rosemary and scrub pine, sat a rusted corrugated iron shed—the abandoned lookout of a coastal spotter from the second World War.

"There," Luca breathed, leaning heavily against the rock wall to catch his breath. "The radio antenna on the roof... it has power."

"Power? In an abandoned shed?" Leo frowned, keeping his rifle trained on the tunnel entrance behind us.

"It is not abandoned," Luca replied, a thin, dangerous smile touching his lips. "It belongs to Donato."

Donato was a name I had heard whispered only once in the Rossi mansion—a legendary smuggler, an old man who had served Luca's grandfather before retreating into voluntary exile along the coast. If Matteo had purged the mainland, Donato was one of the few men who lived outside the syndicate's modern digital grid.

We reached the heavy reinforced door of the shed. Luca hammered on the iron panel with the butt of his pistol: three slow beats, two fast, one final heavy strike.

For ten agonizing seconds, only the howling wind answered. My heart hammered against my ribs, expecting another mercenary to emerge from the brush at any moment.

Then, the slide of a viewing slit scraped back. A pair of rheumy, suspicious gray eyes glared out from behind iron bars.

"Luca?" a gravelly, incredulous voice croaked from inside. "They said you burned alive in the villa at midnight."

"They lied, old man," Luca growled. "Open the damn door before I bleed all over your threshold."

Heavy bolts slammed back, and the door swung open. A hunched, wiry man in a grease-stained wool sweater stood before us, holding a shortened twelve-gauge shotgun. His weathered face was mapped with deep wrinkles and old knife scars, but his eyes were sharp as a raptor's.

"Get inside. Quick!" Donato hissed, glancing up at the sky where the distant hum of a helicopter rotor echoed over the cliffs.

He slammed the door behind us, dropping three heavy iron drop-bars into place. The interior of the shed was packed with vintage maritime electronics, surplus military radios, racks of ammunition, and crates of cured ham and wine. A bank of cathode-ray monitors flickered in the corner, patched into illegal taps of local police frequencies.

Luca sank into a wooden chair, his face slick with exhaustion. "Donato. What is the news from Naples?"

Donato spat on the concrete floor, his expression dark with disgust. "Matteo has called an emergency conclave of the five families for midnight tonight at the San Gennaro fortress. He is telling the council that the Falcone family assassinated you and your inner circle. He plans to declare himself Capo dei Capi with the full endorsement of the Sicilian syndicates."

"And the men who were loyal to me?" Luca asked, his voice deathly quiet.

"Hunted. Imprisoned. Or dead," Donato said flatly. "Matteo spent three years preparing this coup, boy. He has bought off the police commanders, the port authorities, and half your caporegimes."

Donato paused, his sharp gaze shifting from Luca to me, then to Leo. He stared at the blood on my hands, the wild fire in my eyes.

"And who is the girl?" Donato asked softly. "The one the entire coast is hunting for?"

Luca reached out, catching my hand and pulling me toward him until I stood at his side. He didn't look at Donato when he answered. His gaze remained locked on me, blazing with an indomitable, terrifying certainty.