With just eighteen dollars and forty-chipped cents in her bank account and an empty refrigerator at home, Emma had been forced to bring her little girl to work after-hours.

The dining room of Il Vespro felt entirely detached from time.

Outside, the snow was falling faster now, painting the high arched windows in thick, silent swathes of white, obscuring the streetlights of the North End until the restaurant existed as an island of amber glass in a dark sea. The two bodyguards at the entrance stood like iron silhouettes, their gazes fixed on the opposite wall, disciplined enough never to speak, yet acutely aware that the ground beneath their feet was shifting in ways that would alter the syndicate’s ledger before dawn.

Vincent did not move. He remained on his knee, his posture steady as an anchor, his hand resting on the child’s small shoulder with a touch as light as a falling feather. The intricate dark ink of the dragon on his forearm caught the golden light of the Christmas tree, the scales seeming to shift with the steady rise and fall of his breathing.

Emma took half a step forward, her hand reaching out toward Isabella, her lips trembling as she prepared to shatter the silence, to beg, to throw herself between the mafia boss and her child.

"Bella..." Emma’s voice broke, little more than an exhaled sob.

Isabella did not step back. She remained anchored in front of Vincent, her small frame wrapped in the midnight-blue cashmere that fell all the way to the floorboards. She looked at Vincent’s short beard, at the severe lines carved into his handsome, rugged face, and at the absolute, terrifying gentleness that lived in his dark eyes.

She did not look afraid.

She looked like a child who had been asked a question she had waited a very long time to answer.

The crystal chandeliers hummed. The golden lights on the spruce tree flickered once, casting a sudden, brilliant prism of blue across the plastic stones of her tiara.