CHAPTER 1 — The Song That Stopped the Devil
The first time Vincenzo Russo heard me sing, the most feared man in Chicago forgot how to breathe.
Not because my voice was extraordinary.
Because the song wasn't supposed to exist anymore.
Everything inside the 47th-floor penthouse screamed power. Bulletproof glass overlooked the Chicago skyline. Italian marble reflected the gray morning light. Armed guards stood outside every entrance, pretending not to watch me while watching everything.
I was only the cleaning girl.
Invisible.
Forgettable.
Exactly how I preferred it.
My name was Lucia Marino.
Twenty-four.
Working three cleaning jobs.
Drowning in bills.
Keeping my seventeen-year-old brother Mateo alive one prescription at a time.
People thought poverty made you weak.
They were wrong.
Poverty taught you how to disappear.
And disappearing kept you alive.
As I polished the endless wall of windows, I quietly hummed the lullaby my grandmother had sung every Sunday while stirring tomato sauce in her tiny apartment in Queens.
I wasn't even thinking.
The melody simply escaped.
Then...
"You missed a fingerprint."
The voice froze the room.
I nearly fell from the ladder.
Vincenzo Russo stood only a few feet behind me.
No footsteps.
No warning.
Only silence.
He wore a charcoal-gray suit worth more than my yearly salary. His black eyes didn't blink.
Most people looked at his face.
I looked at his hands.
Because they were perfectly still.
Hands that never trembled belonged to men who had seen too much blood.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Russo."
I climbed down quickly.
"I'll clean it again."
He ignored the window.
"What was that song?"
I forced a smile.
"Just an old lullaby."
"Sing it."
"I'd rather not."
"That wasn't a request."
Every cleaner in Chicago knew one rule.
Never argue with Vincenzo Russo.
Yet somehow...
"I only sing when nobody's listening."
For several seconds, neither of us moved.
Then something impossible happened.
He smiled.
Barely.
Just enough to prove his face still remembered how.
"My mother used to sing that."
My stomach tightened.
"My grandmother learned it in Sicily."
His eyes darkened.
"Which village?"
"I don't know."
"You should."
Before I could ask why, he walked away.
But I noticed something strange.
His right hand was shaking.
Only slightly.
Only once.
Then it stopped.
That afternoon he ordered me to clean his private office.
No one entered that room.
Not guards.
Not assistants.
Not even the woman who had spent the previous night there.
The office looked less like a workplace and more like a church dedicated to power.
Mahogany shelves.
Centuries-old Sicilian books.
Antique pistols displayed beside Renaissance paintings.
Everything perfectly arranged.
Everything...
Except one photograph lying face down.
Curiosity whispered louder than common sense.
I picked it up.
A faded black-and-white family picture.
A young woman held a laughing little girl.
Beside them stood a man wearing the exact silver wolf ring Vincenzo always wore.
Written on the back were only four words.
"Never sing it again."
Cold spread through my body.
Footsteps.
I turned.
Vincenzo stood in the doorway.
He wasn't angry.
He looked...
Terrified.
"Where did you find that?"
"It was already here."
He crossed the room in seconds and snatched the photograph from my hands.
His breathing became uneven.
"You looked at the back."
It wasn't a question.
"I'm sorry."
He stared at me for what felt like forever.
Finally he whispered something that made my blood run cold.
"My mother sang that lullaby..."
"...the night she disappeared."
Silence swallowed the office.
Then he looked directly into my eyes.
"Tomorrow."
He paused.
"Bring your grandmother."
"My grandmother died six years ago."
For the first time in years...
The Mafia King looked completely lost.
May you like
Because dead women...
Could not explain songs that had been buried with his family's darkest secret.
