Chapter 1
The dinner tray slipped from my hands before I even saw the mafia boss.
Porcelain exploded across his marble floor.
Red sauce splashed my shoes.
Two guards reached for their guns.
But none of that was why my knees almost gave out.
The dog near the terrace was.
Everyone in Manhattan’s private catering world had heard whispers about Enzo Dante’s pitbull.
A beast so violent even his own men kept their distance.
A dog that had put handlers in the hospital.
A dog people described in the same tone they used for loaded weapons.
What nobody in that penthouse knew was that I had once kissed the white mark on that dog’s chest before bed.
Because seven years earlier, he had been mine.
He was the puppy stolen from my backyard the same week we buried my father.
The puppy I searched for until everyone around me got tired of my grief.
The puppy I was told to forget.
And now he was standing in front of me bigger, scarred, and trained to kill for a man dangerous enough to make a whole room breathe quieter.
“Don’t move,” Enzo Dante said.
But I already had.
I took one step toward the dog.
Its head dropped.
Its lips peeled back.
That growl did not sound like a warning.
It sounded like a promise.
One more step and I should have been dead.
Instead, I did the one thing no sane woman would have done in a penthouse full of armed men.
I sang to him.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Just a broken little lullaby my grandmother used to sing when storms shook our windows and my puppy would crawl into my lap.
The whole room changed.
The dog’s growl cut off.
Its ears twitched.
Its eyes locked on mine.
And then that huge scarred pitbull dropped to his belly and crawled across the floor into my arms like he had been trying to find his way back to me for years.
Nobody moved.
Nobody spoke.
Even Enzo Dante just stood there with his hand near his gun, staring like he had never seen fear look so much like confusion.
Then he said one word.
“Explain.”
So I did.
I told him someone stole my puppy when I was thirteen.
I told him Cerberus used to have another name.
I told him about the lightning-shaped patch on his chest.
I told him about the song.
And when I touched the scar over his eye and said that scar was not there before he was taken, something changed in Enzo’s face.
It was not rage.
It was not disbelief.
It was the look of a man realizing one lie inside his house might be connected to a much bigger one.
I thought he would throw me out.
Instead, he told me to stay.
In his penthouse.
With the dog.
Near him.
That should have been enough to terrify me.
It wasn’t.
What terrified me came three nights later.
Enzo brought me into a private dinner with the men he trusted most.
Expensive suits.
Cold smiles.
The kind of table where one wrong sentence could get buried with the dessert plates.
Then one of his top men stood up, smiled at me, and offered his hand.
Before my fingers even touched his, the dog lost control.
Not random.
Not wild.
Focused.
Violent.
Personal.
He lunged so hard I nearly hit the floor trying to hold him back.
The man stumbled.
His smile cracked.
And then he laughed.
Just once.
Soft.
Dismissive.
Careless.
My blood went cold.
Because I knew that laugh.
I had heard it once before.
Years ago.
May you like
In the dark.
On the night my puppy disappeared.
