The silence in the private office stretched so tight it felt like a piano wire pulled to the breaking point. Two million dollars lay on the mahogany desk between us, rejected by a woman with ink stains on her fingers and three pencils stabbed haphazardly into her dark curls.

Victor Vance had vanished into the federal prison system under an alias so deep even sunlight couldn't reach him. Rocco’s seat at my table had been permanently filled by a loyal captain, and our syndicate controlled ninety percent of Manhattan’s import routes.

On paper, I was untouchable.

But in the underworld, power is a magnet for ghosts.

It was a rainy Tuesday evening when Mateo slammed the oak doors of my private office open, his face pale and dripping with water.

"Boss," Mateo panted, dropping an encrypted satellite phone onto my desk. "You need to hear this. Secure line from Moscow."

I frowned, picking up the handset. "Moretti."

A voice crackled through the static—a low, raspy voice that sounded like grinding stones, speaking in fluent, heavily accented English.

“Dante Moretti. You killed a lieutenant of the Bratva when you dismantled Vance’s little operation. You thought Vance was the head of the snake? Vance was just a stray dog. I am the wolf.”

My grip on the phone tightened until my knuckles turned white. "State your name, or I’ll mail your head back to Red Square in a cooler."

A dark, raspy chuckle echoed through the speaker. “My name is Nikolai Rostov. And I am currently sitting in a private box at Broadway’s Majestic Theatre, watching your wife manage a costume change.”