"Nobody's Coming To Save You," My Ex-Boyfriend Smirked In The Dark Parking Garage—Until Chicago’s Most Feared Mafia Don Stepped Out Of The Shadows!

Carmine Falcone clawed desperately at Marco’s iron wrist, his boots scraping frantically against the wet asphalt as his face turned the color of an overripe plum.

"Her name is Samantha Reed," Marco whispered, leaning in until his breath steamed against Falcone’s ear. "She is the woman who just dismantled your entire supply chain in twenty-two minutes with a nine-inch piece of glass. And she is the last person you will ever look at before your world burns."

Marco let go.

Falcone crashed to the ground like a sack of wet flour, coughing violently, dragging air into his crushed windpipe with terrible, wet gasps.

"Gianni," Marco said, not looking down at the coughing wreck on the gravel.

"Yes, Don Marco."

"Notify the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. Send them the unencrypted files Miss Reed prepared. Tell them the Falcone organization has twenty-four hours to surrender all municipal shipping licenses before I liquidate their properties myself."

Marco turned to look at Ethan, who was curled into a fetal position beside the truck tire, weeping so hard he was choking on his own tears.

"Samantha," Marco said softly, his eyes shifting to her. "What do you want done with him?"

The yard went utterly silent, save for the hum of the gantry generators and the crying of the man who had terrorized her life for nine months.

Ethan looked up through his swollen, tear-streaked eyes. "Sam... please... I loved you... you know I loved you..."

Samantha looked down at him. There was no anger left in her chest. No hatred. Only the vast, cold disgust you feel when you realize you were once afraid of something small and pathetic.

"He owes four hundred and ten thousand dollars to the Falcones," Samantha said, her voice completely steady in the freezing wind. "Let him pay it back working twenty-hour shifts on the coal docks in Duluth. At twelve dollars an hour. With no days off."

A grim, approving smirk touched Marco’s lips.

"A fair accounting," Marco agreed. He looked at Luca. "Put him on the morning barge to Minnesota. If he steps off that deck before the balance is zero, drop him into Superior."

"No! Please! Sam!" Ethan screamed as two armed guards hauled him to his feet and dragged him toward the harbor basin, his boots digging futilely into the wet gravel until the darkness swallowed his cries.

Marco stepped close to Samantha. The freezing rain was dripping from the brim of his collar, but when he stood in front of her, the wind seemed to break around his massive frame, creating a small pocket of absolute warmth in the center of the industrial tempest.

He reached out, his bare fingers gently lifting her chin so that her eyes met his.

"You did well tonight, Samantha," he said.

"I told you," she whispered, her heart hammering against her ribs, not with fear, but with something wild, untamed, and breathtakingly new. "I don't like when the numbers don't match."

"Neither do I," Marco murmured.

He turned toward the waiting Escalade, offering his arm to her with the old-world courtliness of a king escorting an empress into a ballroom.

"Come," he said softly. "Your brother is waiting. And tomorrow, we take over this city."