The Mafia's wife

managed to clean out of the rug. Marco Benedetti sat behind his desk with two fingers of scotch he hadn't touched, which was n

door behind her

it

l st

hen he was deciding whether to fight her on something small to sa

ident at the club

ary issue at the club

the hospital, Maria. H

n two fingers though she hadn't lit it yet - a habit more than a need, at this poi

es sharpened. "

n't m

a made man in the hosp

at go too. He knew which doors in his daughter's life not to open. He'd learned that the hard way, three years ago, when she'd come home

h, finally, and drank

lse," he said. "Bigg

alway

atva has agree

between her fingers. "The Ivanovs don't do truces. The Ivanovs hav

are bleeding money and men over a grudge started before either of us

turned toward the door. "I don'

ar

d that tone maybe four times in her life. It was the tone that meant the nex

a marriage," her father sa

t. Even the bass from d

re jo

bout business in my l

ve to be j

me an hour ago, and you want me to marry the head of

want it to stop before it takes something from this family that we can't get back. You're the strongest thing I have, Maria. That's not me putting

her want to put her fist through something else tonight - there was a smaller

she said

ays, not

hands steady this time out of

ing out to

umorless sound. "At least we'll b

-

mir Ivanov was not taki

t me to marry into the family that put a bullet in my father's skull and bur

imir's temper, or at least skilled at standing still through it. "The old

t family gutted it. I don't answer to old men wh

live," Yuri said, quieter now. "And so do I. That's t

ng nothing to soften the look on his face. Sleep had never come ea

r," he said final

she came back to the family business. Left under circumstances nobody talks about - sealed record, quiet discharge, no public ex

lifted despite hi

pun

"A soldier's daughter with something buried she doesn't talk about,

ked, and for once, Vladim

s territory from hers - six miles that w

meet her,

tral ground. Both fa

e walls he'd need higher before he let a Benedetti anywhere ne

ed to. But for the first time in longer than he cou

iosity, in his experience