On the other end of the line, in the fortified study of the Valducci compound where maps of territory lines covered the walls and the scent of aged Scotch hung in the air, the most feared man on the Eastern Seaboard gripped his phone so hard the casing cracked beneath his fingers.
"Mia! Mia!" His voice shattered. The mask of the Capo di tutti Capi fell away, and what remained was only a father. "Damnit! Where are you, my daughter?!"
By the time Don Vittorio Valducci's motorcade tore through the rain-slicked streets to the crash site, he had already made seven calls. The finest trauma surgeons on the Eastern Seaboard were being roused from their beds, summoned under threat of consequences none of them dared imagine. A private wing at St. Cecilia's had been cleared. Every corridor between the emergency bay and the operating theater was emptied of civilians, lined instead with Valducci soldiers in dark overcoats who stood with their hands folded and their eyes alert.
It was Felix who reached the wreckage first.
The sedan had folded around a concrete median like a crushed cigarette box, its frame buckled inward, glass scattered across the wet asphalt in a glittering carpet. Felix did not wait for the fire crew. He seized the driver's side door with both hands and wrenched it free of its hinges, the metal screaming as it gave way. The driver was already gone. His neck bent at an angle that left no room for hope, his body slumped against the deflated airbag. Felix did not spare him a second glance. He climbed through the wreckage to the back seat, where a woman lay crumpled against the crushed interior panel, her golden-blonde hair matted dark with blood, a single streak of black visible beneath the crimson.
His hands shook. Felix Valducci, who had once put three bullets into a man's chest without blinking, felt his hands shake as he gathered his sister's body from the ruin.
Don Vittorio was already outside the vehicle when Felix emerged. The Boss of all Bosses stood in the rain without an umbrella, his silver hair plastered to his temples, his jaw set like carved granite. When he saw Mia's body in Felix's arms, something behind his eyes fractured. It was not a collapse. It was worse. It was the stillness of a man deciding who would pay.