Chapter 1 - The Faint Beating
The heart monitor gave one long, merciless scream.
Then the line went flat.
In the underground medical wing of the Falcone estate, every man stopped breathing for a second.
Gabriel Falcone lay on the steel table under white surgical lights, blood soaking through the bandages around his body.
Thirty-four years old.
Mafia king of Chicago.
A man half the city feared and the other half pretended not to know.
Dead.
The doctor checked his throat, his pupils, and the clock.
“Time of death,” he said.
“Eleven forty-two.”
By midnight, the mansion had already started betraying him.
Captains arrived in black SUVs.
Men whispered over expensive whiskey.
Territories were discussed and carved up.
Loyalty shifted before Gabriel’s body had even gone cold.
Matilda Higgins heard it all while carrying coffee no one drank.
She was the maid they constantly mocked.
The soft, plus-size girl in the too-tight gray uniform.
The one soldiers laughed at when she passed through the grand hallways.
The one Carmine Rossi had once tripped in the foyer just to hear the men call her an earthquake.
Only Gabriel had ever stopped them.
Only Gabriel had looked at her bleeding hands and asked if she was okay.
Now Carmine was smiling like a man who had been waiting for a throne to empty.
At two in the morning, Matilda walked to the medical wing entirely alone.
The guards were gone.
The heavy doors were completely unlocked.
Inside, the room was freezing.
Gabriel lay beneath a thin white sheet, his skin icy, his lips almost blue.
Matilda touched his face and started to cry.
“You don’t get to leave like this,” she whispered.
“Not alone, and not with them out there smiling.”
Then she looked at the locked thermostat and the brutal cold pouring from the vents.
She climbed onto the steel table beside him.
She pressed her body against his and wrapped one arm across his broad chest.
She tucked his frozen face into the warm curve of her neck and pulled the sheet over them both.
The metal table groaned slightly beneath her.
Shame flashed through her.
She thought she was too heavy, too much.
Then she simply held him tighter.
“I’m here,” she whispered, her teeth chattering.
“I won’t let you be cold.”
Hours passed in the deafening silence of the morgue.
Matilda’s tears dried on her cheeks, but she refused to let go.
Suddenly, she felt something strange against her ribs.
It was a faint, impossible vibration.
Thump.
She held her breath, thinking she was losing her mind.
Thump.
Gabriel’s chest slowly rose against hers.
His icy fingers twitched, grabbing the fabric of her uniform.
May you like
Before Matilda could scream for a doctor, the medical wing door violently swung open.
Carmine Rossi stood in the doorway with a silenced pistol in his hand, pointing it directly at the table.
