The most powerful mafia boss in Queens brought his deadliest dog to a little girl’s funeral—only for the beast to refuse to leave her coffin and growl at the boss’s most trusted underboss. Everyone thought the dog had lost control, until one phone call exposed a betrayal tied to the child’s death. But the real nightmare began when Bruno pressed his ear back to the coffin… as if something inside was still alive.

The basement of my Whitestone estate did not look like the pristine surgical clinic down the hall.

Further down the stone corridor, past the wine cellar and the armory, was a heavy steel door reinforced with iron bars. It was a room that had seen the end of many men who thought they could play games with the Queens territory.

Marco Ricci sat tied to a heavy oak chair in the center of the damp room, his head hanging low, blood dripping from his nose where Tony had struck him during the transfer from the trunk. A single bulb hung from the ceiling, swaying gently, casting long shadows across his pale, sweating face.

I walked into the room, stepping slowly. Bruno followed at my heel, his chest low, his eyes locked on Marco’s boots.

"The girl is alive, Marco," I said, stopping three feet from him, resting my hands in the pockets of my wool coat.

Marco’s head snapped up. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, filled with a sickening combination of disbelief and absolute terror. "Alive? Mateo... that’s impossible. I saw her hit the hood of Harlan’s truck. She didn't move. She wasn't breathing."

"She was drugged," I said coldly. "Rossi found Xylazine in her blood. She was hit by a truck, yes, but she didn't die. Harlan’s coroner put her in a freezer to finish the job without leaving bullet holes. And you stood in a funeral home today, watching her parents cry over a child who was slowly suffocating in a box."

Marco swallowed hard, his throat making a dry, clicking sound. "Mateo... listen to me... you don't understand the pressure Harlan put on me."

"Explain it to me," I said, leaning down until my face was inches from his. "Explain it so I can understand how twelve years of brotherhood turns into horse tranquilizers in a child's veins."

Marco began to cry—not the tears of a man who was sorry, but the frantic, ugly tears of a rat trapped in a corner.

"The dock shipments from last year," Marco stammered, his body shaking against the ropes. "The three containers that got seized by the Feds in Newark. You thought it was an Irish slip-up. It wasn't. It was me, Mateo. I lost six million dollars of Harlan’s money on a bad shipment of illegal arms. He had paper on me. He had recordings of me giving up the shipping manifests."

"So you sold him my routes," I said softly.

"He promised me he would burn the tapes!" Marco pleaded, his voice rising to a high-pitched whine. "He said he just wanted to run three trucks of high-end luxury goods through your West Side warehouse! He swore there were no kids, no drugs, nothing that violated your rules!"

"And what did Elena see three days ago?"

Marco dropped his head, a sob wrenching through his chest. "She was playing behind her father's restaurant... near the loading bay of the warehouse. The back door of Harlan’s truck swung open while they were loading. She... she saw what was inside the crates, Mateo. It wasn't luxury goods. It was girls. Immigrant girls from Eastern Europe. Harlan’s men were moving them to a safehouse in Connecticut."

The air left my lungs in a cold, terrible rush.

Human trafficking. Right beneath my nose. Using my warehouses, my trucks, my protection, guarded by my own underboss.

"Elena knew Marco," I whispered, the horror settling into my bones. "She recognized you because you eat at her father’s restaurant twice a week. She called your name."

"I panicked!" Marco screamed, thrashing against his restraints. "I grabbed her! I meant to hand her back to her father and tell him to keep her mouth shut! But Harlan’s driver—that psycho mercenary named Krell—he didn't wait! He injected her right there in the alley to shut her up! Then he hit her with the truck fender as he backed out, making it look like a street accident! They took her to St. John’s Hospital because Vance was on shift in the morgue! They were supposed to cremate her, Mateo! I didn't know Vance was going to hand the body over to the parents for a closed-casket funeral!"

I stood up straight, looking at Marco as if he were a pile of vomit on the sidewalk.

Bruno let out a low growl, stepping closer to Marco’s legs, his upper lip trembling over six-inch canines.

"You knew she was in that box," I said, my voice dead, devoid of any human emotion. "You stood beside her casket today, wearing a black suit, pretending to mourn, knowing that every minute she lay in that room, her brain was dying."

"Mateo... please..." Marco wept, his knees shaking. "We built Queens together! Remember Carlo! Remember the shootouts in Flushing! I saved your life!"

"The man who saved my life in Flushing died twelve years ago," I said, turning my back on him. "You’re just a skin that Harlan bought."

I looked at Tony, who was standing by the door with a pair of heavy iron pliers in his hand.

"Keep him alive," I told Tony. "Don't let him lose consciousness. I want him to hear the radio when we burn Harlan’s operation to the ground."

"Boss," Tony said, stepping into the dim light. "What about Harlan? He’s got fifty heavily armed men sitting in his Long Island City stronghold. It’s a concrete fortress. If we go in there blind, it’s a bloodbath."

"We aren't going in blind," I said, reaching into my coat and pulling out my phone. "Harlan thinks Marco is still out there, handling the funeral details. He’s expecting a check-in call at midnight."