Three years old, clutching a gray stuffed lamb, she pulled the sleeve of the most powerful man in Chicago and whispered, *Please don't trust that woman.* By midnight the party was over. By dawn, Alessandro Rienzi learned the wedding he was about to walk into wasn't a marriage at all — it was a heist wearing a white dress.

The heavy thud of the steel shutters sealing the windows echoed like a tomb closing.

Silas, realizing he was trapped, reacted with the lightning speed of a trained hitman. He didn't try to negotiate. He dropped the ruined laptop and lunged for the weapon holstered at his waist.

He never even cleared the holster.

Alessandro fired twice. The suppressed gun coughed quietly in the dark room.

Silas took both bullets squarely in the chest. The impact threw him backward over the desk, shattering a crystal lamp before he crumpled to the floor, dead before his body hit the Persian rug.

Genevieve screamed, a raw, terrifying sound that ripped from her throat. She pressed herself against the bookshelves, her pristine white dress smeared with Silas’s blood.

Alessandro didn't even blink. He kept the gun raised, slowly turning his aim toward his bride.

“Alessandro, please!” Genevieve sobbed, dropping the aristocratic, refined voice entirely. She sounded desperate, guttural, and terrified. “It was Arthur! My uncle forced me to do it! I had no choice! They threatened my life!”

Alessandro walked slowly around the desk. He didn't look angry. He looked profoundly, chillingly bored.

“Don't insult my intelligence, Genevieve,” Alessandro said softly. “I know you are a Falcone asset. I know Arthur Vance is a fiction. I know the real Genevieve Ashworth died of leukemia twenty years ago.”

Genevieve froze, her sobbing instantly cutting off. The realization that he knew everything—that he had known everything before she even walked down the aisle—hit her like a physical blow.

Her pathetic, terrified act vanished. Her face twisted into a mask of pure, unadulterated hatred.

“You arrogant bastard,” she spat, her blue eyes burning with venom. “You let me stand there and say vows to you. You let me think I won.”

“I wanted you to feel exactly what it is like to be gutted,” Alessandro replied coldly. “I wanted you to open that safe, thinking you were robbing me of two billion dollars, only to realize you just bankrupted the entire Falcone syndicate in New York.”

Genevieve stared at him, breathing heavily. “They will kill you for this. They will send an army to Chicago. You can't hide.”

“They can't afford an army anymore,” Alessandro smirked. “I just took all their money. The Falcones are penniless. By tomorrow morning, their rival families in New York will smell the blood in the water and tear them apart.”