She tended her garden every morning. She had no idea what grew on the other side of the wall.

The cottage had been in her family for years — small, quiet, tucked against the edge of a property so vast she had never once thought to wonder who owned the rest of it.

She planted flowers. She kept to herself. She asked no questions.

Until that night.

The sound came first — voices, low and sharp, cutting through the dark from just beyond the stone wall she had always used as the edge of her world. She told herself not to look.

She looked.

What she saw on the other side was not meant for her eyes. Men in dark coats. A conversation that was less talking and more warning. And at the center of it all — calm, unhurried, terrifyingly still — the most feared mafia boss in the city.

S ...