No One Could Handle the Mafia Boss’s Daughter — Until a Poor Waitress Did the Impossible. Everyone around held their breath in anticipation.

Casey sat across from her. “They didn’t.”

Sienna swallowed. “I froze.”

“You’re not trained for that.”

“You were.”

The words hung there.

Casey spread jam on toast she did not want. “I’m trained in surviving.”

Sienna studied her for a long moment. Then she said, very quietly, “Thank you.”

It was the first honest thing either of them had given the other.

By the time the charity gala at the Field Museum arrived a week later, their strange alliance had hardened into something less fragile than friendship and more dangerous than convenience.

Dante gave Casey an emerald gown with a slit high enough for movement and, with a look that said he was testing more than her aim, a compact Glock for her thigh holster.

“If anyone gets too close to Sienna,” he said, “you shoot.”

Casey arched an eyebrow. “That’s a lot of trust for a waitress.”

His gaze lingered on her a second too long. “I’m beginning to think you’ve been lying about being just a waitress.”

She should have deflected. Instead she said, “Maybe I contain multitudes.”

His mouth shifted into the nearest thing he allowed himself to a smile. “Wear the boots under the dress.”

At the gala, beneath dinosaur bones and chandeliers, Chicago’s elite performed civilization in tailored silk and public donations. Sienna stayed close to Casey, less out of obligation now than instinct. Dante moved through the room like a blade in a tuxedo, speaking politely, missing nothing.

Then Casey saw the silver-haired man across the hall.

Patrick O’Connell.

Head of the Boston Irish syndicate.

Her uncle.

Ice shot through her ribs.

She turned away too fast. Dante noticed. Of course he noticed.

He found her alone on a balcony minutes later, city wind lifting loose strands of her hair. “You saw someone.”

Casey stared out over the lakefront lights. “I see lots of people.”

“That wasn’t what I said.”

When she finally looked at him, he was too close. Not threatening, not exactly. Worse. Curious. Concerned. Drawn to her in a way she could feel like heat through fabric.

“Who are you really, Casey?” he asked.

The dangerous part was not that he suspected her. The dangerous part was that some tired, reckless, starved piece of her wanted to tell him.