Chapter 1: My Good Boy Came to Kill Me

For three years, the man I met online has called me Mistress. I've never seen his face.

Tonight, a bullet tears through my shoulder at my mafia family's welcome dinner. I hide in a linen closet, but the hitman follows me. A silver tag slips from under his shirt: Vee's Good Boy. I gave it to him. He doesn't know the woman behind the door is the one he's been begging to meet.

I text him an order. His gun vanishes from the doorway. Then his footsteps come back.

——————

At a Chicago hotel, my mother raised her glass to welcome me into the Bellini family. "To my daughter, Nora. Welcome home." The guests applauded. A man near the ballroom doors drew a gun and aimed at me. I ducked too late. The bullet struck my shoulder.

I fell against a waiter, shoved through the service door, and ran into a linen closet. Behind me, the applause turned to screams. Blood soaked the sleeve of the dress my mother had bought me for the dinner.

The closet door didn't latch. A gun barrel pushed through the gap. Above it, a silver tag slipped out of the gunman's open collar.

Vee's Good Boy.

I had mailed that tag to my online boyfriend last winter. Three years of private messages, voice calls, and rules we'd chosen together. He called me Mistress. I called him my good boy. Neither of us had shown the other our face.

Now he was aiming at mine.

He shifted, and a thought sounded inside my head as clearly as if he'd whispered it against my ear: Finish the Bellini girl. Then get to Vee. Don't make Mistress wait.

Luca.

I pressed a towel against the wound and held my breath. Luca knew his target was the Bellini family's daughter. He didn't know she was Vee.

The barrel edged farther in. My phone was already in my good hand. I opened our chat and typed without looking away from the gun.

Come see me. Now. You know what happens when you keep Mistress waiting.

A vibration sounded beyond the door. The barrel froze.

"Hell," he said.

His thought hit me a beat later: She picked tonight? I said I'd come when she called.

The gun withdrew. His footsteps hurried down the hall. I waited until they faded before letting the towel fall from my mouth. I had bitten it so I wouldn't cry out.

Online, Luca had always chosen when to obey. A missed call meant a teasing apology and a fresh start. I had never given him permission to shoot me, and no message on earth could make this safe.

I tried the handle. My injured shoulder sent pain down my arm; I used the other hand. Outside, the hall was empty. A service exit glowed at its far end. I took three steps.

A shoe scraped behind me.

Luca came around the corner with his gun low at his side. His phone was in his other hand. He looked at my bloody dress, then at the closet.

"You were in there."

I stopped. Speaking would be a mistake. He had heard Vee's voice for three years. I held up my phone instead. Its screen showed a fresh note, not our chat.

Don't shoot. I'll pay you twice what they paid to kill me.

"For what?" He didn't lower the gun.

I typed with a shaking thumb: Find the person who hired you. Tell me who it is.

"And you expect me to trust you?"

He could still see the blood on my dress. I showed him the payment screen on my phone and entered the amount he named. He gave me the account details, watching every tap. The transfer completed.

"That's the first half," I typed. "The rest when you bring me a name."

He checked his own phone. A notification lit the screen. The gun pointed at the floor.

"You could have led with that instead of running."

I stared at him. He'd put a bullet in me at my own welcome dinner, and he wanted to discuss manners.

He glanced toward the ballroom doors. "I came back because the hallway was empty. My target hadn't come out, and I hadn't finished the job." His jaw tightened. "I can take the job you just offered. That means I don't finish the other one."

I typed: Move away from the exit.

He stepped aside. Not because his Mistress had ordered it. He couldn't know the wounded woman holding the phone was the person who sent his tag. He moved because I had bought myself an exit, and he had agreed to sell it.

I walked past him, holding the towel to my shoulder. His gaze followed me but his gun stayed down. At the service door, I pushed into the cold Chicago air and kept going until I reached the row of cars by the curb.

My hands were slick. It took two tries to pull open a car door. Before I could climb in, Luca's voice came from behind me.

"I'll find out who paid to have you killed."

I turned. He was putting his phone away; my first payment had reached him. Under his collar, the silver tag still hung against his chest.

Vee's Good Boy.