Victoria Lane sat at the grand piano and softly played a delicate, unfamiliar melody across the ivory keys

The fluorescent lights hummed a quiet, sickly tune overhead. Adrian shook his head, his fair face twisted in absolute agony. He knew that speaking the name was just as dangerous as remaining silent.

"If I tell you, they will kill my entire bloodline," Adrian wheezed, looking at Dante with pathetic, pleading eyes. "They aren't just capos, Dante. They have reach across the entire eastern seaboard."

"If you do not tell me," Dante replied, his deep voice as cold as a frozen grave, "I will ensure your bloodline watches you die, piece by piece, starting tonight."

Adrian squeezed his eyes shut, a ragged sob tearing from his throat. The Mafia boss sitting across from him was not a man who made idle threats. Dante Moretti was an architect of violence, and he was currently designing a masterpiece.

"It was the Commission," Adrian whispered, opening his eyes, submitting completely to his doom. "The elder council. Don Carmine and his lieutenants. They voted on it in secret. They authorized the mechanic to rig the brakes on her car."

Dante did not flinch. He did not roar in agony. He absorbed the catastrophic betrayal with the terrifying, stoic silence of a man who had just decided to go to war against the entire underworld. The elders—the men who had mentored him, the men who had sat at his table and drank his wine—had murdered the mother of his child.

"And you provided them the schedule," Dante stated, a statement of fact rather than a question. "You told them when she would be driving the coastal highway."

"I didn't have a choice!" Adrian cried defensively. "They are the elders, Dante! You don't say no to them!"

"You say no when they target your family," Dante said softly, standing up from the metal chair. He smoothed the front of his tailored three-piece suit. The interrogation was over. He had the truth.

"Dante, what are you going to do?" Adrian asked, his voice pitching high with panic as the Don turned his back. "You can't go after the Commission! It's suicide! They have thousands of men!"

"I am going to burn their empire to the ground," Dante whispered, pausing at the heavy steel door. "And I am going to build a new one on their ashes."

"What about me?" Adrian begged, thrashing against the heavy straps. "I gave you the names! I told you the truth! You have to let me live!"

Dante slowly looked over his shoulder. His cold, intimidating eyes held absolutely no mercy. The handsome, movie-star face was completely devoid of humanity.

"You sat in my house," Dante said, his voice dropping into a lethal, guttural register. "You watched my wife play the piano for my daughter. And you knew she was going to die."