SHE WAS HIRED TO COMFORT A DYING MAFIA BOSS—THEN A STRAY CAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

Chapter 11: The East Wing

On the twelfth night, a guard burst into Elias’s room mid-shave. “Oscar just went up to the third floor, east wing. Someone’s waiting for him there.”

Elias rose, transformed in less than a second, and took Celeste’s hand without asking if she wanted to come. They crept through the dark mansion to the abandoned east wing, where two voices carried through a thin door. Oscar’s. And a second voice that stopped Elias cold — young, achingly familiar, and utterly unlike anything either of them had ever heard from it before.

“How much did he eat today?” Bianca asked, her voice stripped of every trace of sweetness. “Increase the dose. I want this finished in two weeks. That little nurse is slowing things down.”

Papers rustled. “The baby in my belly will be the only true heir. Finn becomes boss when Elias is gone. And I’ll be the one who really holds the power behind him.” A pause. “Volkov agreed. Once Finn rises, I hand over the Southside for protection during the transition. Cain’s very pleased.”

Elias’s hand tightened around Celeste’s hard enough to hurt. Not only poisoned for nine months — his family’s territory sold out from under him, traded for a throne Bianca meant to steal with a smile and a slow-acting herb.

He kicked the door open. Oscar went white and shaking, a man caught, terrified. Bianca didn’t flinch — only anger at being discovered, no remorse anywhere in her eyes. “You,” she said, staring at Elias standing solid and unbroken in the doorway. Every plan, unraveling in real time.

“Does Finn know?” Elias asked, and the whole world hung on the answer.

Bianca laughed, short and cold. “Finn loves you so stupidly it’s pathetic. He doesn’t know what seasoning I use, much less anything else. He’s my puppet — loving me blindly, thinking every idea is his own.”

Relief and grief crashed through Elias in the same breath. His brother was innocent. And his brother had married a woman capable of this.