🫖 The Little Girl Who Warned the Mafia Boss About the Tea

Chapter 07 - The Child Who Remembered the Song

The man who grabbed Maria wore Adrian’s colors.

That was the worst part.

Not an enemy mask. Not a stranger’s face. A trusted house guard named Callen, someone who had nodded to her in the pantry, once held the door when her hands were full of laundry, and gave Lily a sugared almond from the kitchen tray before Christmas.

He caught Maria by the arm as she pushed Lily behind Silas.

“Easy,” Callen said. “Nobody wants to hurt you.”

Maria drove her elbow into his throat.

He stumbled.

Silas shot the second man before he crossed the threshold, the report deafening inside the music room.

Lily screamed.

The grand piano swallowed the sound oddly, making it both huge and muffled. Maria dropped to the floor, pulling Lily beneath her body.

Callen recovered and grabbed Maria’s hair.

Then Adrian arrived.

He did not shout.

He hit Callen hard enough to send him into the wall of framed concert photographs. Glass rained down. Callen tried to rise, saw Adrian’s face, and chose stillness.

Maria looked up from the floor.

For the first time, she saw what the city meant when it whispered his name.

Not cruelty.

Certainty.

“Are you hurt?” Adrian asked.

She shook her head.

“Lily?”

Lily clung to the rabbit and cried soundlessly.

Adrian crouched, keeping several feet between them so he would not loom.

“Little lion.”

Her crying paused.

He had not known he would call her that until the words were already out.

“You did well.”

“I screamed.”

“So did soldiers in Rome, I imagine.”

She hiccupped.

“I don’t know Rome.”

“We’ll discuss it later.”

Maria let out something that almost became a laugh and failed because fear still had its hands around her throat.

Silas was searching Callen’s pockets.

“He has a recording device.”

Adrian looked over.

Silas held up a small black transmitter.

“Dominic wanted audio. Maybe video.”

“To catch me attacking my own men,” Adrian said.

“Or frightening a child.”

Maria’s face went white.

Adrian stood slowly.

Dominic’s plan had been elegant in the way poison was elegant. Dose him for years. Erode sleep. Create tremors, anger, confusion. Gather witnesses. Engineer a crisis. Record Adrian behaving like the unstable monster everyone already half believed him to be.

Then take control legally.

Cleanly.

With pity.

Lily sniffed and wiped her face with the rabbit’s ear.

“Uncle Dominic sings bad.”

Everyone looked at her.

“What?” Maria asked.

Lily frowned, thinking.

“When he did the drops. He sang the lion song wrong.”

Adrian’s heart shifted.

“What lion song?”

“The one in my book.” Lily clutched the rabbit. “He was in your room before. I hid behind the curtain because Mrs. Ricci said not to run in the hall. He didn’t see me.”

Maria closed her eyes in horror.

“When?” Adrian asked.

“Lots.”

Silas crouched. “Lily, did Uncle Dominic say anything when he put drops in the tea?”

She nodded.

“He said, ‘Almost done, Addy.’”

Adrian went still.

No one called him Addy.

No one living except Dominic.

Lily continued, “Then he said, ‘Tomorrow they’ll believe me.’”

Silas looked at Adrian.

Maria whispered, “She’s a witness.”