The Mafia King of Philadelphia: From witness to his doted wife

The Don stood silent for a long time.

The lamp swayed a little on its wire. The shadows moved across the stone. Carina did not look at the woman. She looked at her father’s back, and her lips were pressed together so tightly that they were white.

Then the Don spoke. ”Thank you,” he said. It was said softly. It sounded almost kind.

He lifted his right hand from behind his back. It was holding a gun.

Sienna had seen it before. She had seen it that afternoon, in a cell, in the same smooth hand. She knew what was going to happen, and she opened her mouth, and nothing came out.

”Please,” the maid whispered. ”Please. I told you everything. I told you...”

The shot cracked through the little room.

It was louder than the one in the cell. It rang through the speaker and filled the guards’ room, and Sienna flinched so hard that the chair rolled backward under her. Her hands flew to her ears. Viktor caught her shoulder and held her steady.

On the screen, the maid slumped sideways against her ropes. The chair tilted. A dark thread of red ran across the floor toward the Don’s white shoes.

He stepped aside to avoid it. ”I will end that old fool,” the Don said. He said it calmly, as if he were speaking of a fly.

He slid the gun back into his jacket and straightened his cuffs, one and then the other. He did not look at the body. He looked at Carina.

”Order the men outside to come in. All of them. The gate, the garden, the roof. I want every man who carries my name inside this house in five minutes.”

Carina nodded.

She did not ask why. She did not say Father. She took a small black phone from her sleeve and moved her thumbs over it, fast, and her face did not change.

”It is sent,” she said.

”Good.”

They turned together and walked to the door of the little gray room. Carina went first. The Don followed, with a flat, cold look on his face that Sienna had never seen before. It was not the face from the runway, or the one from the cell. It was older than both. It was the face of a man who had been patient for thirty years and had run out.

They stepped out, and the picture on the screen was only a swaying lamp and a dead woman in a chair.

Another screen woke.

It showed a long corridor, and the two of them walking fast. A pair of guards fell in behind. A third ran up from the side with his hand to his ear.

Sienna turned up the volume.

”Send men to protect Helena,” the Don was saying. His voice was low and clipped, and it carried down the corridor. ”Take her and Katalia out of the main hall. Quietly. Now.”

”And the guests, Father?” Carina asked.

”Let them stay.” His mouth was hard. For a moment, as he passed under a lamp, Sienna saw his face, and she saw something in it that surprised her.

It was regret.

It was not for the maid. It was not for the blood on the floor. It was something much smaller and much stranger, and she almost missed it.

He had wanted this dinner to end in white. He had wanted the toasts and the clapping and the long, bright night. He had wanted to give his daughter an empire and watch the world bow.

”I wanted to avoid a bloodbath,” he said. ”Everyone expected one. I wanted to prove them wrong.” His jaw set. ”But they forced my hand.” He lifted his chin, and his voice dropped to something soft and terrible.

”Now all of them will pay.” They turned a corner and were gone.

Sienna sat very still.

On the long desk, the screens flickered and hummed. The great hall glowed on one of them, bright and loud and full of dancing, and she could see the guests laughing in their silks. She could see her mother at the head of the table with a glass in her hand, smiling at nothing.

They do not know.

None of them knew. In a few minutes the doors would open, and the men in black would pour in, and the Don’s silent order would roll through the room like a wave.

”Sienna.” Viktor’s voice was very quiet. She turned her head.

He was looking at her with a face she could not read. His eyes were bright and tired. His shirt was torn, and a cut near his eyebrow had begun to bleed again.

”They are sending men to get you out,” he said. ”To the hall. To your mother.”

”I know.”

”If they find us here...”

”I know.” She stood up. The jacket slid on her shoulders, and she pulled it tight. She looked once at the black square on the wall where the lab corridor should have been, then at the screen showing the dead maid.

Her fingers curled into her palm. Whatever happens next, she thought, it begins now.

—

”What do we do?” Sienna asked.

She said it quietly, to the screens and not to him. The picture of the empty gray room still hung there, with the swaying lamp and the woman in the chair. She could not make herself turn it off.

Viktor did not answer at once. He was already moving. He crossed to the door of the little room, looked left and right down the stone passage, and came back with his mind made up.

”I go to the hall,” he said. ”I get your mother. Then I come back for you, and we leave.”

”The Don’s order was to take her out quietly. His men will go for her too.” His jaw tightened. ”If I am there first, I can walk her out like a husband taking his wife’s mother for air. If I am second, it becomes a fight.”

It was a good plan. It was the kind of plan that made sense in a quiet room. ”Wait,” Sienna said. He stopped. ”Not yet.”

She was staring at the long desk.

It was covered in the usual mess of a guard’s room, cold coffee cups, a half-eaten sandwich, a pack of cards, a radio with a cracked antenna. But under a crumpled newspaper, she had seen the edge of something flat and black.

She pulled the paper away.

It was a tablet, the kind the guards used to check the cameras on their rounds. She pressed the side. The screen lit up and asked for a code. She tried six zeros. It opened. ”They never change them,” she muttered.

”Sienna, we do not have time...”

”Viktor, listen.” She looked up. Her eyes were very bright, and her voice was fast but steady. ”We do not know this house. We know three corridors and a staircase and one weak wall. In a few minutes, a hundred men will be pouring through every door. If we run blind, we get caught. If we get caught, I will not be able to help my mother, and you will not be able to help either of us.”

He did not answer. ”I need a blueprint.” She tapped the desk. ”Every room. Every passage. The service ways. The old doors nobody uses. If this house has a back entrance, it will be on a plan, and this system will have it.”

”How long?”

She turned to the biggest computer. Its screen was full of small icons. She clicked one, then another, and a window opened with a list of folders. One said Structural. One said Security. One said Estate, 1st edition.

She opened the last one.

A drawing filled the screen. It was thin white lines on a deep blue field, showing floors and rooms and stairs. It was beautiful, in an old way. It was every inch of the Ivanou mansion, laid out like a skeleton.

”There,” she breathed. It was exactly what she had hoped to find. And exactly what she had feared. The file was enormous.

She plugged the tablet into the computer with a cable from the desk drawer. The tablet chimed. A small gray bar appeared on the screen, with a number beside it. Transferring... 4%.

She watched it creep to five. ”It will take a while,” she said. ”How long is a while?”

”I do not know. Ten minutes. Maybe twenty.” She rubbed her forehead with the back of her wrist. ”These machines are old. The files are huge. I cannot make it go faster.”