The phone slipped from her fingers and clattered against the crumpled roof of the overturned car. The screen cracked. Her eyes drifted shut. She accepted death calmly, quietly, like an old friend arriving at the door. Not once did her fading thoughts turn to the people who had made her life so miserable.
On the other end of the line, in the fortified study of the Valducci compound where maps of territory lines covered the walls and the scent of aged Scotch hung in the air, the most feared man on the Eastern Seaboard gripped his phone so hard the casing cracked beneath his fingers.
"Mia! Mia!" His voice shattered. The mask of the Capo di tutti Capi fell away, and what remained was only a father. "Damnit! Where are you, my daughter?!"