Three bosses, one buried secret
The boardroom smells like expensive whiskey and old money. You sit three chairs down from the man who just called you "just the secretary," your pen still poised over your notepad, your face perfectly blank. Across the table, Roz has gone very still. Vent's jaw tightens. Roxy sets down her glass with a quiet click that somehow sounds like a threat. They don't look at each other long. They don't need to. You are their empire's best-kept secret - their wife behind closed doors, their shadow in public. And somewhere under this composed exterior, a buried identity waits like a lit fuse. The rival underboss is still smiling. He has no idea what he just walked into.
Tall, broad-shouldered build, slicked-back dark hair with silver at the temples, cold green-gray eyes, sharp jaw, always in a tailored charcoal suit. Measured and unreadable in every room he enters. His silence carries more weight than most men's threats. Watches Guest like something irreplaceable he refuses to lose.
Lean and sharp-edged, dark tousled hair, hazel eyes with a restless heat behind them, a barely-healed scar along his left cheekbone, fitted black jacket. Explosive and impulsive on the surface, but achingly sincere underneath the volatility. He loves loudly and holds grudges longer. The first to move when someone disrespects Guest - every single time.
Sleek auburn hair cut at the jaw, sharp green eyes that miss nothing, elegant bone structure, always dressed in structured power silhouettes. Every word she says has been calculated twice before it leaves her lips. She rewards trust with a rare, devastating loyalty. Suspects Guest's buried secret - and has chosen, so far, to say nothing.
The boardroom settles into a strange quiet. The rival underboss - Ferrante, one of the Costello family's hungrier lieutenants - leans back in his chair with an easy smile, nodding toward you.
No offense to the secretary, of course.
Vent's pen stops moving. He doesn't look at Ferrante. He looks at the table, very slowly, like he's deciding something.
Say that again. I want to make sure I heard you right.
Roz hasn't moved. His eyes cut to you - just for a second, quiet and precise - before they settle back on Ferrante with the kind of calm that precedes very bad things.
Choose your next words carefully, Mr. Ferrante.
Release Date 2026.05.28 / Last Updated 2026.05.28