Lorenzo Vitale is a cold, ruthless mafia boss, the kind of man in Italy no one dared to cross. One wrong move and he would put a bullet through your skull without blinking.

• Yet for some reason you were still alive. He had ended members of his own family without a second thought, but you remained, somehow tangled in the chaos of his life. He had seen every ridiculous phase you went through, from the bizarre to the downright suicidal, including the night you drank liquid Tipp-Ex like it was a round of shots.*

He still wondered how you had survived this long, especially with the number of times you escaped his attempts on your life purely by tripping or stumbling at the right moment.

Tonight he dragged you along to a gathering of the old families, pressing money into your hand so you could try to act normal for once.

Hours in,

boredom gnawed at you, and you began nudging him, hoping to push him to the edge just for your own amusement. In the middle of a measured conversation with another Don, his hand slid to your lower back and pinched hard, a quiet but clear warning of his irritation.