Late October brought cold winds and leaden skies over the East Coast.

At the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut, the visitor’s room smelled of industrial floor wax, stale coffee, and institutional despair.

Behind a plexiglass partition sat Genevieve Ashworth—or Genevieve Bellini.

She wore a drab khaki inmate jumpsuit, her blonde hair pulled back in an unkempt bun, her manicured nails long gone, chewed down to the quick. Dark circles shadowed her hollow cheekbones. The radiant, untouchable socialite who had dazzled Chicago high society was now merely Inmate #49281.

The steel door opened, and Dante stepped into the booth.

He sat down opposite her, picking up the black telephone receiver.

Genevieve snatched her receiver with trembling, angry hands. "Where is Alessandro?!" she hissed through the perforated glass. "Why didn't he come himself?! Is he too cowardly to look at his fiancée?!"

"You are no one's fiancée, Genevieve," Dante replied calmly, his voice flat and clinical. "And the Boss doesn't visit federal penitentiaries."

"My brother came to Chicago!" Genevieve sneered, a desperate, feral gleam in her eyes. "Matteo will tear your ports apart! When my father hears what Alessandro did to our family—"

"Matteo is currently on a container ship crossing the Red Sea with no passport, no money, and no name," Dante interrupted coldly. "And your father signed you away for thirty percent of our Mediterranean citrus line."

Genevieve’s breath stopped. The color fled from her face, leaving her sickly pale under the fluorescent lights.

"You're lying," she choked out. "Papa would never—"

Dante pressed a photocopy of the signed agreement against the plexiglass.

Genevieve’s eyes darted across the Italian text, locking onto the distinct, aristocratic signature of Don Lorenzo Bellini and the red wax seal.

Her hand began to shake so violently she nearly dropped the phone.

"He... he abandoned me?" she whispered, her voice cracking into a high, broken sob. "He used me as a pawn? All of it... the merger, the setup at Pier 14... he just wanted the American ports?!"

"You were always a pawn, Genevieve," Dante said ruthlessly. "You just thought you were a queen."

Genevieve slumped against the steel counter, tears streaming down her pale cheeks. But then, a strange, sickening smile crept across her trembling lips. She pulled the phone back to her ear, letting out a ragged, unhinged chuckle.

"Tell Alessandro he hasn't won," she whispered, her voice dripping with sudden, venomous spite.

Dante’s brow furrowed. "What are you talking about?"

Genevieve leaned in close against the glass, her breath fogging the plastic.

"You think Richard Vance was working for my father?" she whispered, her eyes burning with dark triumph. "You think the weapons on the Antwerp Star were meant for the black market? You fools. Richard Vance didn't answer to Milan. He answered to someone right there in Chicago. Someone sitting at Alessandro’s own table."

Dante’s jaw tightened. "Who?"

Genevieve laughed—a broken, echoing sound that made the prison guards look over.

"Ask him why his father really died twelve years ago," she whispered, her smile widening into a terrifying sneer. "Ask him who paid the shooter in Naples. It wasn't the Bellinis. It was family."

With a sharp clatter, Genevieve hung up the receiver, stood up, and let the guards escort her back into the dark concrete corridors.