Chapter 11: The Lye And The Ledger

The kiss ended, but the absolute gravity of the moment lingered in the freezing air of the walk-in cooler. Riley slowly pulled back, her heavy breathing mixing with Dominic’s in the crystalline cold.

She didn’t blush. She didn’t look away. Her dark eyes remained locked on the mafia boss, entirely unapologetic about the claiming intensity of what had just happened.

“We have a mess to clean up,” Riley stated, her voice returning to its steady, clinical hum.

“Paulie is a loose end,” Dominic agreed, his gaze sweeping over his shivering, crippled enforcer hanging from the meat hook. “And in my family, loose ends get burned.”

“Dom, please!” Paulie sobbed, his teeth clattering violently. “I got kids! I got a wife in Southie! You can’t let this psycho chop me up!”

“You should have thought about your wife before you sold my shipping routes to Declan Fitzpatrick,” Dominic said coldly, stepping toward the hanging man. “You betrayed the Castellis. You brought an armed assassin into this woman’s sanctuary.”

“I’ll disappear! I’ll go to Florida! You’ll never see me again!” Paulie begged, his eyes wide with a primal, suffocating terror.

“You’re right about that,” Riley interrupted, grabbing a thick roll of industrial duct tape from a steel prep cart. “You aren’t going anywhere, Paulie. Not in one piece, anyway.”

If a traitor begged you for their life after trying to kill you, could you show them mercy, or would you follow the brutal code of the underworld?

Riley ripped a large piece of tape and slapped it brutally over Paulie’s mouth, cutting off his pathetic sobs. She turned to Dominic, her massive frame moving with practiced efficiency.

“My father’s lye vat is in the sub-basement,” Riley explained, wiping her bloody knife on her apron. “It hasn’t been used in five years, but the chemicals are stable. I need forty-five minutes.”

Dominic watched her, utterly fascinated by her lack of hesitation. “You’re going to process my head of security?”

“I am going to erase a problem,” Riley corrected, her voice flat. “But first, we need his phone. If Declan expects a check-in, we need to control the narrative.”

Dominic nodded, reaching into Paulie’s frozen jacket and extracting a sleek, black burner phone. He looked at the screen. A single text message glowed in the dark: IS THE BUTCHER DEAD YET?

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