Dante's eyes locked on the clean black chip in my hand.

His chest rose and fell. His breathing was heavy.

"Cash?" he said. A cold laugh.

He reached out and caught a fistful of my hair.

Pain shot across my scalp. My head was forced back. I was looking straight into his eyes.

The scar at the corner of his eye was still there. Four stitches. He'd taken the bottle for me when we were both seventeen.

My gaze landed there for less than a second and moved away.

"Half a million to keep your side piece? Sienna. When did your appetite get this filthy?"

It wasn't a question.

What he'd seen in that stairwell two years ago and the report he'd held in his hand afterward—together, they'd already closed the case.

He dragged me by the hair through the casino, up to the private floor on the top level.

Sabrina lifted the hem of her dress and followed, a cold smile on her mouth.

The top floor was one wide hall. At its center stood a transparent, blast-proof tank, filled with water kept at freezing.

At the bottom of the tank, waterproofed chips covered the glass floor. Denominations from ten thousand up to five hundred thousand.

Dante stopped at the tank and let go. I hit the carpet in front of it.

He crossed to a leather sofa and sat. Didn't have anyone light his cigar.

Sabrina sat beside him and tipped her face up at the tank as if it were a piece of art.

"Dante, I heard there's three million in that tank."

She turned to look at me. A light smile.

"Sienna, you said you'd do anything. Hold your breath and go get it. Whatever you come up with is yours. Live or die, that's on you."

She turned her face to Dante. Softer now.

"A fun game. Isn't it?"

Dante didn't answer her.

He looked at me, knuckles braced on his knee. He didn't say yes. He didn't say no.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

The hospital's final notice.

Emily has developed severe sepsis. Without a three-million-dollar surgical guarantee deposit by eight tomorrow morning, we will be forced to remove her breathing tube and discontinue treatment.

I stared at the message.

Three million.

I looked up at the tank.

His jacket was still around me. Still damp.

There'd been a winter once when the rain caught us at a crosswalk with no awning in reach. He'd pulled off his coat and held it over my head, and the rain had run off his hair onto his shoulders, soaking him. I told him to come under with me. He said if he came under he couldn't keep me dry.

I looked up at the man on the sofa.

I wasn't getting that back. I'd already lost him.

I couldn't lose Emily too.

I pushed myself up off the floor, climbed the metal ladder beside the tank to the top, and jumped in.

The cold hit hard enough that my whole body shook.

I kicked down fast. The water pressure crushed my eardrums. I opened my eyes and forced myself to keep them open against the sting, and I grabbed the high-denomination chips off the floor of the tank.

Ten thousand.

Fifty thousand.

Five hundred thousand.

I stuffed them inside my bra.

My calves started to cramp. Every kick was agony.

Outside the tank, Dante stood behind the blast-proof glass, eyes fixed on me underwater.

He watched my face turn blue. He watched blood start to leak from my nose and mouth under the pressure, watched it drift into pink threads in the water.

The fingers holding his cigar started to shake.

He stood up. Took one step forward. His fist was closed.

Sabrina walked up and wrapped a hand around his arm.

"Dante." She pressed close, voice low. "It was my game. The rule is whatever she brings up, she keeps. If you go in there and save her now, who's ever going to respect you again?"

"Besides—the paternity test is in black and white. That kid was never yours. What exactly are you heartbroken over?"

Dante didn't look at her.

He lifted her hand off his arm. Didn't speak. His jaw locked.

He forced himself back down onto the sofa.

He clenched the timer in his palm. The knuckles went white.

One-thirty.

One-fifty.

Underwater, my vision was going. My lungs had nothing left.

But I couldn't die.

Emily was waiting for me.

Outside the tank, Dante was on his feet again.

He didn't say anything. Just stood there, eyes on the tank.

Sabrina gave his sleeve a small tug. He yanked his arm away.

The timer cracked inside his fist.

In the instant before his other hand came up to strike the blast-proof glass—

I kicked off the bottom.

A hard break of water.

I came up gasping, dragged myself over the edge, and hit the carpet. Lay there on my side heaving up bloody ice water.

I forced myself onto my knees.

On my knees in front of him, I touched my forehead to the carpet three times.

"Thank you, Mr. Castellano. For my life."

I didn't wait for an answer.

Dragging a wet trail behind me, I ran for the elevator.

The cashier's cage on the ground floor of the casino.

Marco had cleared the other staff out in advance. He stood behind the counter himself and took me in, dripping.

He watched me pull the blood-smeared chips out of my soaked clothes. Something moved in his eyes. He didn't ask.

He counted fast and clean.

"Three million, exactly."

He hit the keys and cut me an unnamed Swiss bank card.

He reached under the counter for a dry towel and pushed it to me. Then he leaned toward the bulletproof glass and dropped his voice.

"Sabrina's men are waiting for you at the front and the side corridors."

He nodded at the passage to his left.

"Take the staff fire exit. No cameras."

He slid the card through the tray.

"Don't let this show. Go save her."

I took the card.

I pressed it flat against my chest and bowed to him.

"I won't forget this."

I didn't stay.

Dante could come down any minute.

If he saw me at a man's counter, saw that man count chips for me, hand me a towel, lean in to whisper—

I knew exactly what he'd think.

I turned and ran for the fire exit.

I was almost at the corner of the parking garage level when I saw her.

Sabrina was at the bottom of the stairs, blocking the way.

Couture gown. Arms crossed. Two bruisers flanking her.

"You think that money's going to keep your little bastard alive?"

She laughed, a small bright laugh. "Sienna. You were born a jinx."

"You killed your mother. Now you're going to kill your little bastard too."

I didn't answer her. I tried to go around.

The two bodyguards stepped in and sealed the way.

I stopped fighting.

For two years I'd been burning myself up in the casino and quietly digging into what happened to my father. What I'd found wasn't much. A dealer who'd vanished. A marked card nobody could account for. And a night nobody was willing to talk about.

Every thread ended at the same wall.

Sabrina crossed to me on her heels, one step at a time, and leaned in to my ear.

"Want to know why your father jumped off that roof?"

My body went stiff. I stared at her.

"Me."

"I paid the dealer. He slipped the marked card into your father's sleeve."

She paused. The corner of her mouth lifted.

"But a marked card alone wasn't enough. You know his temper—he only believes evidence. A marked card would've made him hate your father. It wouldn't have been enough to put you on that table."

"So I did one more thing."

"Remember the private OB clinic you went to when you got pregnant? The director of their lab—I'd already paid him off."

She raised a finger and ticked it slowly.

"The paternity test he delivered to Dante said exactly one line. No biological relationship. The seal was real. The format was real. The signature was real."

"I was right next to Dante the day he opened that report. He read it. Folded it. Put it in the inside pocket of his jacket. Didn't say a single word."

She reached up and patted my cheek.

"And from that day on, he didn't show his face again. I didn't have to lift another finger."

"The only way I get to sit in the Donna's chair is if you're in the mud."

I stared at her.

Two years.

I'd known someone set me up. I couldn't find the proof. I couldn't open my mouth. I'd been swallowing it.

"It was you."

I heard myself roar it.

I threw myself at her and clamped both hands around her throat.

"You killed my father! I'll kill you! I want your life!"

I used everything I had. My nails sank into her skin.

She went down under me against the stair railing.

But she wasn't fighting back. Her eyes had flicked up toward the fire door above us.

She'd timed it.

The instant the fire door was pushed open from outside—

Sabrina snapped her own couture diamond necklace off her neck and smashed it onto the concrete step.

Then she threw herself backward and slammed her head into the wall.

"AAH—"

A scream.

"Dante, help! Sienna's crazy! She's trying to kill me for my necklace!"

The fire door swung open. Dante's silhouette appeared in the greenish emergency light.

He took in the scattered diamonds on the floor. The woman under my hands, bleeding scratches across her throat.

He came down the stairs in long strides and his boot came up and caught me in the shoulder.

The kick threw me sideways. My head slammed into the iron railing. A dull thud.

Blood ran down my forehead into my eyes.

I grabbed a fistful of his trouser leg.

"It was her! She set up my father, and your father too!"

I pointed at her. My voice was raw.

"She broke the necklace herself! Dante, believe me. Once. Just once."

Sabrina sagged against the wall, sobbing. "Dante, I was so scared… she'd do anything for money…"

One of Sabrina's men stepped forward.

He hauled me off the floor and patted me down, head to foot.

A few seconds later, he pulled a single loose diamond from the pocket of my soaked jacket.

It was the one Sabrina had dropped in while I was attacking her.

He held the diamond up to Dante.

Dante looked at the stone.

And then, with something very ugly in his face, he looked at me.

Dante looked down at me.

He held the diamond between his fingers, and his thumb moved slowly back and forth across one of its edges. Once. Again. He didn't stop.

"Caught in the act."

He kicked a small chip of diamond out of his way.

"A million-dollar necklace. What are you going to pay with?"

I lifted my head. My eyes went past his shoulder to the clock on the wall.

Forty minutes until the hospital pulled her off the tube.

I let go of his trouser leg.

I turned and dropped onto my knees on the concrete.

I touched my forehead to the floor. Again. Again.

The sound was a dull thud.

The blood on my forehead left smears on the concrete.

"Dante, this is all on me! All of it!"

I was shouting. My throat was full of iron.

"I'm begging you. Let me go to the hospital first. Let me put down that three million."

"My daughter's waiting for the money. She's two years old."

I reached for the toe of his shoe.

"As soon as she's out of surgery I'll come back. I'll owe you my life. Cut me, kill me, whatever you want—I'll take it."

His fingers curled.

Sabrina was clutching her throat, sobbing harder.

"Dante, don't let her play you!" she cried. "You got that paternity test with your own two hands. Official seal from the hospital—that kid isn't yours!"

"Now she's conjuring up a daughter because she's got her back to the wall. You really can't see through that?"

Dante's jaw locked. The veins in the back of his hand stood up.

He gave the order.

"Strip her of anything worth money."

He pointed at the hand I had folded against my chest.

"That three-million card. Confiscate it."

"And those busy little hands of hers—break them. Then throw her out."

In his eyes, those were the hands that had been around Sabrina's throat. The hands that were guarding the card.

"No—!"

I shrank back and jammed the card between my teeth, deep into my mouth.

Two of his men moved in and pinned me down on either side.

They pried my jaw open and dug the bloody card out.

I fought. I bit at their wrists.

"Filthy bitch. Still biting—"

One of them cursed me and grabbed my right hand. He forced it flat against the edge of a step.

He lifted his foot—a hard dress shoe—and brought it down on my fingers.

Crack.

My index and middle finger bent ninety degrees backward.

Cold sweat soaked through my clothes.

The bloody card was put into Sabrina's hand.

She held it up and smiled at me.

I dragged my broken fingers along the floor. A red streak followed me.

I crawled toward Dante's back.

"Dante… that's Emily's life…"

I was begging.

"Give it back. Please give it back…"

I stared at the back of him.

Every time he used to walk away from me, he'd turn his head after a few steps and look for my eyes. If I was still there, he'd keep walking.

This time he just kept walking. He didn't turn around.

I didn't move either.

I just watched him go.

As he stepped through the fire door—

The phone on the floor a few feet away lit up.

A message came through with the hospital's highest-priority alarm.

The screen read, in one clean line:

County General Hospital, Hematology. Patient account in arrears, treatment suspended. Patient Emily Moretti, age 2, suffered cardiopulmonary collapse at 14:02 today. Resuscitation unsuccessful. Clinical death declared. Please come to claim the remains.

I braced my left hand on the floor and pushed myself up.

I stared at his back. He'd gone rigid where he stood.

I started to laugh.

"Hahahaha…"

The stairwell was empty. My laugh echoed off the concrete.

I looked at him and spoke one word at a time.

"Dante. Congratulations."

"You just confiscated the last money that could have saved your own daughter's life."

"You killed her. With your own hands."