Chapter 1 - The Breath Behind the Glass

"Who’s there?" Liam asked again into his encrypted leather-bound phone, his knuckles turning white as the dark silhouette of Lake Forest trees flashed past the sedan's rain-streaked window.

"Just the radio, darling," Renata’s smooth, melodic voice drifted through the receiver, carrying the delicate, polished calm she had cultivated since her days in finishing school. "Carmine stopped by to drop off the quarterly land reports for the docks before heading home. He’s leaving now. Will you be late for dinner?"

Liam’s eyes narrowed into dark, impenetrable slits. "Tell him to leave the papers in my study. I’ll be twenty minutes."

He had hung up without another word. Twenty minutes later, he had walked into his Lake Forest estate, unaware that the drink Renata would hand him twenty-five minutes later was laced with an experimental neurotoxin—a tasteless, colorless potion supplied by a corrupt South Side chemist. It was designed to mimic a massive cardiac arrest while paralyzing every voluntary muscle, dropping his heart rate to a microscopic beat that no standard stethoscope in a hurried emergency room would detect.

Now, trapped inside the velvet-lined walnut casket in his own grand estate chapel, Liam Falcone was a silent prisoner of his own body.

He couldn't scream as he felt the soft, dismissive kiss his wife gave Carmine Russo over his supposed corpse. He couldn't crush the windpipe of his childhood brother when Carmine laughed softly and pledged to take his throne by Monday.

The chapel grew cold as the Latin prayers ended and the heavy oak doors were sealed for the night. The scent of funeral lilies grew heavy, almost suffocating in the dark, silent room.

I am going to murder them both, Liam thought, every fiber of his conscious mind screaming against the chemical chains holding his nervous system hostage. I will rip Carmine’s tongue from his mouth. I will burn Renata’s empire to ash.