A Giant Black Dog Found a Dying Mafia Boss in the Snow — What Happened Next Was Incredible

Chapter 7

Four hours away, in the dark wood-paneled office that had once belonged to Roman Falconee, Silas Crane sat behind a desk that wasn’t his.

He had been sitting there for two weeks now, wearing Roman’s suits, taking Roman’s calls, slowly tightening his grip on an empire he had stolen with a single push. He believed he had won.

Then one of his men stepped in with news that made his fingers freeze in midair.

They had gone back to the ravine. To finish disposing of the body.

But beneath the melting snow, there was only the overturned wheelchair. And faint drag marks leading back up the slope.

No corpse.

No blood trail sufficient to confirm a death.

Silas rose. Walked to the window overlooking the city strung with lights. And for the first time since the night he had shoved the man he once called his boss into the abyss, a cold unease slipped down his spine.

He understood better than anyone that a living Roman Falconee—even barely breathing—was still more dangerous than an army.

He couldn’t raise a public alarm. That would expose the story of the boss’s death as a lie. So he chose the quiet way.

He called Frankie Doyle.

A forty-four-year-old man with cold hands and no conscience, who specialized in work that left no trace. Silas ordered him to search every town, every clinic, every motel within hours of the woods where Roman had been left. Look for any sign of a strange wounded man. Paralyzed. Appearing out of nowhere.

Frankie accepted the order without a single question. Spread out a map of the mountain region. And began circling sparsely populated places.

Places where a man could disappear.

His invisible net began tightening toward the small towns along the forest.

Toward one name hidden beyond the pine ridges.

Hollow Creek.

—

Roman knew nothing about the storm moving toward him.

But the survival instinct forged over a lifetime made him begin to wrestle with another question. A poisonous thought kept rising without end.

Veto Marshand was the only person in the world who knew he was still alive. The only man to whom he had given information that could get him killed.

If the traitor in the past could have been the person he trusted most, then what guarantee was there that history wouldn’t repeat itself?

He remembered the brief hesitation in Veto’s voice when he heard the order to pay Mara’s debts. Remembered the strange silence on the other end of the line.

His suspicious mind began weaving a web of doubt. Turning harmless things into proof of a plot.

He didn’t realize he was walking back into the same old track. That fear was once again steering him toward the deadliest mistake of his life.

He saw only the threat. And he reacted with the old familiar instinct.

That night, he sat for a long time by the dark window, one hand resting on Bear’s head. Torn between the instinct of suspicion that had shaped his entire life and a new, fragile voice that had kindled inside him during these past days.

A voice reminding him of the terrible price he had paid the last time he trusted doubt instead of trusting a person.