She Saved a Bleeding Stray Dog From the Rain — Then Discovered He Was the Mafia Boss Who Had Been Betrayed and Cursed for Eight Months

Chapter 2

The sound Cookie made wasn’t language. It couldn’t have been — he was a dog, black-furred and bleeding from the same fight that had just saved her life ten minutes ago. But the two syllables that rolled out of his throat landed in the hallway like a name spoken by someone who’d practiced saying it in the dark for a long time, and Mr. Doyle went the color of old paper.

“Rent,” he said, too fast, too loud, stepping back from the door instead of through it. “I came about the rent.”

Except he hadn’t. Mia realized it a full three seconds too late, the way you realize a word was wrong only after you’ve already repeated it back — he hadn’t mentioned a number. Hadn’t mentioned a due date. Hadn’t done any of the small administrative cruelties landlords do when money is actually the subject.

What he’d done was look past her, into the room, at the dog.

And the thing on his wrist — the thing that had caught the hallway light — wasn’t a watch. It was a cuff, silver, and stamped into it, small and crude, was the same wolf’s head that hung from the cord at Cookie’s throat.