The first fire started at 11:47 p.m.
A laundromat on Mott Street, one of the last Rossi cash pipelines, went up like a torch. The second and third followed within the hour: a social club in Little Italy and a warehouse on the Gowanus Canal. By 2:00 a.m. half of Brooklyn smelled of smoke and panic.
Liliana watched it all from the penthouse war room, barefoot in one of Dante's black dress shirts, collar gleaming against her throat. The wall of screens glowed with live feeds: orange flames licking the night sky, firefighters scrambling, old men screaming orders into phones that would never be answered again.
Dante stood behind her, arms folded, expression unreadable.
"Feel anything?" he asked quietly.
She didn't look away from the screens.
"Relief," she said. "And hunger."
He made a low sound of approval and pressed a kiss to the brand on her neck.
At 2:37 a.m. her phone rang, an unknown number.
She answered on speaker.
"Liliana." Uncle Guido's voice cracked with age and fear. "Bambina, what have you done?"
She glanced at Dante. He nodded once.
"I burned what was rotten, zio," she said, calm as winter. "Open the door for me tomorrow night. Let me come home. We can end this."
A long pause. She could almost hear the old man weighing family against survival.
"Midnight," he whispered finally. "Come alone."
The line went dead.
Dante's smile was slow and savage.
"Alone," he repeated. "Cute."
By noon the next day the city was holding its breath.
The Rossis had lost three money streams, two lieutenants, and most of their pride in twelve hours. The Moretti name was on every tongue, and beside it, hers.
Liliana spent the afternoon in the armory choosing weapons the way other women chose jewelry.
A suppressed Walther PPK for the ankle holster (Guido always hugged her too tight to notice).
A ceramic blade that wouldn't trigger metal detectors.
And, because Dante insisted, a tiny tracker sewn into the lining of her coat.
He watched her dress for war: black jeans, black cashmere turtleneck, the collar hidden again beneath a silk scarf. Hair in a low knot. Minimal makeup. She looked like a mourner.
She felt like a reaper.
At 11:15 p.m. they stood in the garage.
Dante cupped her face, thumbs stroking her cheekbones.
"If anything feels wrong," he said, voice low, "you hit the panic button on the watch. I will burn that house down with everyone in it to get to you. Do you understand?"
She nodded.
He kissed her once (hard, desperate, reverent), then let her go.
She drove herself in a nondescript black sedan. Three SUVs full of Dante's men followed at a distance.
The old Rossi family home in Dyker Heights looked exactly the same: wrought-iron gates, manicured hedges, Virgin Mary statue in the front yard. But the guards were gone. The windows were dark.
She parked at the curb and walked up the driveway alone, heels clicking on brick.
The front door opened before she reached it.
Uncle Guido stood there in his robe and slippers, eighty-three years old and trembling.
"Liliana," he whispered, tears in his eyes. "My little girl."
He opened his arms.
She stepped into them.
For one heartbeat she was six years old again, safe and loved.
Then she felt the cold press of a gun muzzle at the base of her spine and Guido's whisper against her ear.
"I'm sorry, bambina. They have my grandchildren."
The world slowed.
She was shoved inside. The door slammed. Bolts thrown.
Six men waited in the foyer (Rossi loyalists, faces she recognized from Sunday dinners and christenings). Guns trained on her.
At the foot of the grand staircase stood her cousin Stefano, Marco's son, eyes wild with grief and rage.
"You killed my father," he spat.
She lifted her chin.
"He sold children," she answered. "I just balanced the books."
Stefano raised his pistol.
Before he could pull the trigger, the front windows exploded inward.
Dante's men came through like black ghosts: suppressed shots, muffled screams, bodies dropping before they could fire.
Dante himself stepped through the shattered front door, gun in one hand, the ceramic blade she'd chosen earlier in the other.
He took in the scene in a heartbeat: Guido on his knees sobbing, Stefano bleeding from a shoulder wound, Liliana standing untouched in the center of the carnage.
His gaze locked on hers.
"Are you hurt?"
"No."
He smiled (small, lethal, proud).
"Then finish it."
She walked forward, past fallen bodies, and stopped in front of Stefano.
He looked up at her, hatred and disbelief warring on his face.
"You were supposed to be pure," he rasped.
"I was," she said softly. "Then I learned purity is just another cage."
She drew the Walther from her ankle and pressed it under his chin.
"For every girl you helped traffic," she whispered, "for every scream you ignored."
She pulled the trigger.
His body slumped.
Silence fell, broken only by Guido's sobbing.
Dante crossed the room, wrapped an arm around her waist from behind.
"Anything else you need here, Regina?"
She looked around at the house that had once been home: blood on the marble, bullet holes in the wallpaper, the Virgin Mary statue cracked in half by stray rounds.
"No," she said. "It's dead."
They left Guido alive (broken, harmless, a warning).
Outside, the night smelled of cordite and winter.
Dante opened the passenger door of his car for her, then paused.
"I lied," he said quietly.
"About what?"
"I told you I'd burn the house if anything went wrong."
He produced a small remote from his pocket and pressed the button.
Behind them, the Rossi mansion erupted in a series of controlled explosions (basement, first floor, second floor). Flames roared up into the night, consuming sixty years of memories in minutes.
Liliana watched it burn, tears on her cheeks that had nothing to do with grief.
When the roof collapsed, Dante turned her to face him.
"No more Rossi," he said. "From this moment forward, there is only Moretti. Only us."
She kissed him in the firelight, tasting smoke and freedom.
"Take me home," she whispered against his mouth.
He did.
And when they made love that night, it was on the floor of the penthouse foyer because they couldn't make it to the bedroom: clothes torn, bodies slick with sweat and ash, her riding him while the city burned behind them on every screen.
When she came, she screamed his name loud enough for the entire island to hear.
When he followed, he buried his face in her neck and whispered the words he'd never said to another living soul.
"I would burn the world to ashes for you, Liliana Moretti. And I would do it smiling."
She held him tighter.
"Then let it burn," she said.
And for the first time, she meant every word.