She Said She Didn’t Have a Boyfriend Yet—The Mafia Capo Heard Only One Word: “Yet.”

Peace is a territory you must actively patrol. You cannot simply declare a war over and expect the enemy to lay down their arms.

Three weeks after our dinner, the reality of Noah’s transition hit with brutal force.

I was at the shop, measuring a client for a bespoke tuxedo. The client was a prominent defense attorney, a man whose expensive cologne failed to mask the scent of arrogance. I was pinning the hem of his trousers when the door to my shop slammed open with enough force to crack the glasspane.

Daniel jumped up from his sewing machine.

A man stood in the doorway. He was built like a heavyweight boxer, wearing a cheap leather jacket and a sneer that belonged in a back alley. I recognized him immediately. He was one of Marco’s enforcers. A ghost from the old regime.

"Shop's closed," the enforcer barked, glaring at my client.

The defense attorney, recognizing the danger of the streets, didn't argue. He grabbed his coat and practically sprinted out the door.

I stood up slowly, keeping the sharp tailor’s pins in my hand. I did not tremble. The terrified girl who used to pay protection money was dead.

"You are trespassing," I stated, my voice cold and lethal. "Get out of my shop."

The enforcer laughed, kicking a chair out of his way. "You got a lot of nerve, sweetheart. Hanging on the arm of a traitor. Noah thinks he can just walk away from the family? He thinks he can run his little trucking company and play the legitimate businessman?"

"He is a legitimate businessman," Daniel spoke up, stepping to my side, holding a pair of heavy fabric shears.

"He's a rat," the enforcer spat, pulling a thick, white envelope from his jacket and throwing it onto my cutting table. "Marco sends his regards. Noah’s logistics company is bleeding. We slashed the tires on twenty of his rigs last night. We bought off his warehouse foreman. He’s going bankrupt."

The enforcer took a step closer, his eyes dropping to me.

"Tell your boyfriend that he drops his testimony next week, or the accidents stop happening to his trucks, and start happening to the people he cares about. Starting with the little tailor."

He turned and walked out, leaving the threat hanging in the suffocating silence of the shop.

I stared at the white envelope on the table. My heart pounded, a frantic rhythm of adrenaline and fury.

"Lyra," Daniel whispered, his voice shaking. "We need to call the police. We need to call Noah."

"If we call the police, Marco’s men will vanish into the shadows," I said, my mind working with terrifying, surgical precision. "And if we call Noah, he will blame himself. He will think he failed to protect me, and he will revert to the only language these men understand. Violence."

I walked over to the table and ripped the envelope open. Inside were photographs. Pictures of Noah’s logistics warehouses, the slashed trucks, the terrified drivers. And at the bottom of the stack, a photograph of me, taken through the window of my shop.

They were watching me.

A cold, brilliant fire ignited in my blood. Marco’s loyalists thought I was a vulnerability. They thought I was a fragile piece of glass they could use to shatter Noah’s resolve.

They had severely underestimated the woman who held the needles.

"Daniel," I commanded, my voice echoing with an absolute, matriarchal authority. "Lock the doors. Pull the blinds."

"What are you going to do?" Daniel asked, rushing to comply.

I walked over to my filing cabinet. For years, I had tailored suits for the most powerful men in the city. Politicians, judges, bankers, and mobsters. When a man is standing on a pedestal, having his inseam measured, he forgets that the woman with the pins is listening. He talks. He boasts.

I pulled out a thick leather ledger of my own. Not a ledger of blood money, but a ledger of secrets.

"Marco’s men are funding this sabotage," I said, flipping through the pages. "They need clean cash to pay off Noah’s warehouse foreman and hire thugs. They are using front companies."

I found the name I was looking for. A shipping conglomerate I had heard two of Marco’s capos whispering about a year ago during a fitting.