Christmas Eve was supposed to celebrate my engagement, but beneath the marble staircase of my Long Island mansion sat a three-year-old girl clutching a photograph of the woman I had spent four years trying to forget

The silence that followed the blackout lasted only two seconds before the heavy *thud-thud-thud* of suppressed gunfire erupted from the lower terraces of the estate.

"Down!" I roared.

In an instant, my instincts took over. I crossed the room in two strides, throwing myself over the bed, shielding Sophia and Lily with my entire torso as the antique leaded-glass windows facing the ocean shattered inward under a barrage of high-velocity rounds.

Glass sprayed across the comforters. Lily shrieked in terror, her small hands digging desperately into my shirt.

"I have you, Lily! I have you!" I yelled over the din of automatic weapons. "Sophia, stay flat!"

"Dominic!" Sophia cried out, her arms wrapping around both me and our daughter.

In the doorway, muzzle flashes lit up the hallway like strobes. Enzo was firing his sidearm, barking orders into his shoulder radio. "Breach on the south terrace! Vitale’s secondary security team! They cut the main power lines at the junction box!"

Isabella was screaming, crawling on her hands and knees across the glass-strewn floor toward the hallway. Victoria was pressed against the wall, her pearls torn, her arrogant composure completely shattered by the reality of real underworld warfare.

"Emergency generators will kick in on forty seconds!" Enzo yelled, ducking back as drywall exploded around the doorframe. "Boss, they aren't trying to escape! Antonio ordered a hit! If he can't have the merger, he’s wiping the leadership!"

"Not in my house," I growled.

I reached beneath the mattress of the king-sized bed, releasing the hidden magnetic latch. A customized tactical 9mm slid into my grip, cold, heavy, and loaded with hollow points.

I looked down at Sophia. In the darkness, illuminated only by the rhythmic flash of gunfire down the hall, her eyes were wide, terrified, but she wasn't panicking. She was holding Lily with a grip that defied death itself.

"Listen to me," I said, pressing my forehead against hers for a split second. "Behind that wardrobe is the old dumbwaiter shaft. It connects to the fallout shelter my father built in the bedrock beneath the wine cellar. Enzo knows the code. You take Lily and you go down there. Do not open that door for anyone except me. Do you hear me?"

"Dominic, don't leave us," she begged, tears running down her cheeks. "Please. I just got you back."

"I am never leaving you again," I swore, kissing her lips—a fierce, brief, desperate promise in the middle of a warzone. "Now go!"

With Enzo providing suppressing fire down the grand corridor, I kicked the false panel inside the wardrobe open. The reinforced steel hatch of the service lift gleamed in the faint emergency lights that finally sputtered to life along the baseboards.

I placed Lily inside first. She looked up at me, her little face streaked with tears, clutching the photograph of Sophia against her chest.

"Remember what Mommy told you?" I said, brushing a tear from her cheek. "I'm the lion. Lions don't lose."

Lily gave a tiny, brave nod.

Sophia climbed in beside her, pulling the child onto her lap. Before the heavy steel hatch slid shut, Sophia looked at me, her voice breaking through the gunfire: "Come back to us, Dominic."

"Always."

The hatch sealed with an airtight hiss.

I spun around, racking the slide of my weapon. The cold, calculating CEO was gone. The polished real estate tycoon on the covers of Forbes was gone.

What remained was the bloodline of the Moretti family—the ruthless, lethal sovereign of the New York underworld.

I stepped out into the hallway.

Isabella was huddled in the corner, sobbing hysterically. Victoria was clutching her arm, her face gray with terror.

"Dominic, please!" Victoria cried out. "Antonio has twenty men on the grounds!"

"Then he brought twenty men to their cemetery," I said without looking back.

I moved down the grand marble staircase like a wraith. The ballroom below was pandemonium. Guests had scattered, hiding beneath catering tables and behind marble pillars, while my loyal soldiers, handpicked and vetted by Enzo over a decade, engaged Antonio Vitale’s hit squad in a brutal, close-quarters firefight.

Through the smoke and drifting gunpowder, I saw Antonio Vitale.

The sixty-year-old Don stood near the double oak entrance doors, surrounded by four of his personal bodyguards, barking orders to execute anyone bearing the Moretti crest.

He saw me descending the stairs.

His eyes widened in shock. He expected me to be dead in my bed.

"Vitale!" my voice boomed through the shattered ballroom, cutting through the gunfire with the finality of a guillotine.

Antonio drew his weapon, but he was too slow.

Four years of stolen time, four years of my daughter growing up without a father, four years of Sophia’s tears—it all funneled into my trigger finger.

Three shots cracked through the cavernous room.

Antonio Vitale’s weapon flew from his shattered hand, his shoulder collapsed backward, and he dropped to his knees on the Persian rug, clutching his ruined collarbone as his bodyguards were systematically eliminated by Enzo’s flanking riflemen.

Silence fell over the great hall, thick, heavy, broken only by the groans of the wounded and the distant howl of the winter wind outside the shattered glass.

I walked down the remaining stairs, my polished dress shoes crunching over broken champagne glasses and spent brass casings, until I stood directly over Antonio Vitale.

He looked up at me, bleeding, gasping for air, the arrogance drained from his aged, aristocratic face.

"Dominic..." he wheezed. "It was... business. You understand business..."

I pressed the smoking barrel of my gun against the center of his forehead.