“Daddy!” A seven-year-old girl screamed as she ran across the orphanage, threw her arms around the most feared man in Chicago, and refused to let go. Everyone stared in disbelief because the man she was calling her father was a powerful mafia boss whose only daughter had vanished six years earlier. Then he opened her intake file and discovered the little girl wasn’t mistaken, and someone he trusted had known the truth all along.

The iron gates of the Apex Logistics compound in Geneva, Illinois did not survive the impact.

The lead Vitelli armored SUV, fitted with a heavy steel battering ram on its front bumper, slammed into the gates at seventy miles per hour.

BOOM!

The iron doors sheared off their heavy hinges, flying thirty feet into the courtyard, crushing two Moretti sentries beneath the twisted metal.

Before the dust could settle, seven more Vitelli SUVs roared into the courtyard, executing a tactical box formation around the main entrance of the two-story stone mansion.

Fourty armored Vitelli enforcers poured out of the vehicles, their automatic rifles spitting bright orange flames into the dark night.

“VITELLI! IT’S MARCO VITELLI!” a Moretti soldier screamed from the second-floor balcony before a sniper bullet from Antonio’s rifle tore through his forehead, dropping him over the stone railing.

The courtyard erupted into absolute, unadulterated chaos.

Muzzle flashes illuminated the falling rain like strobe lights. Glass shattered, tires squealed, and the thunderous roar of high-caliber combat filled the quiet country air.

I stepped out of my SUV, completely ignoring the bullets ricocheting off the armored door beside my head.

I raised my assault rifle, firing controlled three-round bursts as I walked steadily across the blood-stained gravel toward the front doors. Every Moretti mercenary who stepped into my line of sight was eliminated with surgical, lethal precision.

I was not a man fighting a battle. I was a force of nature clearing a path to my wife.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Antonio blew the locks off the front oak doors with a tactical shotgun, kicking them open.

We breached the grand foyer.

Marble floors, crystal chandeliers, expensive oil paintings—and fifteen Moretti enforcers taking cover behind the grand double staircase.

“SUPPRESSING FIRE!” Antonio shouted, stepping in front of me with a heavy riot shield while three of our soldiers tossed flashbang grenades over the marble banister.

BANG-FLASH!

A blinding white light and deafening shockwave shattered the windows of the foyer.

We moved in.

It wasn't a firefight; it was a execution. Within two minutes, the fifteen Moretti soldiers were neutralized, their blood running down the white marble stairs like crimson rivers.

I grabbed a wounded Moretti lieutenant by his tactical vest, slamming him against the mahogany wall.

“Where is Dominic Moretti?!” I snarled into his bloody face.

The man wheezed, coughing up blood onto my coat. “Sub-basement... medical wing... he went down there two minutes ago with a gun...”

My heart slammed against my ribs.

I dropped the lieutenant, turned toward the heavy steel security door behind the staircase, and raised my rifle.

“Antonio! Cover the upper floors!” I ordered. “Nobody leaves this house alive!”