No caretaker had lasted more than three days with me after the accident, and I made damn sure of it

The storm didn't break until midnight, and by three in the morning, the mansion had settled into a silence that felt less like peace and more like an ambush waiting to spring.

I couldn't sleep. The phantom pain was back, crawling up my shins like a thousand fire ants burrowing under the skin. It was the cruelty of nerve damage: my brain couldn't tell my feet to move an inch, but it had no problem inventing excruciating sensations of burning, twisting, and crushing.

I hauled myself from the bed to the chair with the ugly, practiced efficiency I despised. My upper body had grown thick and heavy with raw muscle over the last few months—the only outlet for my rage was pulling iron on the specialized rig Carmine had installed in the adjoining fitness suite. My shoulders were broad, my arms roped with vascular cords of sinew, but from the waist down, I was dead weight.

I wheeled out into the darkened second-floor corridor. The house was a fortress of limestone and black iron, designed by an architect who specialized in paranoid billionaires. But tonight, the air felt thin.

A sharp, muffled *crack* echoed from the foyer below.

I froze.

It wasn't thunder. Thunder rolled; thunder shook the glass. This was a crisp, mechanical sound: the suppressed discharge of a small-caliber weapon, followed immediately by the dull thud of a human body striking polished marble.

My pulse spiked instantly, flooding my veins with ice-cold adrenaline. The instincts that had kept me alive through three gang wars and two federal indictments took over before my conscious mind could register panic.

I moved the chair forward silently, navigating the plush Persian runners until I reached the top of the sweeping double staircase that curved down into the grand entrance hall.

Down on the black-and-white checkered floor, two men in rain-drenched tactical gear stood over the sprawled body of Miller, one of my night security guards. A pool of crimson was already widening beneath Miller's head.

"Check the master suite," one of the men whispered in Russian, his accent thick, guttural. "Rossi said Carter doesn't leave the bed after ten. Two in the skull, grab the hard drives from the study, and burn the room."

Matteo Rossi hadn't waited for the board meeting. He had sent an execution squad directly to my home.

Then, from the hallway leading to the service kitchen, a shadow moved.

It was Faith. She was carrying a mug of hot tea, wearing an oversized faded gray hoodie and woolen socks. She had stepped out right into the open foyer, her eyes adjusting to the dim emergency lighting.

She froze as her gaze fell upon the masked men and Miller’s bleeding corpse.

"Don't move," the taller Russian barked in English, raising a suppressed Glock 19 directly toward her chest.

Every instinct in my paralyzed body screamed at me to jump the banister, to tackle the gunman, to tear his throat out with my bare hands. But I was welded to a piece of metal with wheels. A wave of profound, sickening impotence hit me like a sledgehammer to the solar plexus.

"Faith!" I shouted, the roar tearing from my chest with enough volume to rattle the antique chandeliers above. "Down!"

The gunman’s eyes flicked upward toward the sound of my voice.

In that half-second of distraction, Faith didn't scream. She didn't drop into a fetal ball. With a terrifying presence of mind, she hurled the mug of scalding tea directly into the gunman's face and dropped flat to the marble floor.

The hot liquid caught the Russian across the eyes and nose. He hissed in pain, his first shot going wide and chipping a hunk of plaster out of the wall where Faith had been standing.

From the alcove by the library, a heavy weapon roared.

Carmine stepped out of the darkness in his undershirt and slacks, firing his Kimber .45 with brutal, mechanical precision. Three shots caught the blinded Russian in the chest, lifting him off his feet and slamming him into the mahogany display cabinet before he collapsed in a heap of broken glass.

The second intruder spun toward Carmine, firing wildly, but Carmine ducked behind an archway. A bullet tore through the doorframe, sending splinters flying.

I reached down to the quick-release compartment built into the base of my chair. My fingers closed around the cold checkered grip of my custom Sig Sauer P226.

I didn't have legs, but my hands were steady. I leaned over the mahogany banister, aligning the tritium night sights with the crown of the second shooter's head as he advanced on Carmine’s position.

*Breathe out. Squeeze.*

The gun kicked against my palm. The Russian’s head snapped sideways, his knees buckling instantly as the kinetic force dropped him dead onto the marble.

Silence crashed back into the foyer, punctured only by the heavy, ragged breathing of three survivors.

Carmine emerged from the archway, his gun still raised, sweeping the corners before lowering the barrel. "Clear!" he barked toward the perimeter. "Check the perimeter gate! Now!"

I wheeled myself to the elevator at the end of the landing, slammed the button, and rode it down to the ground floor. When the brass doors slid open, I pushed through the debris, my wheels crunching over spent shell casings and shattered porcelain.

Faith was still on the floor, sitting with her back pressed against the base of a marble pillar. Her hands were trembling now, covered in cold tea and specks of gray plaster dust. Her chest heaved beneath the oversized hoodie.

I rolled up to her, the Sig Sauer still resting heavy on my lap.

"Are you hit?" I demanded, my voice harsh, rough from the gunsmoke hanging in the foyer.

She swallowed, looking up at me. Her hazel eyes were dilated with pure shock, but when she looked at the gun in my lap, then at the dead men bleeding onto the floor, she didn't shrink away from me.

"No," she whispered. Her voice was shaking, but her jaw tightened with that same stubborn defiance I’d seen earlier. "I’m not hit."

I stared down at her. "You threw tea at a man holding a nine-millimeter."

"It was hot," she said, her voice cracking slightly. "I didn't have anything else."

A dark, involuntary chuckle escaped my throat—the first time I had laughed since the night my spine was severed. I reached out a hand, calloused and stained with carbon residue, and extended it toward her.

Faith hesitated for half a second. Then she placed her small, cold hand into mine.

I pulled her up. Her grip was tight, desperate, anchoring herself to the only thing in the room that wasn't broken.

"Carmine," I said, not taking my eyes off Faith's pale face.

"Yeah, boss?"

"Call the cleanup crew. Get these carcasses out of my hall." My voice turned to cold, razor-edged steel, the voice that had commanded Chicago's underworld for a decade. "And get my tailor on the phone. Tell him to bring a measuring tape here at dawn."

Carmine blinked, wiping sweat from his forehead. "A tailor? Dominic, what the hell are you talking about?"

"Matteo Rossi wants to meet at the Drake Hotel on Friday for the annual docklands charity gala," I said, my fingers tightening around Faith’s hand before slowly letting go. "He thinks I’m a ghost. It’s time he realized ghosts are much harder to kill."

I looked back down at the girl who hadn't run away.