Ten days. That was all the doctor believed my six-year-old twins had left, and for the first time in my life, all the money, guns, fear, and power I had built as one of Chicago’s most feared mafia bosses meant absolutely nothing. By three that afternoon, while death waited inside my mansion, a penniless woman stood outside my gates refusing to leave, and I had no idea she was about to change everything.

At 3:00 AM, the industrial docks of the South Side were dead silent, save for the rhythmic sloshing of dark river water against the concrete pilings.

Inside the third-floor office of the cold-storage warehouse, Victor Blackwood stood near the floor-to-ceiling windows, pouring three fingers of bourbon into a crystal glass.

He was a heavy-set man in his fifties, wearing a tailored navy suit, a dark scar running down his right cheek. But his hands were shaking violently as he took a heavy gulp of the whiskey.

"Where are the reports from the estate?!" Blackwood screamed at his chief lieutenant standing near the door. "Why hasn't Yates called back?!"

"Boss... Yates's phone is dead," the lieutenant stammered, wiping sweat from his forehead. "And the strike team... none of them answered their check-ins. Mercer wiped them out."

"Impossible!" Blackwood roared, slamming his crystal glass onto his desk, shattering it into pieces. "Mercer was supposed to be broken! His kids were dying! He was supposed to be on his knees!"

Suddenly, every light in the six-story warehouse flickered and died.

CLICK.

The humming roar of the massive industrial cooling generators died into pitch-black, suffocating silence.

"What the hell?!" Blackwood yelled, reaching for his desk drawer. "Backup generators! Turn on the backup—!"

BOOM!

A massive tactical explosion tore through the sub-basement security doors below, shaking the entire building. High-powered automatic gunfire erupted from the ground floor, echoing through the empty concrete elevator shafts.

"THEY'RE INSIDE!" a mercenary screamed over the hallway speakers before a shotgun blast cut his voice short.

Blackwood panicked, pulling a heavy silver revolver from his desk drawer, sprinting toward his private rear elevator.

Before his hand could touch the call button, the steel elevator doors were sheared open by a hydraulic spreader.

I stepped out of the shaft.

I wore my tactical armor, my black coat covered in plaster dust, holding a heavy 12-gauge tactical shotgun in my hands. Prescott and six Mercer enforcers flooded out behind me, their weapons raised, securing the corridor in three seconds flat.

Blackwood dropped to his knees, his face turning ghost-white under the dim red battery emergency lights. He raised his hands, dropping the silver revolver onto the concrete floor.

"Lawson... Lawson, wait!" Blackwood squeaked, his voice cracking with pathetic, desperate terror. "It was business! Just business! BioVance wanted the land... Yates was the one who suggested the toxin... I didn't want to hurt your kids!"

I walked slowly across the room, my heavy combat boots crunching over the shattered glass of his whiskey tumbler.

I stopped two feet in front of him.

I looked down at the man who had spent eighteen months poisoning my six-year-old twins, the man who had forced Genevieve's sister into hiding, the man who had tried to turn my home into a grave.

I didn't yell. I didn't make a speech.

I raised the heavy shotgun, resting the cold steel barrel directly against the center of Victor Blackwood's forehead.

"You mentioned my children," I whispered softly.

"Please... Lawson! I'll give you BioVance! I'll give you fifty million in offshore bonds! PLEASE!" Blackwood wailed, tears and sweat pouring down his face.

"My daughter asked me if she could take her brother with her when she died," I said, my voice entirely flat, devoid of any human warmth. "And for that, Victor, there isn't enough money in this world."