The eighteenth nanny fled the mansion with blood running down her forehead, screaming that four-year-old Noah Vale was “not right”—and by that afternoon, I was kneeling in front of the same little boy while one of Chicago’s most feared mafia bosses watched from the staircase.

We bounded up the grand staircase two steps at a time, bursting into Noah's nursery.

Noah was standing in the middle of his room, pointing a trembling finger toward the large, open balcony doors. The night wind blew the heavy velvet curtains inward, bringing rain spraying across the hardwood floor.

"Noah!" I dropped to my knees, grabbing his shoulders. "Noah, baby, what happened?!"

Noah was pale as snow, his entire body shaking violently. He looked at me, then looked at Dominic, his small lips trembling as he fought through two years of traumatic silence to force words out of his throat.

"The... the man," Noah gasped out, his voice raspy and broken from disuse. "The man with the... the serpent."

Dominic dropped to one knee beside us, gripping Noah's small arms tightly. "Noah! Look at me, son! What man?! What serpent?!"

Noah raised his little hand, pointing to his own left neck, tracing a shape with his finger. "On his neck... like Daddy's tattoo... but a red serpent. He... he was on the balcony."

Dominic’s face turned into a mask of terrifying horror.

I knew that tattoo. I had seen it in old family photographs displayed in the library.

The red serpent tattoo belonged to Lorenzo Vale—Dominic's older cousin, the head of security for the entire Vale enterprise, and the man who currently controlled all the surveillance systems of the Lake Forest mansion.

"Lorenzo..." Dominic breathed, the betrayal hitting him like a physical blow. "It wasn't Marcus leading this. Lorenzo was the mole inside my house."

Suddenly, the lights in the entire mansion cut out.

The house plunged into pitch black darkness. The loud hum of the emergency generators failed to turn on.

Downstairs, the muffled sounds of suppressed gunshots echo through the grand foyer—thwip, thwip, thwip!

"They cut the main power grid," Dominic barked, pulling a dark custom 9mm pistol from his waistband and racking the slide with a sharp CRACK. "Lorenzo brought Moretti’s hit squad inside the perimeter."

"Dominic!" I pulled Noah close to my chest, shielding him with my body.

Dominic grabbed my arm, dragging us toward a hidden panel behind the nursery's heavy wooden bookshelf. He pressed a hidden catch, and the bookshelf slid open, revealing a narrow, stone staircase leading down into the foundations of the mansion.

"Take Noah down this passage," Dominic commanded, his eyes burning with lethal fury in the dark. "It leads to the boat house on the lake. There is a speedboat key inside the ignition. Take the boy and go across the lake to the safehouse."

"What about you?!" I cried, holding onto his jacket. "Dominic, don't stay here!"

"They came into my house," Dominic growled, his voice sounding like a demon rising from hell. "They threatened my son. They threatened you. I am going to make sure none of them ever see the sunrise."

He leaned down, pressed a fast, fierce kiss onto my lips—a taste of scotch, rain, and raw passion that took my breath away—then shoved us into the secret passage.