"The little boy pounding on my Ferrari window couldn’t have been older than five, but the terror in his eyes stopped me colder than any gun ever had. “Mom is dying... please help!” he cried. He had no idea the man behind that glass was one of Manhattan’s most feared mafia bosses, or that following him into a filthy alley would lead me to a woman who knew my real name and a secret I thought had been buried years ago.

For three days, the safehouse felt like an island of peace in the middle of a violent sea.

Leo learned how to play chess with Marcus, devoured plates of pancakes prepared by our private chef, and treated my garage full of sports cars like his personal amusement park. Elena slowly regained her strength, though she remained guarded, watching me with a mixture of gratitude and deep-seated apprehension.

She still didn't trust that my world wouldn't eventually swallow them whole.

She was about to be proven right.

It was 2:00 AM on a crisp Tuesday night. I was standing in the underground monitoring room, reviewing satellite feeds of our perimeter security, when the red emergency alarms suddenly blared across the entire compound.

PERIMETER BREACH. SECTOR TWO.

My head snapped up toward the monitors.

On screen, three black SUVs had just smashed through the heavy iron security gates of the Upper East Side safehouse, tearing across the courtyard and screeching to a halt near the front entrance.

Men in tactical black gear, armed with submachine guns and suppressors, poured out of the vehicles like ants.

Salvatore Rossi.

There was no mistaking the insignia on their tactical vests—the crest of the Rossi crime family, my fiercest, most ruthless rival in Manhattan. They had somehow caught wind that I had spent an hour in an alley and rushed a woman to St. Jude’s. They had followed the breadcrumbs straight to my front door.

“Boss!” Marcus slammed open the door to the monitoring room, his assault rifle already racked and ready. “Rossi’s hit squad! At least twelve men, heavy ordnance! They’ve breached the courtyard!”

“Get Elena and Leo into the titanium panic room on the lower level, now!” I commanded, pulling my Sig Sauer P226 from my shoulder holster and racking the slide with a sharp, lethal clack.

“What about you?” Marcus demanded.

“I’m going to welcome them properly,” I smiled—a cold, terrifying expression that made even hardened enforcers step back.