The most feared mafia boss in Chicago came home three hours early and found his housekeeper secretly feeding four identical little boys at the dining table no one had touched since his wife died. He was about to demand an explanation when one boy pointed at him and asked, “Elena, is that the man from the picture?” The spoon fell from her hand.

By 4:00 AM, I returned to the industrial safehouse.

The adrenaline of the night’s hunts began to fade, leaving me exhausted, battered, and carrying the heavy weight of a reality I was still trying to comprehend.

I stepped softly into the back bedroom.

The room was quiet. A small nightlight cast a soft amber glow over the cots.

Elena was asleep in an armchair in the corner. But on the main bed, four small bodies were clustered together under a single large comforter.

I set my weapon on the nightstand, pulled off my heavy leather shoulder holster, and quietly sat on the edge of the mattress.

As if sensing my presence, Mateo opened his eyes. He rubbed his face with a chubby fist, sat up, and looked at me.

“Daddy?” he whispered.

“Shh,” I whispered back, brushing a dark lock of hair from his forehead. “Go back to sleep, little bird.”

Instead of going back to sleep, Mateo crawled across the mattress and climbed directly onto my lap. He rested his small head against my chest, right over my heart.

A moment later, Leo woke up, saw his brother, and squirmed over to sit on my left knee. Then Lucas and Nico stirred, crawling across the blankets until all four quadruplets were piled against me, holding onto my suit jacket like I was an impenetrable fortress.

I wrapped my long arms around all four of my sons.

For twenty years, I had believed that power came from fear. I had believed that command was established through bloodshed, territory, and iron-fisted authority.

But holding four warm, breathing human beings who shared my blood and my face, I realized I had been completely blind.

This was real power.

This was the legacy Sofia had given her life to protect.

“Daddy?” Nico—the one who looked most like me when I was angry—whispered, staring at the faint scar on my jawline. “Are you going away again?”

“Never,” I said, my voice thick with emotion. “I am never leaving you again.”

“Elena said you have a big house with a garden,” Lucas murmured, yawning softly against my chest. “Can we go there?”

“We are going to build a new house,” I promised them, kissing the top of Lucas’s head. “A house with a giant garden, four bedrooms, and high walls that no bad men will ever cross.”

“Will there be dragons?” Mateo asked, looking up at me with wide, curious eyes.

I smiled—a real, genuine smile that hadn't touched my lips since the day Sofia died.

“No dragons,” I said softly. “Just us.”

Suddenly, the door to the bedroom opened. Dante stood in the hallway, his face grim. He didn't speak, but he gestured urgently for me to come outside.

I carefully untangled myself from the four boys, tucked them back under the warm blankets, and kissed each of their foreheads.

“Stay with Elena,” I whispered.

I stepped out into the hallway and shut the door behind me.

“What is it, Dante?”

Dante held up an encrypted satellite tablet.

“Don Lorenzo Bellini just issued an all-points contract through the international underworld,” Dante revealed, his voice laced with extreme urgency. “Twenty million dollars to anyone who delivers the four Moretti boys to New York alive... or dead.”

My smile vanished. The warmth in my chest instantly hardened back into solid black diamond.

“Bellini knows Cassian failed,” Dante added. “He’s mobilizing his entire family fleet. Five hundred armed enforcers are heading toward Chicago right now on private charter flights and interstate convoys. He’s planning to level this city until he finds those children.”

I looked back at the closed bedroom door where my four sons were sleeping peacefully.

Bellini thought he could bring five hundred men to my city? He thought he could put a bounty on the heads of my four sons?

“Dante,” I said, my voice dropping to a register that made the concrete walls seem to vibrate.

“Yes, Boss?”

“Call every syndicate boss in Detroit, Saint Louis, Minneapolis, and Cleveland,” I commanded. “Tell them the Moretti family is calling in every favor, every debt, and every blood treaty owed to my father.”