My maid’s eight-month-old baby crawled into my office while my enforcer was holding a gun on a traitor, but instead of reacting like the ruthless Mafia Boss everyone feared, I dropped to my knees and cried. The baby had the same eyes, dark curls, and face as the son I had buried three years earlier.

The suppressed submachine gun chattered violently in my hands.

Tuk-tuk-tuk-tuk-tuk!

9mm hollow-point rounds ripped through the air with lethal precision.

The first mercenary took three rounds directly to the throat and chest, his body jerking backward down the marble steps before collapsing into a bloody heap at the landing.

The second man tried to pivot behind the banister, but two rounds caught him in the soft tissue beneath his tactical helmet, dropping him instantly onto his side.

The third mercenary fired a wild burst toward my position, the bullets chewing into the marble pillar beside my head, sending sharp stone shrapnel flying into my face. One piece cut my cheek, but I didn't blink. I shifted my aim two inches to the left and sent a three-round burst through his visor.

He went limp, sliding down the blood-slicked stairs.

In less than four seconds, the lead assault team was dead.

The remaining three mercenaries retreated frantically to the base of the staircase, taking cover behind the heavy leather sofas in the foyer, blindly firing blind bursts up toward the second floor.

Marco Rossi didn't run. He took two steps back into the shelter of the foyer archway, his eyes wide with a mixture of shock and violent irritation as he watched three of his best men die on my stairs.

“Dante!” Marco roared, his voice trembling slightly over the echoes of gunfire. “You’re making a mistake! You don't know what you’re fighting for!”

“I know exactly what I’m fighting for, Marco,” I called down, my voice steady, cold, and dark as a open grave.

I dropped the empty magazine from the MP5K, let it hit the marble floor with a metallic clatter, and slapped a fresh thirty-round stick into the receiver.

I stepped down the first three stairs, walking directly through the thick smoke, my boots stepping over the fresh blood pooling on the white stone.

“You stole my wife,” I said, taking another slow, deliberate step down. “You faked my son’s death. You locked him in a basement until he died. And then you tried to build a puppet out of his ashes.”

At the bottom of the stairs, behind the leather sofa, Marco went completely still.

The cocky, arrogant smile that had defined his face for twenty years vanished instantly. He realized, with a sickening jolt of horror, that the quiet, brooding Don who had let his empire rot for three years was gone. The monster had reawakened.

“Who told you?” Marco rasped, his voice dropping into a desperate, frantic pitch. “Was it the nurse? Was it Elena? She’s lying to you, Dante! The child is a defect! He’s a biological risk!”

“The child carries my blood,” I said, descending another five steps. “Which means you are standing in my house, breathing my air, while holding a death sentence.”

“Kill him!” Marco screamed to his remaining men. “KILL HIM NOW!”

The two surviving mercenaries stood up from behind the sofa, leaning over the leather cushions to bring their automatic shotguns to bear on my chest.

Before they could acquire their targets, a heavy iron door beneath the staircase burst open.

Dominic re-emerged from the lower levels. He didn't carry a handgun anymore; he held a short-barreled Remington 870 tactical shotgun in his right hand.

BOOM!

The 12-gauge slug hit the mercenary on the left at point-blank range, lifting him off his feet and throwing him through the glass coffee table in the center of the foyer.

Dominic racked the pump with a loud, mechanical CLACK-CLACK.

BOOM!

The second slug tore through the cushion of the sofa, hitting the last mercenary in the lower abdomen, folding him in half before he hit the rug.

The foyer fell into a sudden, terrifying silence.

The smoke hung thick in the air, smelling of burnt cordite, ozone, and coppery blood. The front doors lay shattered in the driveway outside. The six mercenaries Marco had brought to storm my inner sanctum were dead on the floor.

Marco Rossi stood alone in the center of the foyer, his gold-tipped cane held uselessly in his hand, his tailored wool coat covered in plaster dust.

He slowly turned his head to look at Dominic, who was leveling the smoking barrel of the 12-gauge directly at his heart.

Then he looked up the stairs at me.

I walked down the remaining steps, my heavy tactical boots clicking rhythmically against the blood-stained marble, until I stood three feet from him.

I lowered the MP5K to my side and drew the silver-plated .45 Colt from my hip holster.

“Dante...” Marco whispered, his hands rising slowly into the air. His face was white as a sheet, his breath coming in short, shallow gasps. “Listen to me... we can make a deal. The boy... Leo... he needs specialist care. The genetic procedure... it wasn't stable! He needs treatments that only my medical team in Switzerland can provide! If you kill me, he dies in six months!”

I looked at him.

I didn't see the head of the Rossi syndicate. I didn't see a powerful rival Don. I saw a pathetic, cowardly rat who had tortured a five-year-old boy in a basement and used an infant as a shield.

“You’re lying, Marco,” I said softly.

“I’m not!” he shrieked, his eyes darting frantically to the door. “I swear on my mother’s grave! He has cellular degradation! Without the Swiss serum, his nervous system will collapse!”

I stepped closer, placing the cold steel barrel of the .45 directly against the center of Marco Rossi’s forehead.

“My son died three years ago screaming for me,” I whispered into his ear. “My new son will live a long, healthy life under the care of doctors I buy with your stolen fortune.”

“Dante, please—”