“She's a Secret Spy!” the Little Girl Whispered — The Mafia Boss Froze When He Saw His Girlfriend

Dominic tore through the underground tunnel like a bullet through a barrel. The darkness was total, but the green glow of his night-vision optic illuminated the damp brick walls flying past in a blur. Every beat of his heart felt like an explosion in his temples.

*Marco was in the house.*

The man who had stood beside Dominic at his father's grave, who had clasped his shoulder and promised lifelong allegiance, was currently walking the halls of Dominic’s ancestral home, hunting the only two people who made that cavernous museum of a house feel like an actual life.

He reached the library service door in forty seconds flat.

Before he pushed it open, he heard the voices. Cold, mocking, and utterly confident.

"Come out, Emily," Marco Bellini’s gravelly voice echoed through the high-ceilinged library. "You know how these vaults work. They’re air-tight, yes, but they have ventilation baffles on the exterior wall. It takes my men roughly ninety seconds to pump an entire canister of commercial defoliant into those ducts. You and your pretty little girl will be coughing up your own lungs before the boss even makes it back from the carriage house."

Dominic cracked the hidden door half an inch.

The library was illuminated by the flickering glare of two high-intensity tactical floodlights set on tripods by Marco’s men. Marco Bellini stood in the center of the Persian rug, wearing an immaculate camel-hair coat, his silver hair slicked back, leaning lightly on a silver-tipped cane. Around him stood four heavily armed operatives wearing balaclavas, their assault rifles trained on the heavy steel vault door concealed behind the swinging bookcase.

On the floor near the hearth lay Adrien, bound with heavy cable ties, blood pooling from a deep laceration above his temple, but his eyes were still burning with defiance.

"You're making a mistake, Marco," Adrien ground out, his voice hoarse. "Dominic will skin you alive for this."

Marco chuckled, a dry, rattling sound. He tapped his cane against Adrien’s ribs. "Dominic is a sentimental boy, Adrien. That was his father's flaw, and it’s his flaw. He keeps a dead driver's widow as his housekeeper because he feels guilty. He lets my Serena play him like a cheap violin. He isn't a Don. He's an administrator. Chicago needs a wolf, not a bureaucrat."

Marco turned back to the vault door. "Emily! Last chance. Open the door, hand me the bear, and I let you and the child walk out to a bus station. Keep it closed, and I burn you out."

Inside the wall, Dominic calculated his odds. Five targets. Four rifles, one cane that concealed a twenty-gauge shotgun barrel. Distance: twenty-two feet. The MPX had twenty-four rounds remaining in the magazine.

He didn't hesitate.

Dominic kicked the concealed bookshelf open with the force of a battering ram.

The heavy oak bookcase slammed into the nearest mercenary, shattering his collarbone and throwing him into the tactical floodlight. The light tipped over, sparking violently against the Persian rug, blinding the room with shifting, violent shadows.

*Thump-thump-thump.*

Dominic fired in controlled three-round bursts. The second guard took two rounds to the chest and collapsed over the desk. The third guard managed to raise his carbine, but Dominic closed the distance in a blur of lethal momentum, driving his elbow into the man’s throat with crushing force, spinning him around to use as a human shield as the fourth guard opened fire.

Rounds ripped through the mercenary’s tactical vest. Dominic held the dead man upright with his left arm while leveling the MPX over the corpse’s shoulder with his right, squeezing the trigger until the slide locked back empty.

The fourth guard dropped, his weapon clattering across the marble hearth.

Marco Bellini didn't flinch.

With the terrifying calm of an old-school mob boss, Marco twisted the silver handle of his cane, drawing a slim, twenty-inch rapier from the mahogany sheath. He didn't try to run. Instead, he lunged toward the vault door keypad, pulling a small remote detonator from his coat pocket.

"You're too late, boy!" Marco snarled, his thumb hovering over the red toggle switch. "I planted four bricks of Semtex against the ventilation shaft! You take one step, and I blow that vault into a tomb!"

Dominic let the dead mercenary fall. He dropped the empty MPX and reached for his Sig Sauer.

"Drop the detonator, Marco," Dominic said, his voice deadly calm, his breath steady despite the carnage surrounding them.

"You shoot me, my thumb releases the switch!" Marco sneered, his silver eyes flashing with madness. "It's a dead-man's trigger! Kill me, and you kill your precious little family!"

Dominic took a slow, measured step forward. His gun was leveled directly at Marco’s forehead.

"You're lying," Dominic said coolly.

"Try me!" Marco screamed. "Try me, you arrogant little bastard! I built this empire with your father! I took the bullets while he sat in his fancy club! Everything in this city belongs to me!"

From behind the heavy steel vault door, a faint mechanical hum resonated.

The lock began to turn.

"No!" Dominic shouted, panic flashing in his eyes for the first time that night. "Emily, stay inside!"

The vault door swung outward.

Emily Bennett stood in the threshold. She was not crying. She was not cowering. Rose was behind her, hidden deep within the steel recess, clutching Dominic’s oversized coat.

In Emily’s hands was David’s old twelve-gauge Remington pump-action shotgun, which Dominic had kept mounted above the vault's interior gun rack. Her hands were steady. Her jaw was set in a line of pure, maternal vengeance.

"Get away from him," Emily said.

Marco Bellini turned his head, startled by the sudden appearance of the timid housekeeper he had completely dismissed as collateral damage.

That quarter-second distraction was all Dominic needed.

Dominic fired.

The 9mm round didn't hit Marco’s head. It struck his right wrist, severing the tendons and sending the detonator flying from his ruined hand to skitter harmlessly across the marble floor.

Marco howled in agony, dropping his sword cane and clutching his bleeding arm. "You bitch—!"

Emily didn't hesitate. She racked the slide of the Remington with a brutal, metallic *clack-clack* that echoed like thunder through the library. She didn't fire—she didn't have to. The sheer, unwavering hatred in her eyes froze Marco in his tracks.

Dominic closed the distance in a single stride. He caught Marco by the throat, lifting the sixty-year-old mob boss clean off the floor and slamming him against the mahogany wall beneath the portrait of Dominic’s father.

The library fell dead silent, save for Marco’s strangled wheezing and the steady dripping of rain against the shattered terrace glass.

Dominic leaned in close, his hazel eyes completely devoid of mercy.

"My father called you his brother," Dominic whispered, his fingers tightening around Marco’s windpipe until the older man’s face turned purple. "And you poisoned him like a stray dog. You sent Serena into my bed. You sent death squads into my house to slaughter a woman and a child."

"Dominic..." Marco choked out, his heels drumming weakly against the wainscoting. "Mercy... the Commission... they won't allow this..."

"I am the Commission now," Dominic said.

With a brutal, effortless twist of his forearms, Dominic snapped Marco Bellini’s neck.