THE MAFIA BOSS SAW HIS PREGNANT MAID CARRYING A HEAVY SUITCASE—THEN HIS FIANCÉE SCREAMED, “DON'T OPEN IT!”

Vincent’s knees struck the cold marble floor of Union Station, the encrypted phone clattering beside him. For a fraction of a second, the towering don of New York looked like a hollow shell of a man, his breath stolen by the echo of his daughter’s desperate scream.

“Grace…” he rasped, his fingers digging into his hair. “No, no, no…”

“Vincent! Get up!” I shouted, clutching baby Hope tight against my chest with one arm while hauling him upward with the other. “Panicking won’t save them! Julian wants you paralyzed. We have to move now!”

My voice pierced through the shock clouding his eyes. The raw, predatory instinct that had kept the Moretti family at the apex of the criminal underworld flooded back into his veins. Vincent surged to his feet, snatching the satellite phone and barking orders into an emergency dispatch channel.

“All perimeter squads, converge on the Bedford estate immediately!” he roared, sprinting toward the VIP exit where an armored SUV waited with the engine idling. “Code Black! Breach the gates, breach the walls, bring every medical team in the state! Move!”

Within ninety seconds, we were tearing through the highway at breakneck speed, rain lashing against the reinforced windshield like bullets. The black leather binder containing Daniel Bennett’s damning evidence lay securely in my lap, but its triumph felt hollow now. Julian had anticipated our countermove. While we were securing the safe in Pennsylvania, he had struck directly at the heart of Vincent’s world.

Two agonizing hours later, the SUV crested the hill leading up to the gated entrance of the Bedford estate.

The iron gates were bent outward, blown off their hinges by high-grade explosives. Black smoke billowed into the midnight sky, choking out the stars. Orange tongues of fire clawed through the shattered stained-glass windows of the west wing. Fire alarms screamed uselessly into the night alongside the sirens of four unmarked tactical ambulances.

Vincent jumped out before the vehicle came to a complete halt.

“Elena! Grace!” he screamed, his coat flying behind him as he charged headlong toward the blazing front entrance.

Two armed bodyguards, their faces soot-stained and bleeding, tackled him to the grass just yards from the heat of the doorway. “Boss, no! The roof over the grand foyer collapsed! You can’t go in through the front!”

Vincent threw them off with terrifying strength. “Where are my wife and daughter? Speak, or I’ll bury you where you stand!”

“Mrs. Moretti… she held them off in the safe room beneath the library!” the guard gasped out, coughing up soot. “The fire team just managed to pull her out through the cellar grate! But Grace… boss… Julian took the girl!”

A feral sound tore from Vincent’s throat as he turned and sprinted toward the triage perimeter set up beneath the weeping willows.

There, lying on a stretcher with an oxygen mask strapped across her soot-stained face, was Elena. Her designer clothes were torn and scorched, her arm heavily bandaged where a bullet had grazed her shoulder.

When her eyes landed on Vincent, she ripped the mask off, tears carving clean tracks down her blackened cheeks. “Vincent… he had the master override codes,” she sobbed, clawing at his chest as he dropped beside her. “He walked right past the vault sensors! He took our baby… he took our little girl, and he told me to tell you that Daniel Bennett’s blood wasn't enough. He wants the whole lineage dead.”

Vincent cradled her head, pressing his forehead against hers. His voice, when he finally spoke, was so cold it seemed to freeze the surrounding air.