For eight years, Dante Moretti—the most powerful Mafia boss in Chicago—loved me behind closed doors but refused every time I asked about marriage. Then an ivory invitation arrived with two names printed across it: **Dante Moretti & Victoria Carter—my older sister.** Three years after watching him marry her, I returned to Chicago carrying the secret he never knew existed: his son.

Before Dante could signal his men, Victoria began to laugh.

It was a wild, unhinged sound that echoed across the vaulted ceiling, sending chills through the gathered crowd. She stepped backward, reaching into the small sequined purse hanging from her wrist.

"You think you’re so clever, don't you, little sister?" Victoria hissed, her eyes gleaming with manic triumph. "You think you can waltz into Chicago, drag your little bastard behind you, and take everything I built?"

My breath hitched. The entire ballroom seemed to tilt on its axis.

"What did you say?" Dante stepped forward, his hand dropping directly onto the grip of his weapon.

"Oh, did she not tell you, Dante?" Victoria shrieked, playing to the crowd, pointing a venomous finger directly at me. "She spent three years hiding in Switzerland, raising your bastard son! The precious Moretti heir!"

Whispers exploded through the room. The Commission members—the heads of the Marcone and Falcone families—leaned forward in shock. A direct male heir to the Moretti empire changed the entire geopolitical landscape of the underworld.

"Shut your mouth, Victoria," Dante warned, his voice vibrating with absolute lethal intent.

"Why should I?" Victoria smiled, pulling a small remote detonator from her purse. "Did you really think I didn't know about your little safehouse at the Columbian? Did you think I would let you replace me with her and her bastard?"

Terror, colder than the icy depths of Lake Michigan, seized my heart.

"The Columbian," I gasped, my hand clutching Dante’s arm so hard my nails bit through his tuxedo. "Dante... Leo!"

"Your penthouse is very secure, Dante," Victoria whispered, her face twisting into a demonic grin. "Against bullets. Against snipers. But what about the maintenance shafts? What about the gas lines that Carter Logistics installed two years ago?"

"You didn't," Dante breathed, his face draining of blood for the first time in his life.

At that exact moment, the heavy mahogany doors at the back of the ballroom were violently kicked open.

Luca stumbled into the hall, covered in soot, blood pouring from a jagged wound on his forehead, his suit torn to shreds.

"Boss!" Luca roared over the screaming crowd, his voice hoarse with horror. "The penthouse—they breached the lower mechanical floor! They took the boy!"

"No!" A bloodcurdling scream tore from my throat as the room devolved into absolute, deafening pandemonium.

Volkov drew his weapon, firing a round directly into the ceiling. The crystal chandelier shattered, raining thousands of razor-sharp shards down upon the fleeing guests. Gunfire erupted from both sides of the ballroom as Moretti soldiers clashed with Bratva operatives.

Dante threw his arm around me, tackling me behind a heavy marble pillar as bullets chipped away the stone inches above our heads.

His eyes were completely black, stripped of all humanity, the demon of Chicago fully unleashed. He grabbed my face in his hands, his thumbs digging into my cheeks as he looked into my terrified eyes.

"Where is he, Luca?!" Dante roared into his radio over the deafening cacophony of automatic gunfire.

Through the crackling static, a voice that didn't belong to Luca replied—a chilling, guttural Russian whisper:

*"Bring the ledger to the Calumet River docks by midnight, Don Moretti. Or your little prince learns how to swim with the fishes."*

The line went dead.