"My mom and dad ignored 9 urgent calls from my hospital bed since they were helping my sister unpack her new suburban home. So I called my estate lawyer to the hospital, changed everything on the spot, and when they finally arrived, they learned exactly what their cruelty had cost them.

Cassian was the first to move.

The glass slipped from his fingers, shattering against the linen tablecloth, the dark red wine pooling outward like a fresh gunshot wound. He scrambled backward in his leather armchair, knocking it over, his hands clawing at the wall behind him as if he could phase through the plaster.

"Alejandro..." Cassian's voice was a high, choked squeak. "You're... how are you..."

Don Roberto did not move. He was sixty-eight years old, his silver hair combed back with pomade, his face carved with the deep lines of a lifetime spent navigating the betrayals of the Chicago underworld. He set his fork down with deliberate slowness, though the trembling in his right hand betrayed the terror turning his blood to ice.

"The boys," Roberto said, his voice gravelly and flat. "You found the boys."

"I found my sons," I corrected, stepping past the groaning guard on the floor. I walked toward the table with measured, rhythmic steps, pulling a leather-bound chair out from the foot of the table and sitting down. "My four sons, Roberto. The ones you tried to slaughter while they were eating rice with their housekeeper."

Roberto closed his eyes for a brief second, then let out a heavy, shuddering exhale. "Sofia was always too clever for her own good. She should have died when the doctors told her to."

The casual cruelty of the statement hit me like an electric current, but I did not lose my temper. The rage had moved past heat; it was absolute zero now. A calm, mathematical clarity that settled over my mind like winter frost.

"Why the slow poison, Roberto?" I asked, leaning back in the chair. "Why not just put a bullet in her car? Why not stage an accident on Lake Shore Drive?"

"Because you loved her too much!" Cassian shrieked from the corner, his back pressed against the mahogany paneling. "If she had been murdered, you would have started a war with New York! You would have torn the whole Commission down trying to find the killer! But cancer... cancer is an act of God. You can't shoot God, Alejandro! We needed you broken, not vengeful!"

I turned my head slowly toward Cassian. "And why did you need me broken?"

"Because you were soft!" Roberto snapped, his old eyes flashing with desperate, cornered defiance. "You were going to let the legitimate businesses take over the family! You were funneling seventy percent of our profits into trusts, real estate, and clean tech! You were trying to turn the Moretti name into the Kennedys! And without an heir, the street empire was going to rot! I built this city alongside your father! I wasn't going to let a sentimental boy hand it over to bankers and charity boards!"

"So you poisoned my wife," I said. "And when you discovered that she had beaten you—that she had carried my blood into the world before she died—you sent four men to butcher four toddlers."

Roberto swallowed hard. "They couldn't be allowed to exist, Alejandro. Four Moretti boys? Legitimate heirs? If the streets knew you had four sons, you would never step down. You would rule until you were eighty, and then pass the crown to them. My sons... my lineage... we would have been nothing but foot soldiers forever."

I nodded slowly, absorbing every word.

"You're right about one thing, Uncle," I said quietly.

Roberto blinked, a flicker of pathetic hope sparking in his eyes. "About what?"

"I am never going to step down," I said.

I reached into my jacket and pulled out the old photograph Mateo had given me. I laid it flat on the table, sliding it across the white linen until it stopped against Roberto's dessert plate.

"Look at her," I commanded.

Roberto looked down. His breath caught when he saw Sofia's face, radiant and defiant even in her final months, holding the secret that had destroyed his life's ambition.

"She knew what you were," I said. "She knew you were a rat who fed on scraps under the table. And she made sure that even from her grave, she would take everything from you."

"Alejandro, please," Cassian wept, falling to his knees and crawling toward me, his hands raised in supplication. "It was Roberto's plan! He forced my hand! He controlled the offshore transfers! I can give you the accounts! I can give you sixty million dollars in bearer bonds hidden in Luxembourg! Just let me take a plane to Zurich! You'll never see me again!"

I looked down at the man who had been my legal counsel for fifteen years—the man who had stood at my wedding, who had offered the eulogy at Sofia's funeral.

"Cassian," I said gently.

"Yes? Yes, Alejandro?"

"Sofia asked me in her letter to keep the boys safe from me."

Cassian frowned, confusion mingling with his terror. "What?"

"She thought I was too violent. She thought my world would taint them," I whispered, drawing the ceramic blade from my sleeve. "And she was right. I am a monster, Cassian. But tonight, I am their monster."