I HAD POWER, MONEY, AND MEN WHO WOULD KILL FOR ME, BUT NONE OF IT MATTERED WHEN MY WIFE ARRIVED ALONE AND BLEEDING—UNTIL I OPENED HER CRACKED PHONE AND DISCOVERED WHO SHE HAD BEEN MEETING.

At the end of the second-floor hallway, heavy mahogany double doors stood slightly ajar, warm amber light spilling out onto the carpet.

I pushed the door open with the barrel of my gun.

Lorenzo Moretti—the untouchable king of the South Side—was standing behind an oversized mahogany desk, wearing a silk bathrobe, his hands trembling as he frantically tried to load cartridges into a vintage gold-plated revolver.

He looked old. Stripped of his army of guards and his financial security, he looked like a pathetic, cornered predator realizing his final winter had arrived.

“Dominic...” Moretti rasped, his breath hitching as he struggled to snap the cylinder of his gun shut. “You... you’re supposed to be at the hospital with your wife. How did you—?”

“How did I bypass your security?” I finished his sentence, walking slowly across the Persian rug until I stood ten feet away from his desk. “Because your men are mercenaries who love money more than a dying boss, and your financial advisor was a fool who walked right into my trap.”

Moretti’s hands slipped, dropping the gold-plated revolver onto the desk with a heavy clatter. He backed away until his legs hit the high-backed leather chair, sinking into it as if his bones had turned to water.

“Listen to me, Valente,” Moretti stammered, raising a trembling hand in a pathetic gesture of truce. “It was business! You were expanding into the docks, my captains were getting restless—it wasn't personal!”

“Not personal?”

The words tore out of my throat with the force of a physical blow.

“You sent an armored truck to crush a defenseless woman on a dark highway because you couldn't beat me in the boardroom! You targeted my wife, Moretti!”

“She’s alive!” Moretti shrieked, panic breaking his voice. “She survived the crash! What more do you want? Take my money! Take my shipping lanes! Take the entire South Side!”

I raised my SIG Sauer, locking the sights dead-center on his forehead.

“I’m going to take everything,” I whispered. “And then I’m going to take your life.”

Before Moretti could scream a final plea, the sound of a window shattering behind him filled the room. But it wasn't an assassin’s bullet that stopped me—it was the shrill, persistent ringing of my secure satellite phone vibrating against my tactical vest.

I froze. I didn't lower my gun, but my thumb instinctively hit answer.

“Boss,” Mateo’s voice panted over the speaker, breathless and laced with wild urgency. “You need to get back to Northwestern Memorial. Right now.”

My heart stopped. “Is it Clara? Did her vitals drop?”