12 The most feared mafia boss in Chicago came home three hours early and found his housekeeper secretly feeding four identical little boys at the dining table no one had touched since his wife died. He was about to demand an explanation when one boy pointed at him and asked, “Elena, is that the man from the picture?” The spoon fell from her hand.

The blast wave of the first breaching charge ripped through the front parlor, tearing centuries-old oil paintings from their plaster anchors and showering the Persian rugs in fine white dust. Smoke—acrid, gray, and tasting of sulfur and pulverized stone—billowed down the gallery toward the dining room.

"Down!" I roared, throwing my body across the threshold to shield the inner hall.

Elena was already on the floor, dragging the four boys beneath the massive oak trestle of the dining table. The wood was four inches thick, solid English timber from the seventeenth century, built to withstand anything short of an anti-tank missile. The boys didn't cry. That was the most terrifying part. They clung to each other in a tangle of blue cotton sleeves and scuffed sneakers, their large, dark eyes tracking the ceiling plaster raining down around them with an eerie, unnatural discipline.

She trained them for this, I realized with a sick twist in my stomach. Sofia spent her final days preparing my sons for an ambush.

The gunfire was rhythmic, disciplined, and terrifyingly professional. This was not the sloppy spray-and-pray of street crews from Cicero. This was suppressed, short-stroke carbine fire. Three-round bursts designed to suppress, maneuver, and eliminate.

"Marco!" I barked into the tactical radio clipped to my lapel.

Static hissed back. Then a wet, coughing gasp. "East perimeter... compromised, Don Alejandro. They hit the generator shack first. We’re on... auxiliary batteries. Five men down... they aren't syndicate. They're—"

The radio went dead with a muffled pop.

I clicked the safety off the .45. I had eight rounds in the magazine, one in the chamber, and two spare magazines in my coat pocket. Twenty-five rounds against an assault team equipped with body armor and automatic rifles. In my study, behind the false bookcase forty feet away, was an armory that could equip an infantry platoon: FN SCARs, Benelli M4 shotguns, flashbangs, and ceramic plate carriers.

Between me and that study lay the central foyer, now swarming with black-clad shadows cutting through the smoke.

"Mateo," I said, keeping my eyes fixed on the smoke-choked corridor.

The boy who had pointed at the picture crawled toward the edge of the table linen. "Yes, sir?"

Sir. The word burned worse than shrapnel.

"Take your brothers’ hands. No matter what sounds come through that door, you do not let go. Do you understand me?"

"Mom said if the guns come, we become stones," the boy whispered, his lower lip trembling, but his eyes locked onto mine without flinching. "Stones don't move. Stones don't make noise."

"Good boy," I said, and for the first time in five years, something warm and lethal stirred beneath my ribs. "Now watch your father."

I rolled out from the doorway just as a hail of 5.56 rounds stitched through the door frame, splintering the mahogany casing into jagged teeth.

The first shooter came around the corner low, his weapon raised, night-vision optics flipped down over his ballistic helmet. He was fast, but he expected a terrified civilian or an aging mobster caught off guard. He did not expect Alejandro Moretti, who had spent his twentieth year surviving the trench warfare of the Chicago dock strikes and his thirtieth clearing rival safe houses room by room.

I stepped inside his line of fire before his muzzle could track down. My left hand caught the barrel of his carbine, forcing it upward into the ceiling, where a three-round burst obliterated the plaster crown molding. With my right hand, I drove the steel muzzle of my Kimber straight under his ballistic chin strap, into the soft flesh beneath his jaw.

I pulled the trigger twice.

The double-tap bucked against my palm. The man went limp instantly, the heavy thud of his tactical vest hitting the parquet floor vibrating through my soles. I stripped the carbine from his dead fingers, took his tactical sling, and scavenged three spare magazines from his chest rig in four seconds.

"Clear!" a voice barked from the foyer in accented Italian. Calabrian.

The Valenti clan.

The realization settled into my gut like liquid lead. The Valentis had sat at my table two weeks ago. They had kissed my ring, eaten my salt, and pledged their loyalty to the northern territories. Old Don Bernardo had wept over Sofia’s grave at her anniversary memorial, claiming she had been like a daughter to him.

They didn't just want the territory, I thought as I leaned against the marble archway, checking the carbine's chamber. They knew about the boys. If they kill me and take the boys, they hold the entire Moretti bloodline hostage. They control the empire through my sons' corpses.

Two more men moved through the smoke, clearing corners with textbook precision.

I dropped to one knee, leaned around the corner, and fired.

The carbine rattled against my shoulder in controlled, rhythmic thuds. The first operative caught two rounds in the chest plate, stumbled, and took the third through his throat before he could raise his weapon. The second dove behind the marble bust of Julius Caesar that had belonged to my grandfather. Marble chips exploded into the air like white hornets.

"Moretti!" a voice shouted from the foyer. It was deep, rasping, and carried the arrogance of a man who believed numbers determined destiny. "Throw down your weapon! You are alone! Your guards are dead at the gate!"

"You came into my house, Stefano!" I shouted back, recognizing the voice of Bernardo Valenti’s eldest son. "You brought rifles to my table! Do you really think you're walking back down my drive?"

"We don't want you, old man!" Stefano laughed, though the sound was tight, strained by the realization that three of his men were already bleeding out on my rugs. "Give us the bastards! Give us the brats Sofia hid in the woods, and we will let you die with a bullet in your head instead of a knife in your throat!"

Beneath the table, I heard a tiny, stifled gasp.

Elena’s hand was clamping over one of the boys' mouths. I didn't need to look to know which one. They were listening. They were learning what their name meant in the city of Chicago.

"You want my sons?" I murmured, standing up to my full height in the shadow of the doorway.

I pulled a flashbang from the dead soldier's rig, hooked my thumb through the pin, and pulled.

"Come and take them."