Brett’s hand was still frozen on the brass doorknob, his knuckles turning white as the sheer, suffocating gravity of the room washed over him. The three men in bespoke dark suits didn’t draw weapons; they didn't need to. Their mere physical presence—broad-shouldered, immovable, radiating cold menace—turned the private dining room into an airless vault.

Salvatore left with Marcus and a dozen armed men within minutes. Left alone in the sprawling estate, I couldn't just sit still. The adrenaline coursing through my veins wouldn't allow it. I fired up the laptop Salvatore had given me, pulling up the secure network feeds he had left open.

The security cameras at the 22nd Street docks displayed a war zone.

Black-clad operatives from the rival O’Neill syndicate were swarming the warehouses, armed with automatic weapons. They thought Salvatore was vulnerable. They thought his focus on legitimate business ventures had made him soft.

They were catastrophically wrong.

On screen, I watched Salvatore step out of an armored SUV, completely unfazed by the flying lead. He didn't carry a gun; he carried a heavy steel pipe he’d pulled from the back of a truck. With terrifying efficiency, he moved through the crossfire like a wraith, dismantling the ambush piece by piece.

My phone buzzed again. It wasn't Brett this time. It was an unknown number with a local Chicago area code.

I swiped to answer.

“Tessa Vance?” a harsh, rasping voice barked through the speaker. “If you have any sense of self-preservation, pack your bags and run. Marquetti is a dead man walking. The O’Neills are burning his entire operation to the ground starting with his house—and everyone inside it.”

My breath caught in my throat. “Who is this?”

“Consider it a friendly warning from someone who knows how this story ends,” the voice hissed before the line went dead.

Click.

Panic slammed into my chest with the force of a freight train. I jumped up from the desk just as the estate’s master alarm began to wail—a shrill, ear-piercing shriek that echoed through the marble hallways.

Red emergency lights flashed along the ceiling. The power cut out entirely, plunging the manor into sudden, suffocating darkness, broken only by the pulsing crimson glow of the backup generators.