The alley bricks bit into Elena’s palms as she dragged herself up from the crate, wiping the wet grit from her face. Inside the diner, the neon sign flickered—a stuttering red pulse that mapped out her failure. She had nothing left. No job, no apartment worth staying in, and a chest hollowed out by a phantom grief that had just been torn wide open by three tiny voices.

The heavy oak doors of the panic room groaned as another explosive round slammed against the outer corridor wall. The Voss estate was shaking from foundation to roofline.

Inside the reinforced vault, the air smelled of ozone, gunsmoke, and baby powder. The triplets had finally quieted down, huddled together in a padded travel crib while Caden systematically reloaded magazines by hand, his movements steady as a machine.

"He's cutting the power grid," Ortega said, tapping a tablet displaying internal schematics. "We're running on auxiliary generators. The main gates are breached. Julian’s men are in the east wing."

Caden looked up from his ammunition box, his eyes fixing on Elena. She was sitting on the floor beside the crib, softly singing an old folk lullaby her mother used to hum—a strange, surreal contrast to the sound of distant automatic gunfire echoing through the mansion.

"You didn't have to stay," Caden said quietly, his voice devoid of its usual intimidating edge when he spoke to her. "You could have taken the chopper off the pad ten minutes ago."

"And leave my children with a mobster who didn't even know they existed until tonight?" Elena scoffed softly, not breaking rhythm with the babies. "I spent fourteen months thinking I was empty, Caden. Now that I have them back, nobody—not your brother, not your entire syndicate—is taking them away from me again."

Caden stared at her for a long, heavy moment. The ruthless, untouchable crime lord of the eastern seaboard looked, for the first time in his life, completely dismantled.

"Julian wants me," Caden said, standing up and racking the slide of his rifle. "He thinks by destroying my legacy, he takes the throne. He doesn't understand that the throne was never what mattered."

"Where are you going?" Elena stood up, her hand instinctively dropping to the grip of her pistol.

"To finish a family argument," Caden said, his lips curling into a cold, dangerous smile. "Ortega, secure the vault door from the inside. If I'm not back in twenty minutes, seal the coastline tunnel and take them to the safehouse in Montreal."