The diamond on Camille’s finger sparkled mockingly in the Chicago sun, flashing a blinding light that hurt my eyes. Five carats. A monument to a merger disguised as a marriage, a political alliance orchestrated by my grandfather, Salvatore Vale, to cement our syndicate's control over the Midwest shipping lanes.

"Run toward the main street! Don't look back!" I ordered, shoving Maya forward while keeping my body positioned between her and the building wall.

The alley was narrow, flanked by towering brick walls and overflowing dumpsters. A second team of two gunmen rounded the corner from the southern end of the alley, blocking our escape route to the main road.

"Boss!"

A sudden barrage of automatic gunfire erupted from behind the Moretti thugs. Dominic and a four-man Vale tactical response unit burst from a hidden cargo van parked at the alley mouth, their suppressed submachine guns spitting disciplined, lethal fire.

The two Moretti enforcers dropped instantly, neutralized before they could raise their rifles.

"Get them in the van!" Dominic roared over the din of gunfire, scanning the upper fire escape where the remaining assassins were aiming down at us.

I hauled Maya and the children toward the open sliding door of the armored van. Bullets ricocheted off the brick wall inches from my head, sending white-hot sparks showering down onto my jacket.

"Get in! Get down on the floor!" I shoved Maya and the triplets into the back of the vehicle, diving in right behind them as Dominic slammed the heavy steel door shut from the outside.

"Drive! Floor it!" I shouted to the driver through the partition.

The van surged forward, tires screaming against the asphalt as we careened out of the alley and into the bustling Chicago traffic, leaving the ambush behind in a cloud of smoke and rubber.

Inside the darkened, armored interior of the van, the air was thick with the scent of adrenaline, gunsmoke, and terror.

Maya sat huddled against the reinforced steel wall, pulling her three children into a suffocatingly tight embrace. The little girl was sobbing softly, while the two boys stared around the armored cabin with wide, unblinking eyes.

None of them were physically hurt, but the shock had left them paralyzed.

I stood over them in the dim emergency lighting of the van, my knuckles scraped and bleeding, my chest heaving.

Maya slowly raised her head. Her face was deathly pale, streaked with dirt and dried tears. The fierce anger from earlier was gone, replaced by a devastating, hollow defeat.

"You brought war to my door," she whispered, her voice cracking. "You promised me... four years ago, you promised me that if I left, I would never have to see this world again."

"I didn't know they were tracking me, Maya," I said, dropping to one knee in front of her, ignoring the blood staining the knees of my trousers. "I swear to you on my life—on their lives—I would never have led them to you."

"Your life doesn't mean anything if we're dead, Adrian," she said bitterly, her green eyes locking onto mine with a finality that chilled me deeper than any gun barrel. "You think you can just march back into our lives, play the hero, and fix everything with your money and your guns? Look at them. Look at what your world did to my babies today."

I looked at the three little faces. The serious boy. The quiet boy. The little girl with my gray eyes.

They didn't belong in the syndicate. They didn't belong in a world of bulletproof cars, betrayal, and blood feuds.

"Where are we going?" Maya asked quietly, bracing herself for the worst. "Are you taking us to one of your compounds? Are you going to lock us up where nobody can find us?"

"No," I said, my voice steady, carrying a heavy, agonizing resolution that ripped my own heart out of my chest. "I'm taking you to a private airstrip. My jet is fueled and waiting."