The heavy doors of the study closed behind them with a muffled click. Lorenzo did not summon his men. He did not call Marco, his second-in-command, nor did he reach for the encrypted phone in his pocket that could mobilize forty armed soldiers within ten minutes.

The heavy doors of the study closed behind them with a muffled click. Lorenzo did not summon his men. He did not call Marco, his second-in-command, nor did he reach for the encrypted phone in his pocket that could mobilize forty armed soldiers within ten minutes. If Isabella was alive—if she had survived the fiery crash that the city mourned, the funeral where he had buried an empty, sealed mahogany box weighted down with lead—then every single person he trusted was a liability.

He loaded Emma into the back of the armored town car himself, wrapping her shivering frame in his own cashmere overcoat. Her mother, Marta, had been washing the back terrace and came running across the gravel, her face drained of color when she saw the mafia boss carrying her child toward the gates.

"Sir! Please, what has she done? She’s just a baby, she doesn’t know—" Marta’s voice cracked, terror vibrating through every syllable. In their world, crossing Lorenzo Duca usually meant disappearing.

"She has done nothing wrong, Marta," Lorenzo said, his voice terrifyingly calm, devoid of its usual frost. "In fact, she may have just saved my life. Stay here. Double-lock the doors. Tell no one."

He slid into the driver’s seat. He didn't want a chauffeur today. This hunt was personal, quiet, and deadly.

The old train station sat on the industrial fringe of the city, a skeletal monument of rusted corrugated iron, broken glass, and choking weeds. The air tasted of soot and old coal. Lorenzo killed the engine three blocks away, the heavy thrum of the V12 dying into a tense, expectant silence.

"Show me, Emma," he murmured, peering into the rearview mirror.

The little girl pointed a small, steady finger toward the dilapidated freight warehouse at the end of the line. "There. Behind the sliding door that won't shut all the way."

Lorenzo stepped out of the vehicle. His hand dropped instinctively to the cold steel of the Beretta tucked into his holster. Every instinct honed by two decades of bloody turf wars screamed at him that this could be a trap. A rival family exploiting a child’s imagination to draw him out into the open. But then he remembered the bent ring on Bruno’s leather collar. No rival could fake that.

He moved with terrifying, predatory grace across the gravel, hugging the shadows of the rusted tracks. The wind howled through the skeletal rafters of the abandoned station, carrying with it a faint, haunting sound—a rhythmic, hacking cough.

His heart slammed against his ribs. Isabella.

He reached the sliding door, which was jammed open by a foot of warped iron. Peering through the gap, the gloom inside slowly resolved into shapes. Piles of rotting wooden pallets, discarded shipping crates, and in the far corner, a makeshift bed of greasy wool blankets.

And there he saw him. A massive, scarred black mastiff, ribs showing faintly beneath a dark coat, sitting guard over a shivering figure huddled against the wall. Around the dog's thick neck hung a frayed, chewed-up strip of leather with a distinct, bent metal ring catching the pale shaft of morning light.

"Bruno?" Lorenzo whispered, his voice cracking.

The dog’s ears flicked up. A low, warning rumble built in its chest, turning instantly into a whimper of desperate recognition as the massive beast caught his scent.