The nursery grew so quiet that the hum of the electronic air purifiers sounded like a jet engine. I stared at the underside of Theo’s mattress, my chest tightening with a cold, metallic dread that I hadn't felt since my early days in the underworld.

"Federal Marshals don't move that fast on an anonymous tip unless they've been sitting on the warrant for weeks," I said, my voice dangerously calm as I pocketed the burner phone. "Which means Julian didn't just get caught today. He was working with Dante from the very beginning."

Bruno blinked in shock. "Julian? But he managed your legal shields for ten years!"

"Greed makes whores out of saints, Bruno," I replied, turning back toward the mansion where my children were still recovering from the trauma of the frequency pulses. "Which means Julian's little display on that video call was pure theater. He staged his own kidnapping to buy time while the final server transfers cleared."

We rushed back inside the estate just as the heavy oak front doors shuddered under the heavy pounding of federal authorities demanding entry.

"Mr. Moretti! Open the door in the name of the United States Federal Marshals!" a voice boomed through the intercom.

"Hold them off at the perimeter barrier for three minutes," I told Bruno, already sprinting toward the underground security annex beneath the main library. "Buy me three minutes, and I'll hand you the real mastermind."

The security annex was a cold, windowless bunker lined with towering server racks glowing with amber and green indicator lights. This was the beating heart of my empire—the offline terminal where all secondary financial ledgers and encrypted communication logs were stored away from cloud vulnerabilities.

I slammed my palm against the biometric scanner by the heavy steel vault door.

Access Granted.

The door hissed open, swinging inward. I stepped inside, my gun drawn, expecting to find Julian frantically wiping hard drives.

Instead, I found someone else entirely.

Sitting comfortably in my executive leather chair, sipping a glass of my thirty-year-old single malt scotch, was Marcus Vance.

Not dead. Not bleeding.

Marcus took a slow, relaxed sip of the whiskey, looking up at me with an expression of utter, chilling boredom. He casually tossed a blood-soaked latex prop onto the desk beside a container of stage makeup.

"You're tracking me by the watchtower body, aren't you?" Marcus asked, flashing a cold, thin smile. "Must disappointing, boss. I thought my makeup work on the stunt double was convincing."

I kept my Beretta locked dead center on his chest. "You traded your brother to Dante for a seat at his table?"

"Julian didn't trade anything; he was always stupidly loyal to you," Marcus chuckled, standing up and smoothing down his suit jacket. "Me? I realized a long time ago that a sinking ship deserves a captain who knows how to swim. Dante offered me fifty million and clean papers in South America. All I had to do was slip a few micro-transmitters into your kids' cribs and let your little maid find that doll."

"You tortured my children," I whispered, the words slipping past my teeth like ice.

"Psychological pressure, Adrien. It's clean. It leaves no bruises," Marcus replied smoothly, taking another step forward. "And it gave us the exact distraction we needed to bypass your firewall and drain your accounts while you panicked over crying babies."

"You forgot one thing, Marcus," I said, cocking the hammer of my pistol.