The question hung in the sterilized air of the hospital suite like a drawn knife.

“Are you my father?”

Lucas didn't flinch. He stood at the edge of my bed, six years old, wearing a hospital robe three sizes too big, his small hands trembling as he stared at the silver cross sitting in my palm. He had my gray eyes—cold, steel-colored, and unblinking—set beneath the same unruly dark curls that had once tumbled over Elena Rossi’s shoulders.

Every burn across my chest flared with sudden, suffocating agony, but I didn't feel it. The blood roared in my ears like a furnace.

“Lucas,” I rasped, my throat raw from smoke and intubation, reaching out a hand wrapped in thick medical gauze. “Where did you get this cross?”

Lucas took a tentative step closer, ignoring the dark-suited guards standing at the door. “My mom gave it to me. She said if I ever got lost, I had to find the man who carried the matching mark.” He pulled down the collar of his faded t-shirt. On his collarbone, etched into the soft skin, was a tiny, jagged burn scar—the exact shape of the Moretti crest.

Matteo, my cold-blooded consigliere who had stood beside me through three mob wars, let out a sharp, audible gasp.

“Dominic,” Matteo whispered, his hand instinctively dropping to the concealed piece under his suit jacket. “Elena... she didn't die seven years ago. Vittorio Bellini lied to us.”

“He didn't just lie,” Grace Bennett said, stepping into the light of the heart monitors. Her uniform was torn, her wrist still red from the guard's grip, but her dark eyes were steady as flint. “Vittorio didn't burn Elena Rossi in that car fire seven years ago, Mr. Moretti. He kept her alive. And forty-eight hours ago, when he realized you were getting too close to discovering the truth, he tried to cremate both your son and you in that warehouse on 4th Street.”

I stared at the nurse. “How do you know this?”

Before Grace could answer, the glass panels of the ICU suite shattered in a thunderous explosion of sound.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Submachine gun fire tore through the double doors. Glass rained down like diamond dust. The heart monitor exploded into sparks, and Matteo threw himself over Lucas, slamming the six-year-old onto the marble floor as plaster showered down from the ceiling.

“DOMINIC! DOWN!” Matteo roared, pulling his suppressed Glock and firing blind through the smoke billowing from the hallway.

Two men in tactical gear, carrying unmarked automatic rifles, kicked through the remnants of the door. Their helmets were blacked out, their shoulders bearing no rank or family crest. They weren't here to negotiate. They were a cleanup crew.

Grace didn't scream. While most civilian nurses would have frozen, she grabbed a heavy stainless-steel IV pole and swung it with feral, terrifying precision into the face of the first mercenary. The steel bar cracked against his visor, throwing him off balance just long enough for Matteo to put two 9mm rounds through the killer’s throat.

The second mercenary raised his barrel directly toward Lucas, who was pinned beneath Matteo’s shoulder.

Every burn on my body turned into pure adrenaline. I tore the IV line from my arm, blood spraying across the white sheets, and rolled off the bed. I hit the floor hard, grabbed the fallen guard's discarded pistol, and fired three rounds upward through the second killer’s jaw.

The mercenary collapsed like a felled tree, his rifle clattering against the marble.

Silence descended, heavy and suffocating, broken only by the hiss of broken oxygen pipes and Lucas’s ragged breathing.

Matteo stood up, his face covered in drywall dust, checking Lucas for injuries. “The boy’s clear. But the whole floor is compromised. The Bellinis didn't wait for the night shift, Dominic. They know you're awake.”

I dragged myself up against the frame of the bed, blood seeping through my chest bandages, staring at the dead mercenaries. I reached out, grabbed one of the killer’s tactical vests, and ripped open the front pouch.

Inside was a secure satellite phone, its screen still glowing red with an incoming text message:

[SUBJECT WOKE UP. KILL THE NURSE. SECURE THE BOY. VANCE/BELLINI OVERRIDE ACTIVE.]

I looked up at Grace, who was wiping blood off her forehead with the sleeve of her scrubs. She was breathing heavily, her eyes wide, but her hands were steady.

“You knew,” I said, my voice dropping into the terrifying register that made capos tremble. “You knew they were coming.”

“I didn't know when,” Grace rasped, checking Lucas’s pulse with clinical efficiency before looking into my eyes. “Four hours ago, before you opened your eyes, a man named Vittorio Bellini walked into the chief’s office downstairs. He signed an order to shut down the backup generators at midnight. I realized then that no one on this floor was meant to leave alive.”

I turned to Matteo, my steel-gray eyes locking onto my most trusted lieutenant. “Get the cars ready. We're leaving.”

“Dominic, you can't move!” Matteo protested. “Your lungs are scorched, your ribs are fractured—”

“I’ve been dead for forty-eight hours, Matteo,” I snarled, hauling myself upright and snatching a dark coat off the coat rack. “I’m not dying in a hospital bed.”

I walked over to Lucas, kneeling down so I was eye-level with my son. The boy didn't shrink back. He looked at the gun in my hand, then looked into my face.

“Your mother,” I asked softly, my voice breaking for the first time in seven years. “Where is she, Lucas?”

Lucas reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, wet with sweat and stained with soot. “She gave me this before the bad men locked us in the room with the gasoline. She said... she said if the fire started, I had to give this to Dominic Moretti.”

I unfolded the paper with blood-stained fingers.