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The rain pelted the roof of the armored black Cadillac with the force of falling lead. Inside, the cabin was suffocatingly silent, save for the rhythmic, mechanical swipe of the windshield wipers. I reached into my coat pocket, my thumb grazing the damp, frayed fabric of Miss Rose. / Chapter 4 / 20

Chapter 4 - The Heart of the Beast

The central warehouse was an old brick monolith with broken windows and a sliding steel door left half-open. Inside, the sound of muffled crying cut through the ambient hum of diesel generators.

Lily.

My grip on the pistol tightened until my knuckles turned the color of bone.

I slipped through the gap in the steel door, hugging the deep shadows cast by stacks of wooden crates filled with smuggled electronics. Twenty yards ahead, in the center of the dilapidated warehouse floor, sat a wooden chair.

Elena was tied to it, her hands bound behind her back with plastic zip ties, her face bruised and pale, her eyes wild with terror. Just a few feet away, little Lily was huddled on a dirty tarp, clutching a torn blanket, sobbing softly into her knees.

Standing over them with a lit cigar in his mouth was Vincent Colombo. A pair of scarred enforcers flanked him, their weapons casually resting at their sides.

"Look at this," Colombo laughed, blowing a cloud of gray smoke toward the high rafters. "The great Dominic Moretti, reduced to a stray dog running through the rain for a maid and a brat who isn't even his blood."

I stepped out from behind the crates, walking directly into the circle of light cast by the overhead halogen lamp.

"You talk too much, Vincent," I said, my voice cutting through the damp air like a razor.

Colombo spun around, dropping his cigar into a puddle. For a fraction of a second, surprise flickered in his eyes. He hadn't expected me to breach the inner sanctum alone. He thought I would negotiate. He thought fear would make me trade my empire for a child.

He didn't understand that Lily wasn't a liability anymore. She was the only thing keeping the darkness inside me from swallowing the rest of the world.

"You're alone?" Colombo sneered, pulling a small silver revolver from his waistband and pressing the barrel directly against Elena’s temple. "You walked into my warehouse all by yourself? You really have gone soft over a cleaning woman, Moretti."

Elena looked up at me, tears streaming down her bruised cheeks, shaking her head frantically. “Don't... Dominic, get out of here...”

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The burner phone in my hand felt heavy, like a slab of cold iron pulled from a sunken ship. Across the line, Marcus let out a breath that sounded like a low whistle escaping a pressure valve. Nineteen years of rust, nineteen years of school plays, quiet dinners, and ledger sheets—all of it dissolved in the space of a single heartbeat.

The burner phone in my hand felt heavy, like a slab of cold iron pulled...

The man in the back of the Bentley was not a stranger, though it took me three agonizing seconds to place the face behind the silver-trimmed beard. Arthur Vance. The reclusive billionaire shipping tycoon, corporate sniper, and my father’s oldest, most estranged rival.

The man in the back of the Bentley was not a stranger, though it took me...

The ink on the medical schedule wasn't standard printer black. It was darker, heavier, pressed down with the kind of deliberate malice that only a fountain pen could deliver. I stared at the signature at the bottom of the page, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

The ink on the medical schedule wasn't standard printer black. It was da...

"Shut her up," Colombo snarled to his enforcer.

Before the enforcer could raise his hand, the reinforced steel doors at the back of the warehouse exploded inward with a deafening crash.

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