STOP STARING AT MY FATHER! HE DOESN'T KNOW YOU, AND YOU CERTAINLY DON'T BELONG TO HIS FAMILY!” THE MAFIA BOSS'S FIANCÉE HUMILIATED THE YOUNG HOUSEMAID IN FRONT OF FORTY GUESTS—BUT WHEN LUCA MORETTI HEARD THE OLDER MAN WHISPER, “MAGGIE?” HE QUIETLY ASKED, “WHY DOES YOUR FATHER KNOW MY MAID'S CHILDHOOD NAME?”**

"Hold on!" Luca roared into the phone. "I'm sending medics! Do not hang up!"

But the line went dead.

Luca threw the phone against the wall. It shattered into a dozen pieces.

"Daniel! Mobilize every medical contact we have on payroll!" Luca barked, sprinting toward the door. "Get them to the mansion now!"

"Boss, it's a trap!" Daniel yelled, chasing after him. "If you go back there, her hitmen will be waiting!"

"They are my family!" Luca shouted, his usual cold composure entirely broken. "I am not letting them die on that floor!"

I grabbed the heavy wool coat and ran after them. "I'm coming too! I'm a nurse, Luca. I can help!"

Luca didn't argue. We took the private elevator down to the garage and piled into a heavily armored tactical vehicle. Daniel drove like a madman, tires screaming as we tore through the empty midnight streets of Chicago.

My heart hammered against my ribs. Forty men. The entire leadership of the Moretti syndicate, poisoned in one room. If they died, Luca’s empire died with them.

We smashed through the iron gates of the Moretti estate ten minutes later.

The front doors were wide open.

The mansion was eerily silent.

Luca drew his weapon and moved into the grand foyer like a shadow. Daniel covered his flank. I stayed close behind, my hands shaking.

We reached the dining room.

The sight was apocalyptic.

Tables were overturned. Crystal glasses were shattered across the Persian rugs. Dozens of men in expensive suits lay on the floor, groaning, clutching their stomachs, foaming at the mouth.

It wasn't a fast-acting poison. It was agonizingly slow.

"Medical kits!" I screamed, dropping to my knees beside the closest man—Luca's underboss.

I checked his pulse. It was erratic, racing dangerously fast. His skin was burning up.

"It's a neurotoxin," I yelled to Luca. "They need atropine, immediately!"

Daniel rushed in with three massive trauma bags. I tore them open, pulling out auto-injectors.

"Help me!" I ordered Luca and Daniel. "Inject them in the thigh! It will buy us twenty minutes until the ambulances get here!"

For the next ten minutes, the most feared mafia boss in Chicago was on his knees, jabbing medical needles into the legs of his men, desperately trying to keep them breathing. I moved from person to person, clearing airways, checking vitals, doing everything my mother had taught me.

We stabilized twenty men. Ten more were barely hanging on.

As I moved to the back of the room, I saw someone sitting in the corner chair, untouched by the poison.

It was Chloe. The event planner.

She was shaking, crying silently, clutching a detonator in her hand.

Luca saw her. He raised his gun, his eyes black with fury.

"Give me one reason I shouldn't blow your head off," Luca whispered, stepping over the bodies of his men.

"If you shoot me, my thumb slips," Chloe sobbed, holding up the detonator. "The basement is wired with C4. Vanessa’s mother made me do it. She has my little boy, Luca! She said if I didn't poison the wine and blow the house, she would kill him!"

The cruelty was staggering. Vanessa’s mother wasn't just a rival boss. She was a monster who used children as leverage.

"Where is she?" Luca demanded.

"She's outside," Chloe wept. "She's waiting in the armored command truck on the ridge. She wanted to watch the house burn."

Sirens wailed in the distance. The private ambulances were arriving.

Luca lowered his gun. He looked at Chloe, seeing the desperate mother beneath the traitor.

"Drop the detonator," Luca said softly. "I will get your son back. You have my word as Don."

Chloe hesitated, her hands trembling violently.

Slowly, agonizingly, she placed the detonator on the floor.

Daniel kicked it away.

"Paramedics are here!" Daniel yelled as a dozen medics swarmed the room, loading the poisoned men onto stretchers.

Luca turned to me. His shirt was covered in sweat and blood, but he looked like a king who had just secured his kingdom.

"You saved my family tonight, Margaret," Luca said.

He picked up a heavy assault rifle from the floor, racking the bolt.

"Now," Luca said, his eyes turning toward the dark hills outside the window. "I am going to end hers."

He walked out the front doors.

But as I turned to follow, Chloe grabbed my arm.

"Wait," she whispered, handing me a small, velvet box. "She left this for you. Vanessa’s mother. She said... she said if you survived the poison, I was supposed to give you this."

I frowned, taking the box.

I opened it.

Inside was a family heirloom.

An antique gold ring with the Bellini crest.

But engraved on the inside of the band was a name that made my blood freeze entirely.