28"""His mistress was lying in a private hospital room when Dominic suddenly saw his wife gliding past in a wheelchair—and then Clara whispered four words that changed everything.

The blast of the 12-gauge shotgun in the enclosed hospital hallway was deafening.

The heavy slug tore through the shoulder of the mercenary to Mateo's left, lifting the two-hundred-pound man off his feet and throwing him back into the freight elevator doors with a sickening crunch.

"Down!" Frankie roared, opening fire with his .45.

The hallway erupted into a hurricane of muzzle flashes, shattering glass, and splintered drywall. The suppressors on the mercenaries' MP5s coughed out frantic bursts of 9mm rounds, chewing through the acoustic ceiling tiles and chewing chunks out of the concrete pillars.

Dominic didn't flinch. He racked the slide of the SPAS-12 with a mechanical, rhythmic precision that came from muscle memory forged in Chicago's worst alleys.

*Boom.*

Another mercenary fell, clutching his chest as he slid down the wall.

*Boom.*

The third man took buckshot to the hip, collapsing with a shriek that was swallowed by the roar of Frankie's men advancing down the corridor.

Mateo dove behind a steel medical cart, rounds pinging off the stainless-steel trays, sending bandages, syringes, and scalpels raining down around him.

"Fall back to the stairs!" Mateo screamed, firing blind over the top of the cart with a Glock 19. "Fall back!"

"Nobody leaves this floor alive," Dominic commanded, his voice cutting through the gunfire like thunder.

He advanced down the hallway with terrifying, deliberate strides. He didn't take cover. He walked upright, racking the shotgun, firing, racking, firing. A 9mm bullet grazed his shoulder, tearing through the wool of his suit and biting a hot groove into his flesh. Dominic didn't even grunt. The physical pain was nothing compared to the white-hot furnace of rage burning behind his ribs.

Frankie’s men flanked the corridor, their weapons cutting down the remaining two mercenaries before they could reach the stairwell door.

Mateo scrambled backward on his hands and knees, scrambling toward the fire exit, his coat torn, his weapon empty and clicking dry.

He reached the heavy metal fire door, shoved it open with his shoulder, and tumbled down three concrete steps onto the intermediate landing.

He turned to scramble down the next flight—and found the barrel of Dominic’s shotgun pressed flush against the bridge of his nose.

Mateo froze.

His chest heaved. Blood dripped from a cut on his forehead where a piece of flying plaster had clipped him. He looked up the length of the black steel barrel into Dominic’s eyes.

There was no mercy there. No childhood nostalgia. No shared blood.

Only the cold, empty void of an open grave.

"Dom," Mateo panted, his hands trembling as he raised them toward the ceiling. "Dom... listen to me. We're cousins. We took the oath together in your father's basement. You can't kill family."

"You killed Tommy," Dominic said softly.

"Tommy was an employee!"

"Tommy was family," Dominic snarled. "Clara is family. You are a cancer."

"If you kill me, Moretti takes the south side!" Mateo spat, desperation turning his voice into a screech. "He's already got two hundred men mobilized at the rail yards! You need me to hold the line, Dominic! Without me, you lose Chicago!"

Dominic leaned down until his face was inches from Mateo’s ear.

"I don't give a fuck about Chicago," Dominic whispered.

The fire door at the top of the stairs banged open.

"Dominic!"

Marcus Vance’s voice echoed down the concrete stairwell, sounding frayed, exhausted, but loud.

Dominic didn't lower the weapon. "What, Marcus?"

"She's off the table," Vance called down, his breath coming in ragged gasps. "We repaired the hepatic laceration. We stopped the bleed. She’s in recovery."

Dominic's finger paused on the trigger.

For the first time in two hours, a single tremor ran through Dominic’s hand.

*She’s alive.*

Mateo saw the hesitation. He saw the fraction of a second where Dominic's attention fractured. He lunged forward, reaching for the backup blade strapped to his ankle.

Dominic didn't fire the shotgun.

Instead, he swung the heavy steel stock with all the force of his torso, catching Mateo across the jaw. The sound of breaking bone echoed off the concrete. Mateo went limp instantly, his head snapping back against the brick wall, his body crumpling down the stairs until he lay in an unconscious heap at the landing below.

Dominic stood over him, his chest heaving, blood dripping from his grazed shoulder onto the cold concrete.

"Frankie," Dominic said without turning around.

"Yeah, Boss?"

"Put him in zip ties. Take him to the basement of the lake house. The root cellar."

Frankie grinned, a cold, vicious baring of yellowed teeth. "With pleasure."

"And Frankie?"

"Yeah?"