As housemaid Nell Bennett assisted six-year-old Archie in tying a ribbon around a gift in the grand drawing room, Celine Rowe turned beside the gilded mirror, admiring her emerald satin evening gown. The little boy looked at Celine with pride and declared, “Auntie, Mommy bought your princess dress!”

“Nell!”

Dorian’s voice was uncharacteristically raw, stripped of all the cool, calculated authority that usually defined the mafia boss. He dropped his weapon onto the rug, his large, calloused hands gently framing her face as he tilted her chin toward the light.

A dark, angry bruise was already blooming across her left cheekbone where the intruder’s rifle butt had struck her, and a thin line of blood trickled from the corner of her lip. Yet, despite the pain, Nell’s dark eyes met his with fierce, unyielding defiance.

“I... I’m okay,” Nell gasped, fighting through the dizziness. “Check... check under the bed. Archie is... he’s hiding.”

Hearing his name, the small dark head of the little boy cautiously emerged from beneath the wooden frame of the sleigh bed. Archie’s eyes were wide with terror, tears streaming down his cheeks.

Dorian immediately released Nell, lunged forward, and hauled his son out from beneath the bed, crushing the boy tightly against his chest in a desperate, fiercely protective embrace.

“I’ve got you, buddy. You’re safe. Daddy’s got you,” Dorian murmured, burying his face in the boy’s curls before looking back up at Nell as if she were the most precious thing in his world.

Footsteps thundered up the grand staircase outside the nursery doors. A second later, Viktor, Dorian’s heavily armed head of security, burst into the room followed by three tactical operatives, their weapons drawn. They took in the bloody scene in a fraction of a second: the dead intruder on the rug, the shattered balcony glass, and their boss holding his injured son and the bleeding housemaid.

“Boss! Perimeter breach cleared,” Viktor barked, saluting sharply. “We neutralized two more at the East Gate. They were a hit squad from the Moretti syndicate. They thought the Christmas lockdown left us vulnerable.”

Dorian’s eyes narrowed into two lethal slits of absolute ice. The Moretti syndicate—their oldest, most ruthless rivals in the Chicago underworld.

“Moretti,” Dorian growled, the name tasting like venom on his tongue. He gently set Archie down behind him, shielding the boy from the grisly sight of the dead man on the floor. He stood up slowly, towering over his security team like an avenging god.

“Gather every capos, every lieutenant, and every enforcer we have,” Dorian commanded, his voice dropping an octave into a register that made even seasoned killers like Viktor swallow hard. “I want Moretti’s primary shipping ports hit before sunrise. Burn their warehouses to the ground. Leave no survivors and take no prisoners. Let them know what happens when they touch my family.”

“Consider it done, boss,” Viktor said, turning sharply to execute the orders.

As the security detail rushed back down the corridor, Dorian turned back to Nell. He knelt beside her once more, his expression softening instantly into a tender, agonizing vulnerability that no enemy had ever lived to see.

“Can you stand?” he asked softly, extending a large, steady hand.

Nell placed her trembling fingers in his palm. The contrast between his calloused grip—stained with the dark history of the mafia—and her own soft, bruised hand felt symbolic of a world they both inhabited now. With his help, she rose to her feet, swaying slightly before Dorian’s arm caught her waist, pulling her flush against his chest.

“You saved him,” Dorian whispered, his dark eyes searching hers with a depth of emotion that terrified her far more than the assassins had.