I woke to find the housekeeper I had nearly fired asleep beside my bed, her hand still resting on my mattress after spending the night keeping me alive. Everyone feared me as one of Chicago’s most untouchable mafia bosses, yet somehow this struggling single mother had done what no rival ever could—she made me smile for the first time in twenty-two years.

The second blow against the study doors rattled the antique stained-glass transoms above the frame, showering tiny flakes of dried putty and dust onto the Persian rug.

BAM.

The heavy brass deadbolt held, but the wooden frame around it cracked, splintering outward in a spiderweb of raw white fractures. Another hit like that and the doors would cave inward entirely.

"Move!" I snapped, my voice cutting through the panic.

I wheeled myself across the room toward the hidden service alcove, grabbing Claire by the sleeve of her sweater and pulling her behind the heavy mahogany shelving unit that concealed the emergency exit.

"Listen to me carefully," I instructed, my eyes locked onto hers with absolute intensity. "This service shaft drops straight down to the basement wine cellar. The cellar has an exterior drainage tunnel that exits near the seawall. Marcus keeps a spare armored SUV parked in the sub-level garage with the keys in the visor. You take the shaft down, get to the garage, and drive straight out through the emergency security gate using the manual override switch on the wall. Do you understand?"

Claire stared at me, her chest rising and falling rapidly. "And you? What about you, Adrian?"

Hearing my first name slip from her lips for the first time without a formal prefix felt like a physical jolt.

"I'm not leaving," I said, leveling the Sig Sauer P226 and thumbing off the safety. "A crippled man in a wheelchair doesn't run very fast down a drainage tunnel, Claire. But I know every inch of this house. I know where every shadow falls. And I know how to make men regret stepping foot inside my home."

"I'm not leaving you here to die," she whispered fiercely, her fingers gripping my forearm. "You have a son—no, wait, I have a son, and you just found out who killed your father twenty-two years ago! You don't get to check out of this room like a martyr!"

CRACK.

The outer doors finally gave way. The deadbolt housing ripped completely out of the doorframe with a deafening screech of rending wood and metal, crashing onto the hardwood floor inside the study.

Heavy tactical boots crunched across the threshold.

"Clear the perimeter!" a gruff, unfamiliar voice shouted from the outer gallery. "Sweep the study! Boss wants confirmation in thirty seconds!"

I didn't hesitate. With my free hand, I grabbed Claire by the collar of her sweater and shoved her bodily into the open dumbwaiter shaft, pulling the iron safety gate shut and dropping the heavy latch.

"Go, Claire!" I hissed through the iron bars. "If you make a sound, we both die!"

Before she could argue further, I spun my wheelchair around, gliding backward into the deep shadows behind my executive desk as two armed mercenaries in black tactical gear and Kevlar vests breached the study doorway with assault rifles raised.

The lead mercenary stepped into the room, his weapon sweeping left and right in a practiced tactical arc. His thermal goggles hummed softly in the dim light.

"Study's clear of movement," he muttered into his shoulder mic, taking two steps toward the center of the room. "Wait—desk area. Someone's here."

I didn't wait for him to complete his sweep.

From my seated position behind the heavy oak desk, I raised the Sig Sauer and fired twice through the wooden modesty panel. The suppressed rounds made a sharp, wet thwip-thwip sound. The lead mercenary’s Kevlar absorbed the first round, but the second caught him cleanly in the upper thigh, shattering his femur and dropping him to the floor with a choked shriek.

"Contact! Sector three!" the second mercenary roared, immediately dropping to one knee and unleashing a blistering volley of automatic fire that chewed through my expensive mahogany desk like it was made of paper.

Wood splinters, paper shrapnel, and lead slugs exploded around my head. I dropped flat against the seat of my wheelchair, using the heavy iron engine block of the desk's internal steel frame as ballistic cover while returning fire with cold, calculated precision.

My single round caught the second mercenary squarely in the shoulder plate, spinning him hard against the bookshelf and knocking his rifle clattering to the floor.

Before he could recover, I wheeled out from behind the desk, the barrel of my pistol leveled directly between his eyes.

"Tell Salvatore Rossi," I whispered, my voice dripping with lethal ice, "that his math was off by one zero."

The mercenary swallowed hard, his hands trembling as he stared down the barrel of my gun. But before I could pull the trigger, a sharp, metallic ping echoed from the dumbwaiter shaft behind the bookshelves.

Clang.

The mercenary’s eyes flicked toward the sound. "What was—?"

I didn't give him a chance to finish. The butt of my pistol connected with the side of his temple with bone-crunching force, sending him crumpling unconscious to the floor.

I sat there in the settling dust, panting slightly, my ears ringing from the gunfire. I tapped my comms earpiece, praying the signal would bounce through the reinforced walls.

"Claire," I whispered urgently into the channel. "Are you down?"

Silence for two agonizing seconds. Then, a shaky, breathless whisper crackled back through the earpiece.

I'm... I'm in the cellar, Adrian. The drainage tunnel is right here.

I let out a slow, shuddering breath I hadn't realized I was holding.

"Get in the SUV," I ordered. "Drive to the safehouse on Wabash Avenue. Lock the doors and don't open them for anyone except me."