Nora scrubbed floors with a child growing inside her, almost entirely unnoticed by the people around her. Elsewhere in the same house sat a silent old man in a wheelchair, mocked, neglected, and treated as though he no longer mattered. What the staff did not know was that the forgotten man still held the invisible strings of the city's deadliest Mafia empire.

Back in the present, the air in the conservatory felt thick enough to chew.

Dominic Cray’s hand hovered over his holster for a fraction of a second too long before his slate-gray eyes shifted from the weapon down to the tiny human standing in front of him.

Marcus didn't flinch. Instead, my brave, foolish son stepped *closer*, reaching out a small hand as if he intended to physically inspect the "bug" he had diagnosed.

"Marcus, no!" I sobbed, finally finding my voice. I scrambled across the marble floor on my hands and knees, throwing myself between my son and the most dangerous man on the East Coast. I grabbed Marcus around the waist, dragging him backward until my spine hit the base of a massive potted palm. I pressed my body over his, shielding him with my own flesh. "I am so sorry, Mr. Cray! Please! He's only three! He doesn't know what he's saying! I'll leave right now—I'll never come back—please don't hurt him—"

My words tumbled over each other in a frantic, tear-soaked panic. I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the crack of a suppressed pistol, or the arrival of Victor Strand with armed guards to drag us away to whatever dungeon mafiosos kept in their basements.

The expected violence never came.

Instead, the heavy silence stretched, broken only by the faint, distant strains of Mozart drifting through the walls from the ballroom.

Slowly, cautiously, I opened my eyes.

Dominic Cray was no longer reaching for his gun. His arm had dropped back down to the armrest of the leather chair. He was staring down at me—or rather, staring down past my terrified face at the small boy peeking out from behind my shoulder.

Dominic’s expression was unreadable, carved from dark granite. But there was something else in those slate-gray eyes beneath the harsh overhead lighting—a flicker of intense, razor-sharp curiosity.

Slowly, deliberately, Dominic lifted his right hand. He didn't point it at us. Instead, his long, ink-stained fingers reached up, touching the side of his right ear.

His jaw clenched hard. A faint, jagged white scar—one I hadn't noticed before in the dim light—ran from just behind his earlobe down into the collar of his shirt, disappearing beneath the black ink of his chest tattoos. It was an ugly, puckered scar, clearly the result of severe burn tissue or flying shrapnel from that explosion three years ago.

Dominic looked back down at Marcus. Then, with a slow, deliberate motion of his left hand, he picked up the sleek digital tablet resting on his lap. His thumb flew across the glass screen with practiced speed.

A synthetic, metallic voice—canned text-to-speech software—spoke from the tablet’s tiny speakers, breaking the heavy quiet.

*"What did you call it?"*

The electronic voice was startlingly flat, devoid of human inflection, echoing off the glass panels of the conservatory roof.

I swallowed hard, my throat raw. "H-He... he said a bug, sir. He thinks... I don't know, he has an active imagination, Mr. Cray. He watches too many cartoons about ants—"

"Shut up," Dominic typed with one hand, his eyes never leaving Marcus.

Another beat of silence. The synthetic voice played again.

*"Come here, boy."*

My blood turned to ice water. "No," I gasped, tightening my grip around Marcus’s small frame until he let out a tiny squeak of protest. "Please, Mr. Cray. Take it out on me. Fire me. Throw me out into the snow. Just leave my son alone."

Dominic didn't look angry. That was what terrified me the most. He looked... focused. Like a scientist staring through a microscope at an entirely unknown specimen.

He didn't yell for security. He didn't reach for a weapon. Instead, he reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a small, sleek black stylus, and held it out toward Marcus.

Marcus blinked, looked up at me for permission, and then—with the reckless fearlessness only toddlers possess—took one step forward from behind my arm.