The first thing I saw when I opened the mansion door after eight weeks undercover was not the pink birthday decorations I had ordered for my daughter.

The service hallway was cold, smelling of floor wax and old concrete.

Julian slammed against the cinderblock wall, gasping for breath as Damian’s fist remained balled tightly in his silk lapels.

“You—you’re out of your mind, Voss!” Julian choked out, his face turning pale. “If you kill me, the Council will level your entire empire within twenty-four hours!”

“Nobody is killing anyone, Julian,” I said calmly, stepping forward and pulling a small, high-powered data cable from my evening bag, plugging it directly into the wall-mounted security junction box. “We’re just having a very polite conversation about transparency.”

Damian loosened his grip slightly, letting Julian slide down until his feet touched the floor, though he didn't step back an inch.

“The Council thinks they own Chicago,” Damian said quietly. “They think they can buy politicians, fund mercenaries, and play God with people’s families.”

“I’m just a middleman!” Julian gasped, clutching his throat. “The real directives come from Zurich! The Chairman! I don't even know his real name!”

“Then you’re going to help us reach out to him,” I said, tapping the interface on my phone as the museum’s main security feeds routed directly to my screen. “You are going to pull out your personal satellite communicator, open the secure encryption app, and request an emergency status update with the Chairman.”

Julian stared at me in horror. “Are you insane? If I do that, they’ll trace the ping and assassinate me before sunrise!”

“They’re going to assassinate you anyway for failing to eliminate us,” Damian pointed out with chilling logic. “Your only choice is whether you want to go down alone or take the Chairman down with you.”

Julian’s hands trembled violently. He looked at Damian’s merciless expression, then at my cold, calculated federal agent’s stare. He realized there was no escape.

Slowly, shakily, Julian reached into his inner pocket, pulled out a heavily encrypted military-grade satellite phone, and laid it flat on the metal utility table.

“Enter your biometric passcode,” I ordered.

He pressed his thumb against the glass scanner.

May you like

My daughter dumped her wedding cake over my head and called me a burden—...

$I stepped down from a classified military transport and headed directly to the ICU, where my wife was lying with twenty-seven broken bones and a fractured skull. Outside her hospital room, her mother and six sisters stood smiling as though they were waiting for lunch to arrive. The detective assigned to her case leaned in and whispered, "Captain, this family practically controls the entire county." I stared through the glass at my wife's bruised and swollen face before answering, "Good. Because my authority extends far beyond this county."$