The most feared mafia boss in Chicago came home three hours early and found his housekeeper secretly feeding four identical little boys at the dining table no one had touched since his wife died. He was about to demand an explanation when one boy pointed at him and asked, “Elena, is that the man from the picture?” The spoon fell from her hand.

The heavy mahogany doors of my study offered no shield against the metallic scent of burnt gunpowder leaking through the ventilation. Outside, the rain poured over Lake Michigan, but inside my estate, the world had turned into a kill zone.

"Down! Stay behind me!" I commanded, my voice cutting through the panic.

I shoved Elena and the four small boys into the alcove behind my desk. The hidden door to the mansion’s subterranean bunker was concealed within the carved oak paneling—a secret known only to me, Sofia, and my late father.

"Alejandro, please..." Elena gasped, clutching two of the boys against her chest. "They don't know who they are. They don't know what you are!"

"They carry my blood," I said, my hand firm on the custom Sig Sauer P226 in my grip. "That makes them targets. And that makes me their shield."

The four boys—Mateo, Leo, Nico, and Gio—stared up at me with identical wide, slate-gray eyes. My eyes. Not a single one of them cried. That terrifying composure, born of my own DNA, sent a sharp pang through my heart.

Automatic gunfire shattered the stained-glass windows of the grand foyer below. Screams from my outer security detail rang through the halls. My men were blooded veterans of the Chicago underworld, but whoever had just breached my gates came with heavy weaponry and military precision.

"Dominic!" I barked into my encrypted comms unit. "Report!"

Static hissed in my ear before my lieutenant’s breathless voice came through. "Boss! It’s a hit squad! Three heavy SUVs breached the north perimeter gates! They aren't standard street soldiers—they're tactical operators! We're being overwhelmed on the lawn!"

"Fall back to the interior defense points!" I ordered. "And lock down the armory!"

I turned back to Elena. I keyed the biometric scanner hidden behind a leather-bound volume of Dante’s Inferno. The oak paneling hummed and slid open, revealing a dimly lit steel stairwell descending into the concrete bedrock beneath the estate.

"Get them inside," I told her. "Now."

"Are you coming?" Mateo—the boy who had held his mother's photograph—asked, his voice barely a whisper above the sound of breaking glass below.

"I will be right behind you, little bird," I said, using the same endearment Elena had used at the dinner table.

As Elena guided the four boys into the darkness of the shelter, the double doors of my study blew inward with a violent blast. Wooden splinters showered the room.

Three men in unmarked black tactical gear scrambled through the smoke, weapons raised.

I didn't ask questions. In Chicago, when men enter your home uninvited, you give them lead, not words.

I squeezed the trigger four times. The first two operators dropped instantly, hit dead center in the chest and neck. The third lunged behind my marble desk, returning fire with an MP5 submachine gun. Rounds chewed through the plaster above my head.

I rolled behind a heavy leather armchair, drew my backup pistol, and flanked his position. Two rounds ended his advance.

Silence descended on the room, thick with gunsmoke and the smell of cordite.

I checked the bodies. No insignia. No tattoos. Military-grade gear with the serial numbers ground off. But on the wrist of the squad leader, beneath a tactical glove, I spotted a small, dark tattoo: a coiled viper wrapped around a broken anchor.

The Valenti Family.

Don Marco Valenti. The patriarch of the syndicate that held the southern territories of Illinois. The man who had been my bitter rival for a decade—and the man whose family line my late wife, Sofia, had hailed from.

My mind raced. Sofia had been a Valenti before she became a Moretti. When she died five years ago in a sudden car accident near the coast, I thought our two families' fragile truce had died with her.

Now, four boys with my face were sitting in my bunker, and Valenti’s executioners were at my door.

"Dominic," I snapped into the comms, stepping over the fallen gunman. "The house is compromised. Bring the armored fleet to the south exit underground. We are evacuating to the Highland Safehouse immediately."

"Understood, Boss. What about the children?"