The Mafia Boss saw the bruise beneath his maid’s concealer—and the question he asked next made her realize he already knew she was hiding something.

Forty minutes later, a convoy of five black, heavily armored SUVs tore through the pouring rain toward the south side of Chicago.

Damian Cross sat in the passenger seat of the lead vehicle, an assault rifle resting across his knees, his jaw set like iron. Beside him, Marcus was driving, his eyes wild with adrenaline and disbelief.

"Let me get this straight," Marcus yelled over the engine's roar. "The girl is the DA's daughter, she has a ledger that can destroy the Morettis forever, and she has a kid hiding in a tenement building surrounded by Sophia's hitmen?"

"Yes," Damian said flatly, checking the magazine of his rifle.

"And instead of putting a bullet in her head for lying to us, we're going to war against the entire Moretti family to rescue her kid?!" Marcus shouted, slamming his hand on the steering wheel. "Are you insane, Damian?! This is suicide! Sophia has at least twenty men securing that block!"

Damian turned his silver eyes toward his brother, a look of such terrifying, demonic resolve in his gaze that Marcus instantly shut his mouth.

"That child is under my protection," Damian stated, his voice ringing with absolute, divine authority. "And Sophia Moretti is about to learn what happens when you touch something that belongs to me."

The convoy turned onto the dark, waterlogged street in the industrial district.

At the far end of the block, parked outside a dilapidated four-story brick apartment building, were four dark sedans. Eight armed men in heavy coats were standing on the sidewalk, holding submachine guns, guarding the entrance while Sophia’s strike team breached the building upstairs.

"No warnings," Damian ordered into his radio headset. "Flatten them."

Marcus slammed his foot on the accelerator.

The three-ton armored SUV plowed directly into the first parked sedan at sixty miles an hour.

BOOM!

Metal twisted, glass exploded, and the parked car was shoved thirty feet down the street, crushing two Moretti enforcers against a concrete wall.

Before the remaining hitmen could open fire, the doors of Damian’s convoy flew open, and fifteen elite Cross syndicate soldiers poured out into the rain, opening fire with heavy automatic weapons.

The street exploded into a war zone.

Muzzle flashes illuminated the pouring rain in rhythmic bursts of bright orange. Bullets tore through brickwork, shattered windows, and ripped through metal.

Damian didn't take cover. He walked down the center of the street like an unstoppable force of nature, raising his rifle and firing methodically. Every trigger pull resulted in a dead Moretti soldier.

He kicked open the front entrance door of the tenement building, storming inside as blood pooled over the dirty tiles.

"Clear the ground floor!" Damian ordered his men. "Marcus, take the upper levels! I'm going to the basement!"

Damian sprinted down the narrow, creaking basement stairs, his combat boots splashing through ankle-deep water.

At the end of the dark corridor, he heard a terrifying sound.

CRASH!

A wood door was being kicked in.

"Open up, you old hag!" a rough male voice yelled from inside a small room. "Where's the girl?!"

Damian rounded the corner just as a large Moretti hitman grabbed an elderly woman by the hair, throwing her against the wall. In the corner of the room, huddled beneath a thin blanket inside a wooden closet, a tiny, dark-haired girl was screaming in terror, clutching a plastic toy to her chest.

"Hey," Damian said smoothly.

The hitman spun around, raising his gun—but Damian was already there.

Damian grabbed the man's wrist, twisting it violently until the bone snapped through the skin with a sickening CRUNCH. The man shrieked in agony, but Damian didn't stop. He slammed the man's head into the concrete wall three times until he crumpled to the floor, lifeless.

Silence returned to the small room, broken only by the sound of heavy rain outside and the small, desperate gasps of the child in the closet.

Damian lowered his rifle, letting it hang from its strap. He wiped a smudge of blood from his cheek with the back of his hand, trying to soften his terrifying expression as much as possible.

He slowly walked over to the wooden closet and dropped down onto one knee.

The little girl pulled the blanket up to her nose, her wide, tear-filled brown eyes—the exact same eyes as Elena's—staring at him with profound fear. She was small, pale, and her chest was heaving as she struggled to breathe.

Damian reached into his tactical vest pocket. He pulled out the three boxes of pediatric asthma inhalers he had recovered from Elena’s coat at the hotel.

He unwrapped one, holding it out softly on his open palm.

"Are you Lily?" Damian asked, his voice softer than Marcus had ever heard it in thirty years.

The little girl nodded timidly, her tiny hand reaching out from under the blanket to take the inhaler. "Who are you?" she whispered, her voice raspy. "Are you a bad man?"