Two years after a sniper’s bullet stole the use of my legs, everyone inside my estate had learned to fear me—nurses quit, therapists fled, and even armed men lowered their eyes when I entered a room. Then a new maid named Emma walked into my private wing, looked straight at the man everyone called a monster, and said, “Do you want me to stop working? Because if I stop, I don’t get paid.”

Twenty minutes later, the gunfire had ceased.

The estate looked like a war zone. Smoke hung heavy in the main foyer, the grand marble staircase was pockmarked with bullet holes, and six bodies covered in black tarps lay on the driveway waiting for our private clean-up crew.

Marco’s attack had failed completely. Luke and our perimeter guards had funneled the remaining attackers into the lower courtyard, neutralizing eight of them and capturing two alive.

I sat in my study, the Glock resting on the desk beside a glass of straight bourbon.

Luke stood near the window, a bandage wrapped tightly around his left forearm where a bullet had grazed his skin. He looked exhausted, his face covered in soot and sweat.

Emma sat in the leather armchair across from my desk. She was wrapped in a heavy wool blanket, sipping a cup of hot tea that Mrs. Gable had brought her ten minutes ago. Her hands were still trembling slightly, but her eyes had regained that steady, stubborn clarity I knew so well.

"The two guys we captured talked," Luke said, his voice low and raspy. "It wasn't Marco who ordered the hit."

I raised my eyes, my gaze sharpening into two daggers of slate gray steel. "What?"

"Marco died three days ago in a private hospital in Toronto," Luke said, setting an encrypted tablet on my desk. "Kidney failure. He was out of the game weeks ago."

"Then who sent these men, Luke?" I demanded, leaning forward in my chair.

Luke looked at Emma, then back at me, his jaw tightening nervously.

"It was Perez," Luke said quietly. "The union boss in East Chicago. He found out you were looking into his offshore accounts. He knew if you released those audit reports, he’d spend the rest of his life in a federal penitentiary. He hired a private mercenary crew out of Detroit to wipe out this house."

I picked up my glass of bourbon, turning the amber liquid over in the crystal.

"Perez," I murmured, my voice dropping into a register that made Luke take a step back. "The man I gave three shipping lines to after his brother was killed in Gary. The man whose children’s tuition I paid for six years."

"He thought you were weak, Danny," Luke said softly. "He thought a man in a chair couldn't defend his own house."

I set the glass down with a heavy, final THUD.

"Briggs," I said, calling out to the head of my tactical team standing outside the door.

Briggs stepped into the room, his black tactical vest covered in dust, an automatic shotgun slung over his shoulder. "Sir?"

"Take four men," I ordered, my voice cold as winter frost over Lake Michigan. "Go to Perez’s estate in Lake Forest. Don't touch his family. Bring Perez to the old slaughterhouse on 47th Street. I’ll meet you there in an hour."

Briggs nodded once, turned, and walked out to execute the command.

"Danny, wait," Emma’s voice broke through the dark silence of the room.

I looked over at her. She had set her tea cup down on the side table, stepping out of her wool blanket. She walked over to my desk, stopping right beside my chair.

"Don't go," she whispered, her eyes searching my face with a deep, painful anxiety. "Let the police handle it. Let Luke handle it. You don't have to be this monster anymore."

I looked up at her—at her dark eyes, her pale skin, the faint smudge of soot on her cheek from the conservatory floor.

"If I don't go, Emma," I said softly, reaching out to touch the side of her hand gently, "men like Perez will keep coming. They’ll come for this house, they’ll come for Luke, and they’ll come for you. In my world, you don't survive by showing mercy to men who bring guns into your home."

Emma looked down at my hand resting against hers. She didn't pull away.

"Then take me with you," she said, her voice shaking but firm.

I blinked, stunned. "What?"

"I’m not staying in this house waiting for another alarm to go off," she said, her chin lifting with that unyielding, fierce pride. "If this is your world, and if I’m going to be part of it, don't hide me in a closet like a frightened child."

I stared at her for three long seconds. Part of me wanted to order Luke to lock her in the panic room for her own safety. But as I looked into her eyes, I saw something that made my chest swell with a strange, fierce pride.

She wasn't a maid anymore. She wasn't just a girl from Pilsen trying to pay her mother’s hospital bills.