A wealthy mafia boss looked down on his young maid after catching her sneaking leftover food out of his mansion, certain that poverty had turned her into a thief. But when I followed her through Chicago’s frozen streets, I discovered she was feeding her disabled mother—the mysterious woman who had saved my life fifteen years earlier and whom I had never stopped searching for.

Mateo Marcone’s eyes went wide with realization. “It was a trap! Open fire!”

The foyer exploded into violence. Muzzle flashes lit up the darkness like strobe lights, deafening gunshots echoing off the marble walls and shattering crystal chandeliers.

My men fired with lethal, disciplined precision from the high ground. Marcone’s hitmen were cut down before they could even find cover behind the leather sofas.

I didn’t take cover. I walked down the grand marble staircase step by step, firing with methodical accuracy. Every bullet I spent was an answer to fifteen years of lies, fifteen years of my savior’s pain, and every tear Clara had shed in that freezing slum.

Lorenzo scrambled beneath the staircase, screaming in terror as his men fell around him. He pulled his sidearm, pointing it wildly at me as I reached the bottom step.

“Dominic! Wait! It was Marcone! He forced me!” Lorenzo sobbed, backing up against the wall, his gun trembling.

I walked up to him through the drifting gun smoke, completely unbothered by the chaos around us. I reached out, grabbed his wrist, and twisted it until the bone snapped with a sickening crack. Lorenzo dropped his gun, screaming in agony as he fell to his knees.

I stood over him, looking down with absolute coldness.

“Your father helped sabotage my car fifteen years ago,” I said quietly. “He left a seventeen-year-old boy to burn. And because of your family’s greed, a hero lost her legs and spent fifteen years starving in the cold.”

“Please... Dominic... mercy!” Lorenzo begged, clutching his broken wrist, tears streaming down his face.