For two exhausting hours, the Mafia boss’s triplets screamed while nannies, doctors, and expensive specialists tried everything. Nothing worked. Then four-year-old Sophie, the maid’s quiet daughter, wandered into the nursery carrying an old cloth doll. Within minutes, all three children became completely silent. Everyone assumed Sophie had somehow comforted them—until she tilted the doll in her lap. Click. The strange sound made her face change instantly. What she discovered next revealed why the triplets had really been crying.

The crystal glass slipped from Julian’s fingers.

SMASH.

Scotch and shattered glass splattered across the polished Italian parquet floor.

Julian leaped backward, his face draining of every single drop of color until he looked like carved ash. "Adrien...?! What... what is the meaning of this?!"

BOOM.

The heavy double reinforced oak doors of the boardroom were blown inward by a concussive hydraulic breach.

Smoke billowed into the room.

Marching through the doorway, assault rifles raised at low-ready with tactical floodlights cutting through the haze, were twelve elite Moretti Black Watch operators in full Kevlar armor.

The three capos at the table threw their hands into the air, while Attorney Sterling dove beneath the mahogany table in sheer terror.

I walked down the center aisle, dressed in a long charcoal cashmere coat, my footsteps echoing with the measured, terrifying cadence of an executioner.

Behind me walked Marcus Stone, carrying an evidence case containing the three recovered infrasonic discs and Vivian Vance's signed, video-recorded confession.

Julian scrambled toward his executive desk, trying to reach for the concealed drawer containing his sidearm.

Marcus moved with blinding speed. He vaulted over the desk, drove his tactical boot into Julian’s solar plexus, and slammed Julian’s face flat onto the glass conference table, pinning his neck with a carbon-fiber baton.