The Mafia Boss Entered the Hospital With His New Lover—Then Saw His Abandoned Woman With Their Child

The rain hammered against the reinforced glass of the Suburban like a thousand tiny hammers.

"Boss, you can't go in there," Crane rasped from the front seat, a pressure bandage taped tightly across his torn shoulder. "It’s a kill box. He has Vantage wired. He wants you inside when he detonates."

I looked down at Nina.

She had managed to button her coat around the baby, holding him tight. Her face was deathly pale, exhaustion pulling at every line of her features, but her eyes were wide with terror.

"Dorian... don't go," she whispered, her fingers knotting into the fabric of my sleeve. "Let him have the club. Let him have the money. We can disappear. We have the Swiss accounts."

"He doesn't want the club, Nina," I said, reaching up to gently brush a damp strand of hair from her cheek. "He wants to eradicate the Moretti bloodline. If I run, he spends the rest of his life and every dollar he has hunting you and Leo down."

She paused. "Leo?"

A faint, tired smile touched my lips. "My grandfather’s name was Leo. He was a dockworker who believed that a man who doesn't protect his blood doesn't deserve to breathe."

Nina pressed her face against my hand, weeping softly. "Come back to us, Dorian. Please."

"Marcus," I said, looking at the driver in the rearview mirror.

"Sir."

"Take them to the safehouse in Lake Forest. The one beneath the old carriage house. Activate the perimeter countermeasures. If anyone approaches who isn't me or Crane, you flood the access tunnel."

"Understood, Mr. Falk."

I checked my weapon. Two full magazines. A combat blade tucked into my right boot.

I leaned down and kissed my son's forehead. His skin was warm, smelling of baby powder and hospital soap. "I'll see you before sunrise, Leo."

I stepped out of the Suburban into the freezing Chicago downpour at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Ontario.

The Suburban sped away, its taillights bleeding red across the wet asphalt.

Vantage stood half a block away—a sleek, multi-story glass-and-brick fortress that had been the crown jewel of my operations for a decade. The neon sign buzzed in the fog: a cool, electric blue that cut through the gloom.

The front doors were unlocked.

I pushed them open.

The ground floor bar—where Nina had once poured whiskey, where she had laughed at my bad habits, where our lives had collided—was dead silent. The smell of expensive liquor mingled with the sharp, acidic tang of industrial C4 explosive.

Small, rectangular blocks of plastic explosive were strapped to the support pillars, their digital timers blinking in synchronization with a receiver on the upper floor.

I took the private stairs to the penthouse office.

The heavy mahogany double doors were open.

Felix Cavallo sat behind my desk, illuminated only by the rain-streaked ambient light of the city skyline behind him. His blackthorn cane leaned against the mahogany. His coat was off, revealing his tailored three-piece suit. In his right hand, he held a tumbler of my twenty-five-year-old Macallan.

In his left hand, resting on the blotter, was the military detonator.

"You're late, Dorian," Felix said, taking a slow sip.

"Traffic was bad," I replied, stepping into the center of the office, hands hanging loose at my sides. "Where are my staff, Felix?"

"Tied up in the walk-in freezer in the basement," Felix said casually. "They have about ten minutes of oxygen left. But that depends entirely on whether we reach an understanding."

"There is no understanding," I said. "Petra tried to murder my son. She’s currently in custody with two shattered bones."

Felix didn't even flinch. His expression remained completely flat. "Petra is a fool. She acts on emotion. That’s why she was never meant to lead."

He set his glass down with a heavy *thud*.

"You, on the other hand... you were my finest creation, Dorian. I took you from the gutter in Canaryville. I gave you power. I gave you legitimacy. And you repaid me by bedding a Moretti whore and fathering a child that threatens everything I spent forty years building."

"She wasn't a whore. And that child is the legitimate heir to the city you stole."

Felix chuckled—a dry, rattling sound. "You think this town cares about legitimacy? Chicago belongs to whoever has the stomach to burn the bodies, Dorian. Marco Moretti was weak. He thought contracts and city charters could protect him from men who were willing to use dynamite."

He picked up the detonator, his thumb resting lightly on the red arming toggle.

"Give me the location of the safehouse," Felix said, his voice dropping into absolute ice. "Tell me where she took the boy. You sign the Pilsen trusts over to my offshore accounts, and I let you walk out of this building alive. You can rebuild in Miami. Start over."

"You really don't get it, do you, Felix?" I asked, taking one slow, deliberate step forward.

Felix’s thumb tightened on the toggle. "Don't test me, boy! I'll level this block right now!"

"Press it," I said.

Felix blinked, a flicker of hesitation crossing his ancient, predatory eyes. "What?"

"Press the button, Felix." I took another step. "Do you really think Crane let your crew wire this building without tapping the receiver frequency? Those charges on the pillars aren't connected to your transmitter anymore. They've been looped into my private server since midnight."

Felix’s eyes flared with sudden, frantic realization. He mashed his thumb down onto the red button.

Nothing happened.

A tiny green light on my desk flickered once and died.

"You're old, Felix," I whispered, drawing the SIG from my coat in a motion so fast it defied the human eye. "And in this town... the old get put down."

Felix lunged for the snub-nosed revolver concealed beneath his blotter, but he was twenty years too slow.

*Bang.*

The bullet struck his shoulder, spinning him out of the leather chair. He hit the floor, groaning, his blackthorn cane clattering away across the Persian rug.

I walked around the desk, standing over the man who had ruled Chicago with an iron fist for three decades. Blood pooled beneath his expensive suit, staining the fibers dark.

I pointed the weapon between his eyes.

"This is for Marco Moretti," I said. "And for my son."

Felix coughed, blood bubbling from his lips, but instead of begging, a hideous, broken grin spread across his dying face.

"You think... you think you won, Dorian?" he wheezed, his gray eyes flashing with final, vindictive spite.

"I know I did."

"You know... nothing," Felix whispered, his breath rattling in his throat. "Look into the hospital logs from twenty-five years ago... look into who signed Nina’s birth certificate... Dorian... she isn't Marco Moretti’s daughter."

He coughed violently, his fingers clawing at the rug.