The most feared man in Chicago took my screaming baby from my arms, looked at her like he had seen a ghost, and whispered, "How old is she?"

My breath froze in my lungs.

*Sister?*

I looked at the steel door, then at Stellan. His face was unreadable, but a muscle in his jaw twitched with violent tension.

"You told me Arthur's direct line died with him," I whispered. "Who is on the other side of that door?"

Stellan didn't answer immediately. He raised his hand, signaling Vance and Kora to take flanking positions on either side of the reinforced blast hatch.

"Arthur had two daughters," Stellan said, his voice dropping to a gravelly murmur. "You were the younger one. Evelyn. The elder daughter was named Natalia. When Arthur's yacht exploded twenty-five years ago, Natalia was seven. Julian’s father didn't hide her in the foster system like they hid you. They kept her. They raised her inside the syndicate like a pet wolf."

The intercom speaker crackled again.

"Come now, Stellan," the woman's voice purred. "You can’t keep her locked in a bomb shelter forever. Let me see my little sister. I brought her a welcome gift."

A wet, choking gasp came through the intercom audio, followed by the dull sound of a body slumping against the outer steel door.

"Dr. Ramos is here with me," Natalia continued casually. "The lovely pediatrician who was poisoning my niece’s formula. I took the liberty of removing three of his fingernails in the elevator. He was remarkably eager to tell me where Julian hid the master cryptographic key to the Torrence Trust."

"She's playing both sides," Vance muttered from the doorway, his rifle leveled at the hinges. "She wants Julian dead just as much as we do."

"She doesn't want Julian dead to save Selene," Stellan said coldly. "She wants Julian dead so she doesn't have to share the empire. If Selene dies, Natalia is the sole surviving heir."

"Then why knock?" I demanded, picking Fern up from the exam table and securing her into the chest carrier against my ribs. "If she wants me dead, why didn't she blow the door?"

"Because the vault door is linked to a dead-man's thermite charge," Stellan said. "If anyone breaches it with explosives from the outside, the servers incinerate the Torrence genealogical records. Without those records, the Cook County probate court freezes the entire four-billion-dollar trust in federal escrow for fifty years. Nobody gets the money. She needs you to open it voluntarily."

"Then let's open it," I said.

Stellan grabbed my arm, his grip fierce. "Selene, no. Natalia was trained by the Russian syndicate in St. Petersburg. She doesn't have a conscience. She’s executed entire families over a single disputed shipping container."

"She wants the trust," I said, looking him dead in the eye. "And I have the baby who controls it. You said yourself that you can't fight this war from the shadows anymore. We need leverage."

I pulled my arm free, stepped past Vance, and walked toward the vault control panel.

"Selene!" Stellan barked.

I hit the hydraulic release switch.

With a deep, pneumatic hiss that sounded like a dying beast, the three-ton steel vault door unsealed. The locking bolts retracted with heavy, echoing clunks. The door slowly swung open six inches.

Through the gap, a woman stepped into the red emergency light.

She was stunning. Tall, with sharp, aristocratic cheekbones, jet-black hair cut into a severe bob, and cold, crystalline green eyes that were an exact mirror of my own. She wore a tailored black wool coat over a silk shirt, and her leather gloves were speckled with fresh crimson droplets.

Behind her in the dimly lit corridor, two armed mercenaries held a battered, bleeding man in a ruined doctor's coat.

Natalia looked at me. Her gaze moved slowly from my eyes down to Fern sleeping peacefully against my chest, and finally to the scar on my collarbone.

A slow, chilling smile spread across her red lips.

"Well, well," Natalia murmured, stepping fully into the vault without a trace of fear, despite Vance’s rifle pointed directly at the bridge of her nose. "The little maid from the Gold Coast. You really do look like Mother. Except for the cheap polyester coat, of course."

"What do you want, Natalia?" I asked, keeping my voice level, though my heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

"What every good sister wants," Natalia said smoothly, peeling off her bloodstained gloves and tossing them onto the metal console. "I want our family back together. And by that, I mean I want Julian Torrence’s head on a silver platter before the sun comes up."

Stellan stepped out from behind the corner, his Glock raised, the barrel aimed squarely at her forehead.

"You're working for Julian," Stellan said, his finger tightening on the trigger. "You coordinated the perimeter breach at my estate tonight."

"Julian is a vulgar, small-minded thug who thinks power comes from bribing city aldermen and poisoning babies," Natalia spat, her green eyes flashing with genuine disgust. "He promised me thirty percent of the trust if I delivered Evelyn to him. Thirty percent! To Arthur Torrence's firstborn daughter!"

She turned back to me, her expression shifting into an uncanny imitation of warmth.

"Julian has called an emergency assembly of the syndicate council for three o'clock this morning at the Saint Jude Cathedral in Old Town. He has fabricated a proxy guardianship document. He’s going to announce that you died in a fire at Stellan's estate, that Fern is an orphan, and that he is her court-appointed conservator."

"The council won't accept that without a death certificate," Stellan countered.

"The coroner is already in his pocket, Stellan," Natalia said sharply. "The death certificates for Selene and Fern were signed twenty minutes ago. Julian has fifty heavily armed mercenaries surrounding the cathedral. If we don't crash that assembly and present Evelyn alive to the twelve syndicate elders before the vote is ratified, the empire is his. And the moment he takes control, his first order will be to launch a city-wide purge to hunt down every person in this room."

Silence descended on the vault.

"How do we know this isn't an ambush?" Vance asked from the wall. "You could be leading us straight into a kill box."

Natalia reached into her coat pocket.

Vance raised his rifle, but Stellan held up a hand, stopping him.

Natalia pulled out a heavy, ornate gold key engraved with the double-headed eagle of the Torrence family crest. She tossed it onto the table. It slid across the stainless steel, stopping inches from my hand.

"That opens the private gallery above the cathedral's high altar," Natalia said. "There is a secure elevator behind the organ pipes that leads directly to the street. I will get you inside before Julian's perimeter guards even know you've arrived."

She leaned forward, her green eyes boring into mine.

"You want to save your daughter, Evelyn? You walk into that cathedral, you sit in our father's chair, and you order Stellan Cross to execute every traitor in the room."

I looked down at the gold key, then at Fern, whose tiny fingers were curled around the strap of my carrier.

I looked at Stellan. His face was set in stone, but behind the coldness was a flicker of warning—and something deeper. A fierce, absolute readiness to bleed for us.

I picked up the key.

"We go to Saint Jude," I said.

Natalia smiled, a predator showing its teeth. "Good. Because Julian just gave the order to burn your old apartment building to the ground, just to make sure no evidence remained."

She checked her diamond-encrusted watch.