A frail, starving little girl with the exact same face as a feared mafia boss’s daughter was abandoned in a Chicago park, and the woman who left her there thought the truth would stay buried forever. But when the mafia boss’s daughter called the child her sister, one look into those familiar green eyes exposed a secret his late wife had taken to her grave.

The private hangar at Vienna International Airport was quiet, save for the rhythmic howling of the freezing Austrian wind sweeping across the tarmac.

Vance and I stepped out of the Gulfstream into the biting chill, our long wool coats snapping against our legs. Waiting by a black Mercedes sedan parked near the hangar doors was a man in a tailored gray trench coat—an old intelligence contact of mine from my early days expanding the syndicate into Central Europe.

"Marcus," Nikolai greeted, shaking my hand with a firm, calloused grip. "You look like a man who woke up with a headache that won't go away."

"Skip the pleasantries, Nikolai," I said, sliding into the backseat of the Mercedes. Vance took the passenger seat, keeping his hand resting on the tactical rifle secured between his knees. "The IP address from our Zurich breach led straight to a safehouse in the Old Town. Who’s running the operation?"

Nikolai slid into the driver's seat, shifting into gear as we pulled out onto the highway toward the city center. "You're not going to like it, Marcus. It's not a ghost from the intelligence service. It's someone closer to home."

"Speak," I commanded.

"The woman you knew as Grace—she wasn't just a low-level operative," Nikolai explained, keeping his eyes on the snowy road ahead. "She was the daughter of General Viktor Vanechkin, one of the top architects of the Soviet bloc's black-budget division. When the regime fell, Vanechkin hid a fortune in bearer bonds across Western banks, using Grace as the designated trustee. When she ran away to Chicago to marry you, she took the cryptographic keys with her."

"And Karen?" I asked.

"Karen wasn't her nanny. She was Vanechkin’s most loyal lieutenant, sent to retrieve the keys and eliminate anyone who got in the way—including Grace, if necessary."

My blood ran cold. The car crash seven years ago wasn't an accident. It was an assassination attempt orchestrated by Vanechkin’s loyalists who believed Grace had betrayed the syndicate.

"And who is pulling the strings now?" I asked, my voice dangerously low.

"General Vanechkin himself," Nikolai said, glancing in the rearview mirror. "He’s still alive. And he knows you have one of his granddaughters—Emma."

The car came to a smooth halt in front of an unassuming, historic stone townhouse tucked away in a quiet cobblestone alley of Vienna’s historic district.

"He's inside?" I asked, reaching into my coat and pulling out my customized Sig Sauer pistol, racking the slide with a sharp, metallic clack.

"Waiting for you," Nikolai said.

I didn't hesitate. I kicked the heavy oak front door of the townhouse wide open, stepping into the dim, wood-paneled foyer with Vance right on my heels.

At the far end of the hallway, sitting in a high-backed leather armchair beside a crackling fireplace, was an elderly man with piercing gray eyes, sharp aristocratic features, and a heavy woolen blanket draped over his knees.

General Viktor Vanechkin.

"Marcus Blackwell," the old man said, his voice raspy and dry like old parchment, speaking in flawless English with a heavy Russian accent. "I wondered when the feared Chicago boss would finally come to pay his respects."

I walked slowly down the hallway, the barrel of my gun pointed straight at his chest. "You sent Karen to terrorize my daughter. You tried to steal what belongs to me."

Vanechkin smiled, a cold, humorless twitch of his lips. "I took back what belongs to the state, Blackwell. Grace was a traitor. And her children... well, bloodlines are complicated things, aren't they? One twin is safe in your gilded cage. But the other... the other was meant to be leverage."

"You lost that leverage the moment you crossed my threshold," I said, cocking the hammer of my pistol.

Before Vanechkin could blink, the shadows beside the fireplace shifted. Two armed operatives stepped out, raising their weapons—but Vance was faster. Two suppressed shots rang out in rapid succession, and both men dropped to the hardwood floor like felled timber.

Vance stepped forward, pressing the barrel of his rifle against Vanechkin’s temple.

The old man didn't flinch. He simply looked up at me with those cold, calculating gray eyes. "You can kill me, Marcus. But the network is global. Another team is already in Chicago. Right now, your estate is being breached."

My heart stopped.

Chicago.

I pulled out my encrypted satellite phone, dialing the secure line to the Blackwell estate master control room with trembling fingers.

The line rang once. Twice. Three times.