omg1 A Mafia Boss looked down on his maid after catching her sneaking leftover food out of his mansion. But when he secretly followed her through Chicago’s freezing streets, he uncovered someone his own empire had declared dead twelve years earlier—and in that moment, every lie he had ever believed began to unravel.

Glass rained down like a crystalline storm as automatic gunfire shredded the walls of the office. Tomas and I pressed ourselves flat against the concrete floor behind the heavy desk, the deafening roar of submachine guns bouncing off the metal roof of the warehouse.

"Boss!" Tomas yelled over the din, reloading his weapon. "They’ve got us pinned! There are at least ten guys on the main floor!"

I clutched the manila folder tightly against my vest, sliding the encrypted hard drives into my inner pocket. "They aren't trying to capture us, Tomas! Lorenzo knows I have the files. He's clearing the board!"

"I thought you said he didn't suspect anything!"

"He's a snake!" I shouted back, pulling my custom SIG Sauer from its holster. "He was playing me just like I was playing him!"

The gunfire suddenly ceased, replaced by the heavy, echoing sound of footsteps approaching the iron staircase leading to the mezzanine.

"Gabriel!" Lorenzo’s voice called out from below, calm and conversational, as if we were discussing business over lunch. "Did you really think you could slip into my house without my network flagging it? I’ve owned the security detail in this harbor for ten years! Every camera, every motion sensor—it all reports to me!"

I signaled Tomas to cover the left doorway while I edged toward the shattered window frame, looking down at the warehouse floor.

Lorenzo stood below, surrounded by eight heavily armed mercenaries in unmarked tactical gear. Beside him stood Marcus and Viktor—two of my top Capos. The very men who had sworn loyalty to me on my father’s signet ring.

"You sold us out to the Genoveses, Lorenzo!" I shouted down, my voice echoing through the massive space. "I have the Skyway documents right here! Marcus, Viktor—look at him! He set up my father, and he’ll set you up the second you outlive your usefulness!"

Marcus shifted uncomfortably, looking toward Lorenzo, but Viktor merely laughed—a dark, wet sound.

"Save your breath, Gabriel," Viktor called up. "Lorenzo pays three times what you pay. You wanted to run a clean business, play by corporate rules. We’re mobsters. We like the mud."

"You see, Gabriel?" Lorenzo said, stepping forward, a heavy-caliber pistol resting in his hand. "Your father was a visionary, but he was weak. He thought he could wash the blood off his hands with dirty money. And you... you were just an obedient little prince who did all my heavy lifting. You eliminated my rivals, consolidated my territory, and built me a multi-billion-dollar machine. But every king has an expiration date."

"Come and get me then, you old bastard!" I yelled.

Lorenzo smiled coldly. "Burn the office. Leave nothing but ash."

Two mercenaries stepped forward, raising grenade launchers loaded with incendiary rounds.

"MOVE!" I roared, grabbing Tomas by his tactical vest and lunging toward the secondary emergency exit at the back of the office.

BOOM!

A wall of fire burst through the front of the room, the shockwave throwing us through the rear door onto the metal catwalk outside. Flames devoured the office instantly, black smoke billowing into the night sky.

We raced down the exterior steel stairs, bullets snapping through the cold air around us, striking the metal steps with sharp CLANGS. We hit the ground running, darting between massive rows of shipping containers as the warehouse behind us erupted into an inferno.

"Target sighted on the east dock!" a guard shouted ahead of us.

Two mercenaries stepped out from around a container, weapons raised. Before they could acquire their targets, I fired four quick shots, dropping them both into the snow. We vaulted over their bodies and sprinted toward the perimeter fence.

"Tomas, call the reserve squad!" I ordered, reloading my magazine on the run.

"I can't, Boss!" Tomas gasped, holding up his shattered smartphone. "A bullet took out my comms device!"

We reached our armored SUV just as three more enemy vehicles roared around the corner of the alley, their high beams blinding us. Lorenzo was closing the net.

"Get in!" I yelled, diving into the driver's seat while Tomas covered the rear.

I slammed the vehicle into reverse, stomping on the accelerator. The heavy armored truck smashed through a chain-link fence, tires spinning on the ice, as automatic fire hammered against the bulletproof glass, spider-webbing the windshield. I spun the wheel hard, executing a J-turn onto the main road, leaving the burning warehouse and Lorenzo’s hit squad behind in a cloud of burning rubber and snow.

We had escaped the trap, but the war was now out in the open.

I pulled over three miles away in an abandoned industrial park, my hands trembling slightly on the steering wheel as the adrenaline began to fade. I pulled out my secure satellite phone and dialed the Michigan safe house.

"Gabriel?" Beatrice answered on the first ring, her voice filled with panic. "I saw the news reports on the police scanner—there’s a massive fire at the docks!"

"We’re alive, Beatrice," I breathed, looking at the blood dripping from a shrapnel wound on my arm. "Put my father on the line."

A moment later, my father's voice came through. "Gabriel. What happened?"

"Lorenzo knows," I said flatly. "He turned Marcus and Viktor against me. The entire syndicate is under his control now. By morning, he’ll have a hit out on my head, claiming I went rogue or committed treason."

"Then you must go underground," my father urged. "Leave the country. I have funds in Zurich—"

"No," I cut him off, staring at my reflection in the rear mirror. My eyes were burning with a terrifying, absolute clarity. "No more running. No more hiding in basements. Lorenzo took twelve years of our lives, Dad. He made me slaughter innocent people in the name of a fake vendetta."

"What are you going to do?"

"The Commission is holding its annual summit in Chicago in two days," I said, a cold, lethal smile spreading across my face. "Every major boss from New York, Detroit, and Philadelphia will be in that room. Lorenzo plans to announce his official takeover there."