The Mafia Boss's Fiancée Poured Wine On A Poor Maid—The Next Few Seconds Changed Everything

The drive back to the North Side was the longest forty minutes of Marin’s life.

The armored Maybach tore through the empty midnight streets of Chicago at breakneck speed, sirens screaming, running red lights with impunity as Casper’s security detail escorted them like a presidential motorcade.

Marin sat in the back, her fingers clawing into the leather upholstery, her breath coming in shallow, terrified gasps.

Posie. Her heart. The monitors. The oxygen.

If her sister had been dragged out of her recovery bed while still recovering from major surgery, the shock alone could kill her.

"Who has her?" Marin’s voice cracked, tears finally spilling over her lashes as she looked at Casper with raw, desperate anguish. "Who would take a sick fourteen-year-old girl?"

"There's only one person desperate enough and stupid enough to cross me like this," Casper said, his voice cold as a glacier as he dialed a secure satellite number on his encrypted phone. "Arthur Vance. Victor’s older brother, who runs the syndicate's international shipping rings out of the port of Milwaukee."

"Milwaukee," Marin whispered, horror washing over her. "That's two hours away."

"Not by helicopter," Casper replied coldly.

When they arrived back at the Hail Mansion, the private helipad behind the east wing was already floodlit, the twin turbine blades of a heavy-duty Sikorsky chopper spinning in a deafening, roaring tempest of wind and noise.

Cyrus was waiting by the tarmac, holding a tactical vest and a secure comms headset.

"We traced the burner phone they used to call the hospital front desk," Cyrus shouted over the roar of the rotors. "They're holding her at an abandoned drydock facility on the Milwaukee waterfront. Arthur Vance knows his brother's empire is gone. He wants a trade: your sister... for the entire North Side shipping portfolio signed over to his name."

Casper grabbed the tactical vest from Cyrus and strapped it over his dark shirt in three swift, practiced movements. He loaded two extra magazines into his holster, his face set in lines of lethal, terrifying resolve.

Marin stood by the edge of the tarmac, the rotor wash blowing her dark hair across her face. As Casper turned to board the helicopter, she stepped directly into his path.

"I'm coming with you," she said.

Casper stopped, his dark eyes narrowing. "No. It's a war zone, Marin. I'm going to tear that drydock apart brick by brick. It's no place for you."

"That's my sister in there!" Marin shouted, her voice cutting through the roar of the engines with fierce, unbreakable fury. "You think I'm going to sit in a gilded mansion while some lunatic holds a dying girl hostage for your shipping lanes? I found the poison, I mapped the ambush, and I know how Arthur Vance operates. You take me with you, or I swear to God I will follow you on a commercial flight and find her myself!"

Casper stared at her. For three endless seconds, the air between them crackled with tension—the clash of two unyielding wills forged in fire and survival.

Then a dark, fierce smile broke across Casper’s lips.