"I brought divorce papers to my missing wife’s hospital room—unaware the nurse’s warning about my best friend was about to change everything."

I stepped off the elevator, the master key card clutched in my right hand, my left hand resting casually inside my dark wool coat against the custom grip of my Sig Sauer P226.

Standing near the door of Room 412 were two men wearing plain dark jackets over tactical shirts.

I recognized them instantly. They weren't hospital guards. They were Marco and Frankie—two low-level enforcers who had been on Mateo’s payroll for five years. Men who had eaten at my Sunday dinner table in the West Loop. Men who had raised their glasses to my marriage four years ago.

When they saw me step out of the shadows of the corridor, Marco’s hand twitched toward his waistband.

"Boss...!" Marco stammered out, his face draining of every drop of color in a fraction of a second. "What... what are you doing up here? Mateo said you were downstairs signing papers with the lawyers."

I didn't answer him with words.

I closed the distance between us in three long, silent strides.

Before Marco could pull his weapon, my broad hand wrapped around his throat with vice-like, iron force, driving his heavy frame back flat against the concrete wall. My left hand drew the P226 from my coat, driving the cold steel barrel beneath Frankie’s jaw before he could even unbutton his jacket.

"Don't move, Frankie," I whispered, my voice smooth, quiet, and devoid of any human mercy. "Give me your weapons."

Frankie trembled so violently his knees knocked together. He slowly reached into his holster with two fingers, dropping his sidearm flat onto the carpet, while Marco clawed frantically at my fingers around his windpipe, his face turning an ugly, mottled purple.

"Boss... please..." Frankie whimpered pathetically. "Mateo told us she was a rat... he said she was feeding shipping manifests to the federal prosecutors... we didn't know she was pregnant!"

"You stood outside my wife's room for three months," I rumbled, my voice dropping into a dark, terrifying register. "And you didn't tell your Don."

I didn't shoot them. I didn't want gunshots echoing down the corridor to frighten my wife.

I drove the butt of my sidearm sharply against Frankie’s temple, knocking him senseless onto the carpet. I squeezed Marco’s windpipe until his eyes rolled back, letting his unconscious body slip silently to the floor beside his partner.

I dragged both of their heavy frames into an empty linen closet across the hall, locked the door, and wiped the sweat from my brow.

Then I turned to face the door of Room 412.

My hand hovered over the brass handle for three agonizing seconds.

For four months, I had believed that Sophia had walked out on me. I had believed she had looked at my life, my world, my dark heritage, and decided I was a monster who wasn't worth loving. I had slept in an empty bed, surrounded by her clothes, hating her for leaving me broken.

And all the while, she had been lying in a sterile hospital room, terrified for her life, carrying my child, protecting me from a bomb under my car.

I slid the key card into the reader.

BEEP.