Chapter 1 - The Ash beneath the Cardboard StarsThe voice echoing from the tiny speaker inside four-year-old Sophie’s pink plastic space helmet sliced through the quiet bedroom like a sharp silver blade, dropping the room's temperature to absolute zero.
"ALEXANDER... IF YOU'RE HEARING THIS, THEY'VE FOUND OUR DAUGHTER."
My heart slammed against my ribs with terrifying, hydraulic force.
I stood six-foot-four in the doorway of my daughter's bedroom, my broad chest heaving beneath my bespoke charcoal suit jacket, my ink-covered arms frozen at my sides. At twenty-seven, I was Alexander Moretti—the undisputed Don of the Chicago Syndicate. Powerful men in corporate boardrooms and street corners lowered their voices when I passed.
Yet right now, my dark gray eyes were fixed on twenty-five-year-old Emily Carter, who stood shivering in a silver costume beside my four-year-old daughter.
"Daddy...?" Sophie whimpered, her blue eyes wide as she clutched Emily’s silver-clad sleeve. "Is Mommy calling us from the moon?"
"Emily," I rasped out, my deep baritone dropping into a low, subsonic rumble that made the hanging cardboard planets tremble. "Take Sophie into the private panic room behind my study. Now."
Emily didn't hesitate or panic. The gentle, quiet housemaid who had spent three months dusting my library turned into a wall of pure protective maternal instinct. She picked Sophie up into her arms, cradling her head against her shoulder.
"Yes, Mr. Moretti," Emily whispered softly, stepping toward the hidden mahogany panel in the hallway.
BOOM!
The heavy double glass windows of the second-floor observatory at the end of the grand hall shattered violently into ten thousand sparkling shards!
Three men dressed in dark tactical gear, carrying suppressed submachine guns, swung through the shattered window frames on tactical ropes!
Before their boots hit the marble floor, my right hand reached beneath my tailored jacket, drawing a black customized sidearm with frightening, automatic speed.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
Three rapid shots echoed through the corridor. The three intruders collapsed onto the runner rug before they could raise their barrels.
Stepping through the shattered window frame behind them, holding a smoking sidearm, flanked by eight tactical operators from Vance Security, was Lieutenant Colonel Marcus Vance.
"Boss," Marcus reported flatly, his gravelly voice calm. "The perimeter's secure. But these men aren't street mercenaries. Look at the tattoos on their necks."
I walked down the hallway, stepping over the glass, crouching beside the lead intruder.
On his neck was a tattoo of a black crescent wrapped in barbed wire—the official crest of Arthur Sterling, my late wife Isabella's corrupt billionaire uncle, who had claimed to cremate her remains two years ago following a chemical plant explosion.
I reached out, picking up the small folded note that had fallen from Sophie's costume:
Alexander, if you ever find this necklace, don't trust the man who told you I died.
My hands shook. The grief that had paralyzed my soul for two years vanished, replaced by an apocalyptic, diamond-hard, terrifying rage.
I turned back toward the hallway. Emily stood in the doorway of the study, keeping Sophie's eyes shielded against her shoulder.
"Marcus," I commanded ice-cold.
May you like
"Sir?"
"Deploy the primary tactical convoy to the Sterling Logistics Tower. Tonight... I tear Arthur Sterling's world to the ground."
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