"I stepped in to donate my rare AB-negative blood to a dying 17-year-old orphan, but when I saw the crescent scar beneath her eye, I realized she was the daughter I was told I could never have."

THWIP! THWIP!

The suppressed cracks of Marco's weapon echoed softly through the corridor, muffled like heavy books falling onto carpet.

The two contractors standing behind Miller collapsed instantly onto the linoleum, their weapons clattering uselessly against the baseboards. Miller gasped, stumbling back into the elevator frame as a bullet shattered his shoulder blade, dark blood spraying across the brushed-metal doors.

I didn't draw my gun to shoot him. I closed the distance in two strides, grabbing Miller by his leather collar, dragging his heavy frame out of the elevator cab, and slamming him face-first into the thick safety glass of the corridor window.

The glass cracked in a spiderweb pattern beneath the impact.

"Who hired you?" I growled into his ear, my thumb driving deep into the soft hollow behind his jawbone until his teeth ground together in agonizing friction.

"You... you don't know..." Miller choked out, his eyes rolling back in pain as blood trickled from his nose onto the glass. "You think... you think you're the only king in Chicago, Mancini? Victor Vance... Vance paid the contract three days ago..."

Victor Vance.

The head of the Vance Logistics Group—the man who controlled the rail yards and cold-storage facilities along the canal. A man I had shared a table with at the Italian-American Commerce Gala two weeks ago. A man who had smiled, raised a glass of scotch to my health, and asked if I ever regretted never having a family to inherit my empire.

"Why does Vance want Sofia's daughter?" I demanded, my voice dropping into a register so dark Miller's breathing turned into a pathetic whimpering rasp.

"She... she isn't just Sofia's daughter..." Miller gasped, his fingers clawing uselessly at my wool coat sleeves. "She's... she's the primary beneficiary of the Vance-Bennett estate in Zurich... forty percent of Vance's holding company is registered under her mother's birth name... if the girl turns eighteen next month... Vance loses everything..."

My brain locked onto the numbers with terrifying, absolute precision.

Seventeen years ago, Sofia Bennett hadn't left me because she was afraid of my world. She had left because she was running from Victor Vance—her step-uncle—who had orchestrated her father's "accidental" drowning to seize the family's logistics trusts.

And when she discovered she was carrying my child, she realized that keeping the baby alive meant disappearing completely, hiding under a false identity in a quiet suburb, waiting for the day her daughter turned eighteen to reclaim her life.

Three weeks ago, Vance's forensic accountants had flagged the trust transfer filings. He had hunted them down, run Elena's car off I-290, and sent Miller's crew to finish the job in the trauma ward.

"Luca," Marco spoke sharply from behind me, his eyes fixed on the elevator display screen. "The secondary elevator is coming up from the basement. Four more signatures on the thermal sensor."

I didn't hesitate. I drove my knee upward into Miller's ribs, knocking the remaining breath from his lungs, then tossed his limp body to Marco.

"Put him in the utility closet," I commanded cleanly. "Lock the door. Tell our men downstairs to block the basement ramp. Nobody leaves Lakeview Medical alive if they carry a Vance badge."

I turned back toward the operating room.

Through the narrow glass panel, I saw Nurse Hannah Cole standing near the instrument tray, holding an empty blood bag. Beside her, the primary surgeon was stripping off his bloody latex gloves, stepping back from the operating table with a exhausted, triumphant nod.

The green line on the heart monitor above Elena's head was pulsing steady, smooth, and unbroken: 78 BPM.

My blood was inside her. My life was keeping her heart beating.