"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."

Marco stepped into the room, holding an encrypted satellite tablet. He gave Sofia a polite, respectful nod before looking at me.

"Enzo is awake, Luca," Marco reported softly. "The surgeon cleared him from recovery. He wants to see you."

I looked at Sofia, who gave me a faint, hesitant nod.

"Go," she whispered. "I'll stay with her."

I stepped out into the hallway, walking six doors down to Room 418.

Enzo Caruso sat up in his hospital bed, his broad chest wrapped in white medical tape, an oxygen tube in his nose. His face was pale, but his dark eyes were clear, sharp, and burning with the familiar, ruthless intelligence that had made him my underboss for fifteen years.

When I walked into the room, Enzo tried to sit up higher, letting out a low grunt of pain as his stitches pulled.

"Stay down, Enzo," I commanded gently, pulling a chair up to his bedside.

"I heard about the girl, Luca," Enzo rasped out, his voice rough as gravel. "Marco told me. AB negative."

I didn't answer. I simply looked at my oldest friend, the man who had taken two bullets aimed at my back near the Chicago River three hours ago.

"She's your blood, isn't she?" Enzo asked, his dark eyes searching my face.

"She's Sofia's daughter," I replied smoothly. "And mine."

Enzo closed his eyes for a second, letting out a long, shuddering breath. A faint, genuine smile touched his pale lips. "Seventeen years... God has a strange sense of humor, Luca. The doctors told you that you were sterile after the Detroit job in '08."

"The doctors were wrong," I said softly.

Enzo opened his eyes, the warmth vanishing from his face, replaced by a dark, lethal focus. "Victor Vance set the ambush on the river tonight, Luca. It wasn't about our shipping turf. He wanted me dead so you'd be alone when his men ran the girl's car off I-290."

"I know," I replied.

"Vance is sitting in his estate in Northbrook right now," Enzo continued, pulling a small silver flash drive from under his hospital pillow and handing it to me. "He thinks you're stuck in this hospital waiting for news on my surgery. He doesn't know Marco wiped his hit team in the elevator."

I took the flash drive, feeling the cold steel between my fingers. "What's on this, Enzo?"

"The complete financial registry for Vance Logistics," Enzo revealed cleanly. "I pulled it from his primary broker's server twenty minutes before his men opened fire on my car. Forty percent of his primary equity isn't held in Zurich, Luca. It's held in a domestic trust registered right here in Cook County under the name Elena Sofia Bennett."

My jaw set hard as iron.

"If Vance dies before sunrise," Enzo added, looking straight into my eyes, "the domestic trust activates automatically under Cook County probate law. The entire forty percent equity transfers directly to Elena the second she turns eighteen next month."