Dante Moretti had killed three men before his twenty-fifth birthday. By forty-two he had stopped counting, which was not the same thing as having lost track.

While peace seemed to settle over the Rivera household, dark clouds were gathering on the southern horizon of the city.

In a hidden basement facility beneath an old fish processing plant in South Boston, a man named Viktor Petrov sat at a long steel table. Petrov was the chief lieutenant of the Solntsevskaya Bratva—the Russian syndicate that had been quietly expanding its control over the city's illegal docks over the past five years.

Jimmy Vance had been Petrov’s key to seizing Sal Falcone’s old territory. With Vance in federal custody and Dante Moretti stepping in to seize Falcone’s assets, Petrov’s multi-million-dollar land expansion had hit a brick wall.

"Moretti interfered directly," Petrov’s lieutenant, a heavily tattooed man named Yuri, reported in Russian. "He took out Vance’s men himself and turned Falcone’s ledger over to the federal asset recovery unit."

Petrov slammed his heavy fist onto the table, rattling the vodka glasses. "Moretti is a fool! He’s a mafia boss acting like a social worker for a dead cop’s family! Why does he care about this woman?"

"Our sources say he was at the bakery when the girl ordered her cake," Yuri replied. "He paid for her party. He’s protecting them personally."

A slow, cruel smile spread across Petrov’s pale face. "A man who has no weaknesses is impossible to break. But a man who suddenly acquires a heart? He is the easiest man in the world to kill."

Petrov leaned forward, his icy blue eyes fixed on the map of Boston laid out on the table. "Moretti thinks he controls these streets because his family has been here for three generations. He doesn't realize that old empires fall the moment their leaders grow soft. Find out where the widow and her daughter are moving. When Moretti goes to visit them, we will eliminate them all in one stroke."

"And if Moretti brings his security team?" Yuri asked.

"Then we bring a war," Petrov snarled. "Call Moscow. Tell them to send the strike team."

Meanwhile, Dante was sitting in his study, completely unaware of the Russian plot, holding a small piece of paper that had arrived in his morning mail. It was a drawing made with bright colored markers on heavy paper.

It showed a tall man in a dark suit holding hands with a little girl wearing two mismatched ribbons in her hair—one pink, one yellow. Above the tall man’s head, Lily had drawn a bright yellow crown, and at the bottom, in shaky eight-year-old handwriting, it read: Thank you for my princess cake, Mr. Dante.

Dante framed the drawing and placed it on his desk, right beside his ledger.

Marcus stepped into the room, his face solemn. "Boss, we’ve got a problem on the docks. Three of our supply trucks were intercepted in South Boston. The driver was beaten badly, and the cargo was burned."

Dante looked up from the drawing, his warm expression instantly turning back to hardened steel. "Who did it?"