For two hours, the grand nursery on the second floor of my Lake Forest estate had been transformed into a chamber of pure, unadulterated distress. Bottles, warm baths, rhythmic rocking, emergency diaper changes—nothing worked.

Midnight at the abandoned shipping warehouse on 22nd Street was cold, wet, and smelling heavily of industrial oil and stagnant river water.

Sal Marcone, head of the North Side Outfit, sat in a battered leather chair surrounded by twenty of his heaviest armed hitters, smoking a thick Cuban cigar as he waited for me to arrive. When the heavy corrugated steel doors of the warehouse rolled open, revealing my black Mercedes idling in the rain, Sal grinned with yellow teeth, expecting to execute a bloodless hostile takeover.

"Well, look who finally decided to show up," Sal laughed, standing up as I stepped out of the car into the pouring rain, flanked by Marco and forty of my most loyal Moretti enforcers. "Where’s your golden boy Dante, Adrien? Did he finally convince you to hand over the keys to the empire?"

I didn't answer immediately. I walked slowly into the center of the warehouse, my black leather gloves squeaking slightly as I adjusted my collar. Behind me, two of my men dragged a bruised, gagged Dante Vance forward, throwing him facedown into the dirty concrete at Sal Marcone’s feet.

Sal’s smile faltered instantly. He looked down at Dante, then back up at my cold, expressionless eyes.

"You... you figured it out," Sal muttered, dropping his cigar into a puddle of dirty water, his hand twitching toward his waist.

"Sal, you made a fundamental miscalculation," I said, my voice echoing off the high tin roof of the warehouse. "You thought because I became a father—because I spent my nights in a nursery instead of a boardroom—that I had grown weak."

I pulled a heavy manila folder from beneath my coat and tossed it onto a metal drum between us.

"That folder contains every shell corporation, every bribed dockworker, and every stash house your crew operates in Chicago. It’s all mine now. By dawn, your entire operation will be seized, liquidated, or buried."

"You think you can take my city?!" Sal shrieked, his face turning red with fury as he drew his pistol. "Kill him! Kill the whole damn lot of them!"

Before Sal’s finger could even squeeze the trigger of his gun, a deafening roar of automatic gunfire erupted from the shadows above the catwalks. My snipers had already taken positions across the high rafters, systematically disabling every single one of Marcone’s gunmen with surgical precision. Pistols clattered against the concrete; men dropped to their knees, disarmed and terrified, without a single Moretti soldier taking a scratch.

Sal Marcone stood completely alone in the center of the warehouse, his pistol shaking violently in his hand, surrounded by forty of my heavily armed men pointing lasers directly at his chest.

I walked slowly across the concrete, stopping two feet away from the trembling Outfit boss. I reached out, gently took the pistol from his paralyzed fingers, and tossed it aside.

"This city belongs to my children, Sal," I whispered into his ear. "And anyone who tries to touch them doesn't get a second warning."

I turned my back on him, raising my hand. "Take them all away. Hand Dante over to federal custody with full documentation of his federal crimes—let him rot in a maximum-security prison for the rest of his natural life. It's a kinder fate than he deserves."

As my men swarmed the warehouse, securing prisoners and packaging evidence, I stood in the rain outside, taking a deep, clean breath of the night air. The storm was finally clearing.