He set up hidden cameras to watch his disgraced nurse—only to catch his perfect senator's daughter fiancée poisoning his paralyzed son on live feed.

The name hung in the quiet bedroom like an unexploded bomb.

Uncle Dante.

Victor didn't move. He didn't speak. For five agonizing seconds, the only sound in the room was the gentle hum of the moon-shaped nightlight and the rain beating furiously against the windowpane.

"Leo," Victor whispered, his hand tightening around the mattress rail until the wood groaned under his pressure. "Are you sure?"

Leo nodded weakly, his small frame shaking from the exertion of speaking. "He... gave her... the bottles," the boy rasped, each word costing him immense physical energy. "In the... hall. I saw... in the mirror."

Norah looked at Victor, her green eyes wide with horror. She knew who Dante Calderon was. Everyone in Chicago knew. He was Victor’s left hand, the muscle behind the Romano empire, the man who guarded the estate’s security systems.

"If Dante is involved," Norah whispered, leaning toward Victor, "then he controls the guards outside this room right now. He controls the perimeter feeds. He controls everything."

Victor stood up slowly. The grief that had momentarily softened his face vanished, replaced by an ancient, merciless rage.

"He took my money. He ate at my table. He stood beside my wife's grave," Victor said, his voice dropping into a register so dark it made the hair on Norah's arms stand up. "And he poisoned my child."

Suddenly, the encrypted walkie-talkie on Victor’s belt buzzed with static.

"Boss," Dante’s voice came through the speaker, crisp and calm. "I checked the server room like you asked. Everything’s clean. Kitchen logs are intact. Do you want me to bring Meline up to your office now?"

Victor looked down at his radio, then at Norah, then at his son. Dante wasn't in the server room. Dante was testing him. He was checking to see if Victor had already confronted Meline or if he was still in the dark.

"No," Victor spoke into the radio, keeping his tone perfectly even, a masterclass in deception honed through twenty years of mob warfare. "Leave her in her room for now. I need you to assemble the perimeter team in the main courtyard. I think someone hit our outer sensors near the north gate. I want a full sweep."

"Copy that, boss," Dante replied. "Moving the boys to the north gate now."

Victor unclipped the radio and turned it off completely.

"He’s moving his loyal guards away from the house," Victor told Norah, turning to her with absolute focus. "Which means he knows something is wrong. We have less than twenty minutes before he realizes I’m not coming to the office."

"What are you going to do?" Norah asked, standing up and instinctively shielding Leo.

"I am going to burn his world to ashes," Victor said. "But first, I have to get you and my son out of this fortress."

"There's a service elevator behind the kitchen," Norah offered quickly, her mind racing. "It leads down to the old wine cellar and out through the storm drain near the eastern ravine. I noticed it when I was studying the emergency evacuation routes on my first day."

Victor stared at her for a moment, surprised by her tactical awareness. "You studied the evacuation routes?"

"I don't trust rich men with guards," she said plainly. "It’s saved my life before."

"Good," Victor said. He pulled a heavy keycard from his inner pocket and handed it to her, along with a small, sleek 9mm pistol from his ankle holster. "Take this. The keycard opens the storm drain door. The gun is in case anyone tries to stop you."