PART 2: THE MAFIA BOSS’S FIANCÉE ORDERED ME TO PUT HIS PREGNANT DAUGHTER IN A CAB BEFORE THEIR ENGAGEMENT DINNER—BUT WHEN I WALKED HER INTO THE DINING ROOM, LUCA MORETTI DROPPED HIS FORK AND WHISPERED, “YOU’RE HAVING A BABY?”

Dominic froze. Salvatore Bellini’s glass shattered on the concrete floor.

Before either man could react, four flashbang grenades dropped from the ceiling, detonating in a blinding, concussive fury.

*BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG!*

Screams erupted as the warehouse was flooded with smoke and blinding white light. Gunfire rattled instantly, but it wasn't chaotic—it was the surgical, rhythmic fire of Luca Moretti’s elite squad executing from the high ground.

Bellini’s guards dropped like marionettes with severed strings. Dominic scrambled behind a stack of wooden crates, firing wildly into the ceiling. "Kill him! Kill Julian!"

A Bellini soldier lunged toward Julian with a hunting knife, intending to slit his throat before dying.

A single gunshot cracked through the rafters. A high-caliber bullet punched clean through the attacker's forehead, dropping him instantly beside Julian's chair.

Luca Moretti dropped from a support cable onto the warehouse floor, landing lightly on his feet like a shadow given form. He walked forward through the drifting smoke, his long coat sweeping the floor, twin pistols barking every two seconds as he cleared the remaining guards with chilling efficiency.

Salvatore Bellini, scrambling on his hands and knees toward an exit door, looked up to find Luca standing over him.

"Luca!" Salvatore shrieked, raising his trembling hands. "Wait! It was Dominic's idea! He forced me! Vanessa was trying to help you!"

"Elena sent her regards," Luca said coldly.

Luca fired once into Salvatore’s leg, dropping the old man flat on his stomach with a wail of agony, leaving him alive for a far more painful reckoning.

Luca rushed to the center of the floor, pulling a tactical knife from his vest and slicing Julian’s zip-ties. Julian slumped forward into Luca's arms, barely conscious.

"Julian. Can you hear me?" Luca asked, checking the young man's pulse.

Julian opened his swollen eyes, blinking through the haze of blood. He recognized the face that ruled the opposing half of New York. "Moretti...? Where’s... where’s Emily?"

"She's outside. She’s safe. And she’s having your baby," Luca said firmly, pulling Julian’s arm over his shoulder and lifting him up. "Now stand up, son. We're going home."

Julian’s breath hitched, tears cutting clean paths through the grime on his face. "A baby...?"

Outside, inside the armored van, Emily watched the feed with soaring relief. "He’s alive! He got him! Marcus, open the doors!"

"Miss Emily, wait until the perimeter is declared 100% cold—"

"He's alive!" Emily burst out of the van, unable to contain the overwhelming flood of emotions, running down the wet pier toward the open warehouse bay doors.

Inside the warehouse, Luca began helping Julian toward the exit.

Behind them, hidden deep in the pitch-black recesses behind the industrial generator, a shadow shifted. Dominic Falcone had not fled through the side door. He was bleeding from a shoulder wound, his face contorted in demonic, homicidal spite.

Dominic raised a heavy tactical rifle, lining the crosshairs directly between Luca Moretti’s shoulder blades.

"If I'm burning," Dominic whispered through bloody teeth, "we all burn."

At that exact moment, Emily reached the threshold of the warehouse. "Dad! Julian!"

Luca turned his head at the sound of his daughter’s voice.

His eyes locked onto Dominic’s rifle barrel glinting in the dark behind them.

Before Luca could push Julian aside, before Emily could even scream, a terrifying, unfamiliar voice whispered from the darkness right beside Dominic’s ear—a voice that shouldn't have been there, a voice from someone presumed dead for ten years:

"Drop the gun, Dominic. The girl belongs to me."