THE MAFIA BOSS HEARD HIS OWN VOICE FRAME A DEAD GIRL AT HIS ENGAGEMENT DINNER—THEN HE REALIZED HIS SMILING FIANCÉE HAD BROKEN MY FINGERS TO KEEP THE AUDIO SECRETS BURIED

Luca grabbed the emergency receiver before the second ring could finish.

"Moretti," he answered, his voice instantly dropping into battlefield command mode.

The sound of heavy automatic gunfire and frantic shouting erupted through the telephone receiver, loud enough for Marco and me to hear across the desk.

"Boss! It’s convoy unit two!" a guard screamed through static and roaring engine noise.

"We’re on Interstate 90, five miles outside the Gary airfield!"

"Three black armored suburbans ran the escort car off the embankment!"

"They’re using heavy military ordnance—fifty-caliber armor-piercing rounds!"

"Did they hit the transport van?" Luca demanded, his knuckles turning white against the plastic phone.

"They breached the rear doors, sir! They took Vanessa!"

"What about Enzo?"

"Enzo took two rounds to the chest during the crossfire; he’s dead on the shoulder!"

"Vanessa’s extraction team had high-grade thermal jamming; they pulled her into a gray Dodge Charger heading back toward the Chicago industrial canal!"

"Lock down the city exits immediately!" Luca ordered, slamming the receiver onto the base.

Marco had his radio drawn before Luca even finished speaking.

"All perimeter units, code black! Seal every entrance to the south shipping corridors!"

I stood up, pushing through the sharp jolt of discomfort in my hand as the realization settled over the room like a suffocating blanket.

"Vanessa planned this from the very beginning," I said, my voice trembling with cold fury.

"She knew Don Salvatore would enforce banishment rather than immediate execution to keep the peace among the five families."

"She used her father as disposable bait."

Luca walked to the wall safe behind his desk, punching in the eight-digit security code with rapid strikes.

"Vanessa didn't just want to save herself, Grace."

"She knows you have the original voice recording on your phone and that Julianna Rossi is alive in my private medical wing."

"If Julianna and you reach the federal prosecutor’s office tomorrow morning to sign the sworn depositions, Cavallaro's entire Midwestern cartel pipeline will be exposed."

"She’s coming to eliminate the evidence," Marco said, loading a tactical shotgun near the armory cabinet.

"No, she won't attack the mansion directly," I intervened, walking over to the digital map of the Chicago riverfront displayed on the command console.

Luca stopped loading his sidearm and looked at me, listening with complete attention.

"Why do you say that, Grace?"

"Vanessa is arrogant, but she isn't suicidal," I explained, pointing to the port terminal maps.

"She knows this estate is an armed garrison right now with fifty guards on the perimeter."

"Where would she go instead?"

"The municipal power grid substation at terminal nine," I answered, pulling up the maintenance logs Enzo had kept hidden in the offshore files.

"Three months ago, Enzo leased a private fiber-optic server farm inside the old municipal switching station right next to the river."

"That server farm controls the central dispatch cameras and the drawbridges connecting the southern canal to Lake Michigan."

"If she seizes that switching station, she can shut down all city traffic cameras, blackout our communication repeaters, and slip onto a high-speed cargo freighter before sunrise."

"And she will take Julianna’s mother as collateral," Luca realized, his jaw clenching with sudden horror.

"Julianna’s mother is at St. Jude’s Rehabilitation Center on 22nd Street," Marco blurted out.

Luca didn't hesitate for a single second.

"Marco, take ten men and secure the hospital immediately."

"Grace, you stay inside the fortified panic room in the basement."

"I am not hiding in a basement while that woman tries to slaughter everyone who stood up to her," I countered, looking straight into his eyes without flinching.

"You still have broken bones, Grace!" Luca said, his voice rising with raw, protective intensity.

"And I have the cryptographic access keys to Enzo’s server farm memorized from those files," I fired back.

"Without me, your tactical team will spend forty minutes cutting through magnetic security doors while Vanessa escapes on the river."

Luca stared at me, the conflict waging across his sharp features between the instinct to shield me and the respect for my iron will.