SHE CLIMBED 42 FLOORS COVERED IN BLOOD TO WARN THE MAFIA BOSS: “THE TRAITOR IS STANDING IN THIS ROOM!”

Dante walked slowly across the wrecked concourse, his shoes crunching on shattered crystal and spent brass casings. He stopped in front of his sister.

Sofia looked up at him, tears of terror and pain streaming through her smeared makeup. She held her shattered, bleeding wrist against her chest, her breathing coming in ragged, hysterical sobs.

“Dante…” she wept, her voice high and desperate. “Dante, please… we’re blood. We’re family. Father… father would never want you to kill your own sister! I was just trying to save the empire! Leo was weak… he was going to destroy everything Father built!”

Dante looked down at her with eyes that were utterly dead.

“Father died in a federal penitentiary because he trusted the wrong people, Sofia,” Dante said softly. “He told me the greatest weakness of the Moretti family wasn't the police, and it wasn't the rival syndicates. It was our own arrogance. Our belief that blood makes people honest.”

Dante knelt down in front of her. He gently reached out, his bloody fingers taking her chin, lifting her face so her eyes met his.

“Leo loved you,” Dante whispered. “He had a trust fund set up for your children that you didn't even know about. He took three bullets in the stomach in Cicero, and as he was dying in my arms, do you know what his last words were?”

Sofia swallowed, trembling violently, unable to speak.

“He told me to protect you,” Dante said. “He thought Kozlov was coming for you next.”

Sofia let out a broken, agonizing wail, burying her face in her lap as the weight of her betrayal crushed whatever was left of her soul.

Dante didn't raise his gun. He stood up, turning his back on her, and looked over at Sergei Kozlov.

“Kozlov,” Dante said coldly.

The Russian kingpin stiffened under Victor’s revolver. “Moretti.”

“Your pipeline through the Port of Chicago is terminated,” Dante commanded. “Your offshore assets under Apex Capital are forfeit. Take this broken snake with you back to Brighton Beach. If I ever see her face in the state of Illinois again, I won't just kill her. I will wipe your entire family off the map from Moscow to New York. Do you understand me?”

Kozlov bowed his head slightly, the cold realism of an aging gangster taking over. “She is dead to Chicago. You have my word on the icons, Moretti.”

Dante nodded once. “Get out.”

Victor lowered his weapon, allowing Kozlov to haul the weeping, broken Sofia to her feet and drag her toward the service stairs, leaving a trail of blood that marked the end of the Moretti family line.

Dante turned around and walked toward the freight elevator.

Elena was sitting on the floor, leaning against the metal wall, her eyes half-closed as the final reserves of her strength ran dry. The digital tablet on her lap had gone dark. The ledgers were settled. The traitors were dead or exiled. The empire had survived.

Dante knelt beside her, sliding his arms gently under her shoulders and knees, lifting her battered body with effortless care.

Elena groaned softly, resting her bruised head against his chest, feeling the steady, rhythmic beat of his heart through the tactical vest.

“Did the… numbers balance?” she whispered, her voice barely a breath against his neck.

Dante looked down at the young woman who had walked into hell with a document bag and brought down an entire conspiracy with a fountain pen and a snub-nosed revolver.

“The balance sheet is clean, Elena,” Dante said, carrying her through the ruined ballroom concourse toward the private medical suite waiting below. “From this moment on, you don't audit my books.”

Elena blinked up at him through her swollen eyes. “Then what do I do?”