Coming home three days early should have given me the advantage over the traitor inside my organization. Instead, I walked into my own fortified Chicago mansion, heard my seventeen-year-old daughter screaming behind a locked kitchen door, and found the quiet maid I barely noticed digging metal out of her bleeding leg while my youngest child—silent for three years—whispered, “Claire is fixing it.”

I froze as the cold metal of a gun barrel pressed directly against the back of my neck. The metallic click echoed loudly in the quiet, blood-stained kitchen. I did not need to turn around to know who was holding the weapon. Only three men in the entire world had the security clearance to bypass my exterior guards without triggering an alarm. "Drop the weapon, boss," a familiar, shaking voice demanded from behind me. It was Marcus. He had been my right-hand man and most trusted enforcer for over fifteen years. He was the man who taught Ava how to ride a bicycle. Now he was standing in my kitchen with a loaded gun pointed at my skull. I slowly lowered my pistol, placing it gently onto the marble countertop. "You were supposed to die in Miami," Marcus whispered, his breathing heavy and erratic. "You missed," I replied coldly, keeping my eyes locked on Claire. The quiet maid did not even flinch at the sight of the traitor. She calmly finished stitching Ava's leg, pulling the surgical thread tight. My teenage daughter whimpered, but Claire placed a soothing, bloody hand on her cheek. "Almost done, sweetie," Claire whispered gently. "Step away from the girls, Claire," Marcus ordered, his voice cracking with absolute panic. "The house is surrounded, and the cleanup crew is two minutes away." I calculated my odds of disarming him before he could pull the trigger. The angle was bad, and the risk to my daughters was entirely too high. Suddenly, Claire turned her head and looked directly at Marcus. "Is your safety off?" she asked in a dangerously calm tone. Marcus blinked in confusion. In a fraction of a second, Claire's hand shot out from beneath the bloody towels. She threw a heavy, silver meat cleaver with terrifying speed and lethal precision. The blade spun through the air and buried itself deep into Marcus's shoulder. He screamed in agony, dropping the gun as he stumbled backward against the refrigerator. I instantly dove for my pistol on the counter, rolling across the floor and aiming it directly at his chest. Marcus collapsed onto the tile, clutching his bleeding shoulder as tears streamed down his face. "Who paid you to do this?" I roared, pressing the barrel of my gun against his forehead. Marcus looked up at me with terrified, bloodshot eyes. "You don't understand," he choked out, coughing up a spatter of dark blood. "He has my family." Before I could ask for a name, the massive kitchen windows completely shattered.