Five years after I called my wife broken and signed away our marriage because doctors said she could never give me a child, I walked into a sealed Manhattan restaurant and found a little girl coloring at table nine. Then she looked up with the same black-and-gold eyes that had marked every Valenti heir for generations—and the woman I had destroyed pulled her close and said, “She is mine.”

The following night, a heavy thunderstorm rolled off the Adriatic Sea, battering Venice with sheets of freezing rain and deafening thunder.

It was the perfect cover.

Julian was stationed on a rooftop across the canal, armed with a high-powered, silenced sniper rifle and a hacked tablet controlling the palazzo’s security grid.

I was clinging to the slick stone wall of the Palazzo di Morte, suspended forty feet above the crashing waves by a grappling hook.

"Cameras in the west wing are looped," Julian’s voice crackled softly in my earpiece.

"You have a three-minute window before the patrol cycles back."

"Copy," I whispered, swinging my body weight toward a narrow, stained-glass window.

I used a glass cutter to silently trace a circle, popping the pane out and slipping through the opening like a ghost.

I landed silently on the marble floor of the palazzo’s private wing.

The vault was located beneath the basement level, accessible only through a biometric elevator.

I moved through the shadows, avoiding the armed guards patrolling the opulent hallways, my ceramic blade ready.

It took me five minutes to reach the basement corridor, where two heavy mercenaries stood guarding the steel doors of the vault.

"Julian, I have two tangos at the door," I whispered.

"I see them," Julian replied. "Taking the shot on the left. You take the right."

"Three, two, one. Mark."

The thick glass of the basement window shattered instantly as Julian’s sniper bullet took the left guard directly in the chest.

Before the second guard could even raise his weapon, I closed the distance, sweeping his legs out from under him and driving the pommel of my knife hard into his temple.

He dropped instantly, unconscious.

I dragged their bodies out of sight and approached the heavy steel door.

I bypassed the biometric scanner using a cloned fingerprint Julian had lifted from a wine glass the night before.

The massive vault door hissed and clicked, swinging open heavily.

I stepped inside, my gun drawn.

The vault was vast, filled with gold bars, bearer bonds, and ancient artwork.

But in the center of the room, strapped to a medical chair, was my brother Leo.

He looked terrible, beaten and heavily drugged, but his eyes fluttered open when I approached.

"Dom?" he rasped, coughing violently. "It's a trap."

Before I could cut his restraints, the heavy steel vault door slammed shut behind me with a booming finality, sealing us inside.

The lights flickered on, revealing the Blind King standing in the corner of the vault, an ornate cane resting in his hands.