I came home six hours early with a loaded

I screamed Grace's name, crawling frantically across the splintered wooden floor of the moving train.

Another sniper bullet ripped through the metal wall, missing my head by mere inches.

Carlo's men had used a drone to track the train, and a sniper was firing from a parallel highway overpass.

I dragged Grace behind a stack of heavy wooden pallets, shielding her from the deadly crossfire.

The bullet had struck her in the upper shoulder, narrowly missing her heart, but she was losing blood rapidly.

I applied intense pressure to the catastrophic wound, my hands covered in her warm blood.

I yelled at the girls to stay completely flat against the floorboards and not to move a single muscle.

I realized that staying on the train was a guaranteed death sentence for all of us.

The train was slowly crossing a massive steel bridge over a deep, rushing river.

I told Grace that we had to jump, or the sniper would eventually tear the entire boxcar apart.

She nodded weakly, clutching her bleeding shoulder with a terrifyingly pale face.

I grabbed the girls, holding them tightly against my chest, and counted down from three.

We threw ourselves out of the open boxcar door, plummeting down into the freezing, dark abyss.

The icy water hit us like a solid brick wall, completely knocking the air out of my lungs.

I fought desperately against the violent current, keeping my daughters' heads above the churning water.

We finally washed up on the muddy, freezing banks of the river, miles away from the city.

We stumbled through the dense, dark woods until we found an abandoned hunting cabin.

I kicked the rotting door open and quickly built a fire to keep the girls from freezing to death.

I left my entire criminal empire, my wealth, and my corrupted legacy behind in the muddy water.

I used Grace's encrypted phone to contact her agency director, agreeing to surrender everything I owned.

For eight years, Dante Moretti—the most powerful Mafia boss in Chicago

The wooden train hit Cameron Jenkins in the shoulder before

The three knocks came one minute before midnight

The director promised to send a heavily armed tactical extraction team to our coordinates at first light.

I sat by the fire, holding a gun to the door, praying that we could just survive the night.

Chapter 9 - The Sniper's Aim