716 "Your Babies Aren't Sick, They're Scared": What My Housekeeper's 4-Year-Old Found Inside the Nursery Vent Shook the Entire Mafia Underworld

The sound of Sophie's scream shattered whatever remained of my restraint.

I dropped to my stomach, sliding feet-first beneath the jammed blast door into the wine cellar corridor.

A massive attack dog, its teeth bared and muzzle dripping saliva, lunged at me from the shadows. I raised the captured rifle and fired three rounds into its chest mid-leap. The beast collapsed heavily onto my boots.

I kicked it aside and stood up.

At the end of the vaulted stone corridor, two men in full tactical gear were dragging a kicking, screaming Elena by her hair.

A third man held a tactical transport crib containing Nora and Miles, while a fourth had little Sophie pinned against the brick wall, a gloved hand clamped over her mouth as he tried to pry Theo from her arms. Sophie was biting his hand with everything she had, her tiny fingers locked around Theo’s swaddle like iron vice-grips.

"Drop her!" I roared.

The man holding Elena tried to bring his weapon up, but I put a round through his eye socket before his barrel cleared his hip.

The second man dropped Elena and reached for his sidearm, but Marco came sliding under the blast door behind me, leveling his shotgun and firing a single blast that blew the mercenary off his feet, painting the wine racks behind him in crimson.

The fourth man—the one pinning Sophie—panicked. He drew a combat knife and pressed it against Sophie’s throat.

"Back off!" he screamed, his voice muffled by a balaclava. "Take one more step and I open her neck! Drop the guns!"

The corridor went deathly silent, save for the terrified wails of my triplets and the heavy, ragged breathing of the mercenary.

Elena was crawling on her hands and knees toward Sophie, weeping hysterically. "Please... don't hurt her! Take me! Don't hurt my baby!"

I lowered my rifle by half an inch.

My gray eyes locked onto the mercenary's visible pupils through the eyeholes of his mask.

"You don't know who I am, do you?" I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm, vibrating through the cold cellar air like the rumble of an earthquake.

"I know who you are, Moretti!" the man shouted, his hand trembling against the knife. "You're a dead man! Drop the gun or the kid dies!"

"If you kill that little girl," I said, taking a slow, deliberate step forward, "I won't shoot you. I will tie you to that pillar. I will break every bone in your hands. I will cut away your skin strip by strip, and I will feed it to the dogs you brought into my home. And I will make sure it takes you three days to die."

The man swallowed. His blade shook against Sophie’s porcelain skin. A tiny bead of blood welled beneath the edge of the steel.

"Adrien..." Sophie whispered through the man's fingers, her big brown eyes filled with tears, looking straight at me. "He... he has the winter candy too."

My heart went entirely still.

The man’s eyes widened in panic as he realized the child had identified him.

In that split second of hesitation, Sophie drove the heel of her tiny shoe directly into the man’s kneecap, biting down on his fingers with all her strength.

The mercenary cursed, his knife pulling back an inch.

That inch was all I needed.

I closed the distance in a blur. My left hand caught the mercenary’s wrist, twisting it until the bones snapped with the sound of dry kindling. The knife clattered to the floor. Before he could scream, my right hand closed around his throat, lifting him off his feet and slamming him into the brick wall with bone-shattering impact.

Sophie scrambled backward, clutching Theo tightly to her chest, tumbling safely into Elena’s outstretched arms.

I didn't use a bullet.

I slammed my fist into the mercenary's face once, twice, three times, until the concrete behind his head cracked. His body went limp, dangling from my grip like a broken ragdoll.

I ripped the balaclava from his face.

It was Victor Bellini.

Julianna’s younger brother. My brother-in-law.

He hung in my grip, coughing blood, his face unrecognizable, but his swollen eyes glared at me with pure, undiluted hatred.

"Where is she, Victor?" I growled, my fingers crushing his windpipe. "Where is Julianna?"

Victor choked on his own blood, a hideous, bloody grin spreading across his broken lips.

"She’s... at the private hangar... O’Hare..." he wheezed, blood bubbling from his mouth. "The jet is fueling... she has the real prize, Adrien... she took the birth certificates... the syndicate trust funds... and when she lands in Sicily... Don Salvatore will wipe your bloodline from the earth..."

"My bloodline," I whispered into his ear, "is standing right behind me."

I snapped his neck with a single twist of my wrists.

His body dropped to the floor, lifeless.

I turned around.

Elena was huddled in the corner, sobbing, wrapping both arms around Sophie and the three babies. Nora, Theo, and Miles were screaming, terrified by the violence, but they were whole. They were untouched.

Sophie looked up at me through her tears, her yellow dress covered in dust and blood that wasn't hers. She held her button-eyed doll against Theo’s chest, trying to comfort him even as she shook with terror.

"Mr. Moretti?" Sophie sniffled. "Did you stop the bad men?"

I knelt down in front of the little girl, ignoring the blood on my coat, and gently wiped a smudge of dust from her cheek.

"Yes, princess," I said, my voice softer than it had ever been in my life. "I stopped them. Because of you."

I looked up at Marco, who was already securing the perimeter and checking the vitals of our wounded men.

"Marco," I said, standing up. "Take Elena, Sophie, and the babies to the safehouse in Lake Geneva under maximum armed escort. Put forty men on that perimeter."

"What about you, Adrien?" Marco asked, his eyes darkening as he saw the lethal resolve in my face.