The morning the man I once loved found me, I was barefoot, covered in flour, and holding the twins he'd never known existed. Three years earlier, I'd disappeared after catching my husband in bed with my own sister. Now the most feared man in Chicago was standing on my porch, staring into the amber eyes of two children who looked exactly like him.

The threat materialized on a Tuesday night while the bakery was dark and the town of Gray Hollow was asleep.

I was upstairs in the kitchen, washing the dinner dishes, when the lights in the apartment flickered once and died. The hum of the refrigerator ceased, leaving the space in a heavy, suffocating silence.

Instinct, sharp and cold, took over. I dropped the dish towel and crept into the twins’ bedroom. Ash was already awake, sitting up in his bed with his eyes wide in the gloom. I pressed a finger to my lips, scooping Lena into my arms while reaching out to grab Ash’s hand.

"We're going to play the quiet game, okay?" I whispered in his ear. He nodded, his little fingers tightening around mine.

We didn't use the stairs leading to the bakery. Instead, I opened the small storage closet in the hallway that led to the old building’s fire escape—a rusty iron ladder that dropped into the narrow alleyway behind the shop.

As my foot touched the first metal rung, a shadow stepped out from the darkness of the alley below.

"Going somewhere, Sarah?"

The voice belonged to Enzo Vance—Marcus Vance’s younger brother and the enforcer for the East Side syndicate. He was holding a heavy, silenced automatic pistol, his face illuminated by the distant streetlamp.

"Your husband has been a very hard man to find," Enzo sneered, stepping closer, his boots crunching on the wet gravel. "But when he started moving millions of dollars into West Virginia bank accounts to buy up real estate, even the feds noticed. Marcus wants his manifests, Sarah. And he thinks these two little bastards are just the leverage we need to get them."

Before I could scream, a heavy, dark shape dropped from the second-story fire escape above us.

It was Luca.

He hit Enzo with the force of a falling boulder, the sound of breaking bone echoing through the alley as the gun discharged harmlessly into the dirt. They rolled into the gravel, a brutal, silent struggle unfolding in the dark. Luca wasn't the restrained, gentle man who had played with acorns in the park; he was the apex predator of the Moretti family, fighting for the lives of his children.

His fists rose and fell with a clinical, terrifying precision. Enzo didn't stand a chance. Within thirty seconds, the Vance enforcer was unconscious on the ground, his face a bloody ruin.

Luca stood up, his breathing shallow, his face splattered with red. He looked up at me where I stood on the ladder, his amber eyes wild and glowing in the dark.

"Are they hurt?" he gasped, his hands shaking as he reached for the iron railing.

"No," I whispered, my voice trembling as Ash buried his face in my neck. "Luca... they know we're here."

"I know," Luca said, wiping the blood from his cheek with the back of his hand. "The war is over tonight, Sarah. I’m going back to Chicago to finish this. Stay with Mr. Pike. I’ve left four of my personal security team at the perimeter of the property. They won't let anyone through."

"Luca, wait!" I called out as he turned toward the alley exit.

He paused, looking back through the shadows.