The most feared man in New York unknowingly spent an entire flight sitting beside the little girl he had been searching for without even realizing she was his daughter. When she looked at me and asked, **"Have you ever loved someone enough to ruin your own life?"** I thought it was just an innocent question. Then the plane hit violent turbulence, and I found myself holding the hand of the child whose mother had hidden her from me for six long years.

The rain in Montreal was freezing, falling in heavy sheets against the high-rise windows of the Grand Horizon Hotel.

At 4:30 a.m., the penthouse suite on the top floor was lit by dim amber lamps. Julian Moretti—a sharp, gray-haired man in his late fifties with cold blue eyes and an expensive silk robe—sat at a mahogany desk, sipping aged scotch while looking over real estate deeds for my New York properties.

Beside him stood three heavily armed mercenaries.

"Viktor hasn't called," one of the guards reported nervously, looking at his tactical watch. "The flight landed in Halifax an hour ago."

Julian swirled his whiskey calmly. "Viktor is a professional. If there was a delay, he will handle it. Once Luca’s bastard child is dead, Luca will lose his mind. He will make mistakes, and the Council in New York will hand the throne back to me."

BOOM!

The heavy, reinforced doors of the penthouse suite exploded inward in a shower of wood splinters and steel fragments.

A flashbang grenade bounced across the hardwood floor, exploding in a blinding burst of white light and deafening sound.

Before the mercenaries could recover their senses, my tactical strike team surged into the room like black shadows. Gunfire erupted—sharp, precise, and ruthless.

THWIP! THWIP! THWIP!

Julian’s three guards were dropped in less than three seconds, their weapons clattering to the floor.

I stepped through the smoke, dressed in full tactical black, holding a custom sidearm equipped with a suppressor. My eyes locked onto Julian, who had scrambled back against his desk, his face drained of every drop of blood.

"Luca..." Julian gasped, his hands shaking as he reached for a gun inside his desk drawer.

I raised my pistol and fired a single shot.

THWIP.

The bullet tore through the desk drawer, shattering Julian’s hand. He screamed in agony, clutching his bleeding wrist, falling to his knees.

I walked up to him, stepping over the fallen guards, and stopped inches away. I looked down at the man who had torn my life apart, who had forced the woman I loved to flee into hiding, and who had tried to murder my six-year-old child.

"Six years ago, Julian," I said, my voice completely devoid of emotion. "You set a bomb in my car. You killed three of my men. You made my wife run into the dark."

"Luca... please!" Julian begged, weeping, pressing his bloody hand against his chest. "We’re blood! I’m your father’s brother! You can’t kill your own family!"

"You stopped being my family the moment you put a gun in the face of my daughter on that plane," I said coldly.

Julian’s eyes widened in horror. "The... the child survived?"