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I took a breath and charged in.

"Leon!!"

My voice echoed through the empty warehouse.

No response.

Just my footsteps.

I went deeper. Dim light made it hard to see.

"Leon! Baby, Mommy's here!"

A heavy metal crash behind me.

I whipped around—

The warehouse's rolling door slammed down, sealing the exit completely.

Dust filled the air.

My heart plummeted.

"Long time no see, Ms. Caldwell. Or should I say... Mrs. Moretti?"

Footsteps crunched over broken cement, coming closer.

A wiry man with a vicious burn scar slashing across his face stepped out from behind the support columns. He held a heavy silenced pistol, lips twisted in a cruel, satisfied grin. Seven or eight men in black leather flanked him.

Lorenzo DeLuca.

The only son of the DeLuca family patriarch. The family Marcelo destroyed.

"Your son's not here." His muddy eyes fixed on me coldly, yellowed teeth bared. "But don't worry. He's safe. As long as you cooperate."

All the blood in my body reversed its flow.

A diversion.

This was a trap.

And I'd walked right into it like an idiot.

Chapter 33

Marcelo

The air in the underground conference room of the Long Island estate hung heavy as molten lead.

Twelve black leather high-backed chairs surrounded the polished mahogany table, occupied by the Moretti family's core capos—men who controlled everything from the Brooklyn docks to New Jersey casinos, from Wall Street money laundering networks to Queens arms smuggling operations.

Overhead, dim chandeliers cast flickering shadows through the smoke. Scattered across the table were intelligence files marked with red skull insignias—DeLuca remnant hideouts over the past three months, money trails, and newly confirmed safe house coordinates.

"Don, we intercepted that shipment at the East River docks." Old Tony, seated at my right, rapped his weathered knuckles on the table. "DeLuca's men tried to go by sea to Boston. We boxed them in their containers. Six of them. All sleeping with the fishes in the Hudson now."

I didn't speak, just nodded slightly, my gaze sweeping over the latest surveillance photo of Lorenzo DeLuca on the table—that face twisted from fire burns, contorted with hatred.

Four years ago, I'd personally executed his father Vincenzo DeLuca in this Long Island basement. Used an old-school Sicilian lupara shotgun. Point-blank range. One shot that blew that old bastard's brains out.