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“Probably.” Roman rolls a pen between his fingers, a restless habit that’s been worse lately. “She’s also Marco’s daughter. She grew up in that restaurant. She ate dinner with our people. She knows faces, even if she doesn’t know names.”

He’s right. Sophia Marchelli spent her childhood in a room full of men who work for me. She may not understand what she saw, but memory is a dangerous thing. A face remembered. A name overheard. A connection made years later by a woman who, according to her academic record, is exceptionally good with patterns and numbers.

She has an MBA in finance. That detail has been sitting in the back of my mind since I first read her file.

“What do you want to do?” Roman asks. But how he asks it, the slight edge, the weight on do, tells me he already has an opinion.

“Bring her in. Politely.”

His eyebrow lifts a fraction. “And then?”

“Then I talk to her. I find out what she knows, what Marco might have left behind, and whether she’s a problem.”

“And if she’s a problem?”

I look at my brother. He holds my gaze. This is the fault line between us. It always has been. Roman sees threats and wants to eliminate them. I see threats and want to manage them. Thirty years ago, that difference was merely philosophical. Now I feel older wolves watching every disagreement between us, measuring Roman’s teeth against my restraint and wondering which kind of alpha the next century will require.

“Then I’ll handle it,” I say. “My way.”

Roman’s jaw tightens. But he nods once and stands. He’ll send two of our people. Humans, not wolves. Polite, professional, unmistakably not optional. An invitation that communicates exactly what it is: you don’t have a choice, but we’re going to pretend you do.

After he leaves, I stand at the window and look out over the city. Chicago in early fall. Clear sky, gray buildings, the lake a flat steel line on the horizon. I’ve watched this skyline change for longer than any living human remembers. I’ve seen buildings rise and fall, neighborhoods transform, entire power structures collapse and rebuild. I’ve outlived every alderman, every police chief, every rival who thought they could take what’s mine.

This city belongs to my pack. It has for nearly a century and a half.

Viktor brought the Voronovs here from the Russian Empire in the 1880s, when Chicago was still rebuilding itself and thousands of immigrants were pouring into the city every year. It was the perfect place for wolves who needed to disappear. New names. New neighborhoods. Thousands of strangers arriving faster than anyone could keep track of them.

Viktor saw opportunity. Wolves are very good at recognizing territory before everyone else understands what it will become.

Humans built empires that lasted a generation. Ours carried the same memory from one century into the next. The same men, sometimes, hidden behind new names.

That has always been our advantage.

Now it may destroy us.

Cameras on every corner. Databases that remember everything. A digital world that doesn’t let you disappear the way you used to.

In another five years, Dominic Voronov will have aged too little. People who met me twenty years ago will begin comparing photographs. Facial-recognition software already notices things humans overlook. Eventually Dominic Voronov will have to die. A car accident, a heart attack.

Then, after enough years have passed, another Voronov will appear. A nephew. A cousin. A son from a branch of the family no one remembers clearly.

Except there is no branch.

There is only us.

It’s what we do. What we’ve always done.

But the seams are showing. And now Marco Marchelli’s daughter is back in my city, digging through an apartment my people already searched and found nothing in.

My phone buzzes. A text from my father.

I hear the Marchelli girl is back. We should talk.

I stare at the message. Viktor doesn’t text casually. Every word from my father is calculated, placed with the precision of a chess move by a man who’s been playing the game for nearly three centuries. The fact that he knows about Sophia already, before I’ve made a single call, tells me his network inside the pack is still more active than I’d like.

We should talk. Not a suggestion. A summons, dressed up in the language of equals. My father hasn’t been my equal for a long time, but old wolves don’t surrender hierarchy easily. He handed me the alpha’s chair because his body gave him no choice. At two hundred and ninety-five, even a wolf’s vitality begins to crack. But his mind is as sharp as it ever was, and his influence with the older wolves in the pack is a current I can feel but can’t always see. The oldest among them still call him Viktor Mikhailovich when they want to remind me exactly how far back their loyalties go.

I don’t respond to the text. Not yet. Let him wait.