"The most feared mafia boss in Chicago came home three hours early and found his housekeeper secretly feeding four identical little boys at the dining table no one had touched since his wife died. He was about to demand an explanation when one boy pointed at him and asked, “Elena, is that the man from the picture?” The spoon fell from her hand. / Chapter 4 / 10

Chapter 4 - The Viktor ProtocolThe suppressed chatter of the MP5 tore through the silence of the foyer before Viktor could squeeze his own trigger.

The first three rounds stitched a lethal line across the oak banister wood right beneath his boots, shattering the carved mahogany into splinters. Viktor shrieked, stumbling backward and dropping his sidearm as it clattered down the grand staircase, bouncing step by step until it came to rest at my feet.

“Don't shoot! Don't shoot!” Viktor choked out, pressing his back against the gallery wall, his hands raised in frantic surrender.

I didn't rush. I walked up the grand staircase at a measured, deliberate pace, each step echoing like a judge’s gavel. The remaining Syndicate thugs scattered on the ground floor hesitated, trapped between advancing blindly and abandoning their commander.

“Call off your dogs, Viktor,” I commanded, pressing the cold steel muzzle of my pistol directly against the hollow of his throat as I reached the landing.

“D-down!” Viktor stammered, his face gray with terror, spittle flying from his lips. “Stand down! All of you, get out! Get out of the house now!”

Below us, the surviving operatives looked at each other, then toward the shattered front doors where sirens were beginning to wail faintly in the distance. Realizing the element of surprise was entirely gone and their commander was compromised, they hauled their wounded comrades toward the SUVs and peeled out down the private drive in a cloud of burning rubber.

I looked down at Viktor, my finger resting lightly against the trigger guard.

“You thought you could inherit my empire by stealing my blood,” I whispered, my voice barely audible over the hum of the central ventilation system. “You thought Sofia’s sacrifice was in vain.”

“Alejandro... please,” Viktor whimpered, tears streaming down his cheeks. “We were brothers. Remember the docks in '14? Remember the warehouse fire?”

“I remember everything, Viktor,” I said softly. “That’s why you’re going to live for a very long time.”

I pulled back the pistol slide, ejected the magazine into my palm, and smashed the heavy steel butt of the weapon across his temple. Viktor’s eyes rolled back, and he collapsed unconscious onto the plush Persian rug of the gallery floor.

I stepped over his limp body and walked briskly toward the private elevator at the end of the second-floor corridor, punching in the biometric master code that led directly down to the subterranean boathouse bunker.

The car descended rapidly, plunging deep beneath the earth where the cold, damp air of Lake Michigan filtered through the reinforced concrete walls. When the doors slid open, Rocco was standing guard with his weapon raised, while Elena sat on a canvas cot, wrapping a comforting blanket around the four identical boys who were quietly eating crackers from an emergency ration tin.

As soon as the elevator chime sounded, four pairs of identical brown eyes snapped toward the doorway.