"My dying wife was rushed past me covered in blood while I sat inside Northwestern Memorial Hospital holding my mistress’s hand. But the sickening humiliation of being caught was nothing compared to what came next: Clara had been deliberately run off the road, and the reason she was on the South Side threatened to destroy everything I thought I knew."

I stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, staring out at the rain-slicked Chicago skyline, desperately scrubbing at my hands with scalding water and coarse paper towels in the adjoining washroom. But the blood wouldn't come off. No matter how hard I rubbed, my skin remained stained a faint, haunted pink.

The heavy door opened softly.

Mateo stepped inside, his long black overcoat wet with Chicago mist, his face carved from dark, unyielding granite.

I didn't turn around. “Give me good news, Mateo. Tell me she’s stable.”

Mateo didn't answer immediately. The silence stretched, thick and suffocating, until it felt like a physical weight pressing down on my spine.

“Mateo,” I whispered, turning around slowly. “Tell me.”

“Tommy’s dead,” Mateo said quietly.

My blood froze dead in my veins. The room seemed to tilt on its axis. Tommy Rossi had been Clara’s dedicated driver and bodyguard for five years—a quiet, dependable kid from the old neighborhood whom I personally trusted with my wife's life.

“What do you mean, he’s dead?” I choked out, taking a step toward him. “Tommy is built like a tank. Where was he?”

“He was driving Clara,” Mateo continued, his voice dropping into a harsh register. “An armored SUV—heavy weight class, reinforced grill—rammed their sedan at nearly seventy miles an hour on a blind curve, then pushed them off the overpass. Tommy died on impact. The car was completely pancaked.”

“Where?” I demanded, a cold fury rising from the pit of my stomach, sharp and lethal. “Where did this happen?”

Mateo hesitated. A strange, troubled shadow passed across his eyes.

“The South Side. Near 79th and State.”

My mind seized up. The South Side. Moretti territory.

For ten years, Dante Moretti and I had maintained an uneasy, blood-soaked truce across the city lines. The North Side belonged to Valente shipping and financial holdings; the South Side belonged to Moretti’s drug and arms trafficking networks. Crossing that line unannounced was a declaration of war.

“Lorenzo Moretti,” I snarled, slamming my fist against the marble counter so hard the porcelain cracked. “The bastard has been waiting for an excuse to hit me. He wanted to hurt me, so he targeted my wife.”

“It doesn't fit, Boss,” Mateo interrupted, his voice cutting through my rage like a scalpel.

I stopped, glaring at him. “What doesn't fit?”

“Clara hated the South Side,” Mateo said, stepping closer. “She wouldn't drive down there for a million dollars. She knew the territory lines better than our capos do. She had zero business down there at midnight. And yet, Tommy was driving her straight into the heart of Moretti turf when they were hit.”

My brain stalled. Mateo was right. Clara was a homebody, a quiet woman who spent her days running charity foundations, reading French literature, and managing our Gold Coast estate. She had no connections to the underworld, no secret life, and an absolute terror of the rough industrial districts down south.

“Why was my wife on the South Side, Mateo?” I hissed, stepping right into his face.

Mateo didn't flinch. He slowly reached into the inside pocket of his heavy black coat and pulled out a shattered, blood-smeared smartphone wrapped in a clear evidence bag.