The mafia boss’s dog had just attacked a professional handler so badly that the man fled through the estate gates bleeding when my maid’s three-year-old daughter walked directly toward him, clutching a small laundry cloth in her hand. I was certain I was seconds away from witnessing something horrific, but instead, the animal that had obeyed only me for ten years ignored my order, rested his enormous head in the little girl’s lap, and exposed a secret someone inside my estate had been trying to keep from me.

The silence in the courtyard was absolute. Even the winter wind seemed to hold its breath as my heavy leather boots crunched softly against the snow-dusted cobblestones.

Sienna was weeping silently behind me, her fingers digging into the stone archway of the servants' entrance as she watched her three-year-old daughter. But Elsie didn't look afraid. She sat cross-legged in the snow, her oversized red wool coat pooled around her knees, gently stroking the massive head of the animal that had sent a grown, hardened man screaming into the freezing morning.

Nero—or Bruno, as I had called him in the shadows of the European underworld a decade ago—did not move. His eyes, dark and intelligent, remained fixed on me.

I knelt in the snow beside the little girl. The cold seeped immediately through my trousers, but I didn't feel it. My entire focus was narrowed to the small patch of matted black fur behind Nero’s left ear where Elsie’s tiny fingers were resting.

"Show me, small one," I said, my voice low and calm, carefully measured so as not to startle either the child or the dog.

Elsie looked up at me, her blue eyes wide and earnest. She lifted her hand, pulling back the thick, coarse coat of fur.

My breath caught in my throat.

It was not a wound from a fight. It was not a gash from a fence or a tear from an iron leash.

Embedded deep into the muscle tissue at the base of his skull was a small, sleek cylinder made of polished silver titanium. It was no larger than a thumb USB drive, but around the edges of the metal casing, the skin was raw, angry, and inflamed. Fresh blood leaked around a tiny, blinking red LED light buried beneath his flesh.

It was a military-grade neural tracker and shock transponder. A piece of black-market hardware designed to deliver high-voltage electrical pulses directly into an animal’s central nervous system—or broadcast a real-time audio and GPS feed of everything happening within a fifty-foot radius.

Someone had surgicalized my dog.

Not in some remote laboratory. Not in a back-alley vet clinic in downtown Chicago. The incision was fresh—less than forty-eight hours old. The stitches were surgical silk, tied with the distinct, double-looped knot of a professional medical practitioner.

My mind raced through the roster of my estate. Only three people had access to the private medical bay on the third floor of my manor. Only three people had the clearance to enter Nero’s kennel after midnight without raising the automated security alarms.

"Mister Alessio?" Elsie whispered, her little voice breaking my icy focus. "Is Bruno sick?"

"No, Elsie," I said softly, gently placing my gloved hand over hers and smoothing the fur back down to hide the device. "Bruno isn't sick. But he's been very brave."

I stood up slowly, the blood in my veins turning to liquid nitrogen. The fury that rose within me was not the hot, wild rage of an amateur; it was the cold, calculating wrath that had made me the undisputed head of the Moretti syndicate.

I turned back toward the archway. Sienna was shaking, ready to collapse. Beyond her, standing discreetly near the glass doors of the main hall, stood my inner circle.

There was Marco, my right-hand man and head of security, his hands folded neatly in front of his sharp charcoal suit.

There was Doctor Harrison, the estate physician who had treated my men—and my family—for fifteen years.

And there was Dominic, my younger stepbrother, who managed the family’s legal assets and corporate holdings, holding a silver thermos of hot coffee, looking down at the snow with an expression of mild concern.

One of them had held Nero down. One of them had sliced open his flesh. One of them had sold my home to my enemies.

Nero let out a soft, low whine, his head remaining heavy in Elsie's lap. He hadn't refused my command out of defiance; he had ignored my order because he knew that if he approached me, the microphone buried in his neck would broadcast my voice to whoever was listening on the other end of that frequency.

He was protecting me. Just like he did in the warehouse fire eight years ago.

"Marco," I called out, my voice echoing off the stone walls of the courtyard.

Marco stepped forward immediately, bowing his head slightly. "Yes, Don Alessio?"

"Lock the estate gates," I ordered, staring directly into his eyes, then shifting my gaze to Harrison, and finally to Dominic. "No one enters. No one leaves. Shut down the primary server array, cut all external satellite uplink bands, and bring every staff member into the grand ballroom."

Dominic frowned, stepping past Sienna. "Alessio, what's going on? It's six in the morning. The handler was just incompetent. We can get another one from New York—"

"The handler ran because he saw the blood, Dominic," I interrupted, my eyes locking onto my stepbrother. "He tried to put a metal choke collar over Nero's neck, and the metal pressed against a surgical incision that shouldn't exist."

Dominic’s face paled slightly, but he quickly masked it with a sigh. "Incision? What are you talking about?"

"Sienna," I said, ignoring Dominic. "Take Elsie inside. Wash her hands. Give her whatever she wants from the kitchen."

Sienna didn't wait for a second invitation. She rushed forward, scooped Elsie into her arms, and held her tightly against her chest. As she turned to leave, Elsie looked back over her mother's shoulder, waving her small hand at the massive black dog still lying in the snow.

"Bye-bye, friend," she called out.

Nero gave a single, soft thud of his tail against the wet stone.