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His first tooth. His first word. The way he laughed when I made faces at him. The way he reached for me when he wanted comfort. The soft weight of his body against my chest when he fell asleep. The smell of his hair after a bath. The grip of his tiny fingers around mine. All the tiny, precious moments that made up a life. The moments that parents were supposed to share together. The moments she’d never get back.

She was missing all of it.

And I couldn’t fix it.

Couldn’t save her.

Couldn’t storm whatever fortress her father had locked her in and drag her out. Couldn’t even talk to her without risking her father finding out and tightening his grip even more. Every text I sent her was a gamble. Every photo of Henry was a risk that could blow up in our faces and make everything worse. But what was I supposed to do? Cut her off completely? Let her think I’d forgotten about her? Let her believe that Henry and I had moved on without her?

The list of questions seemed to get longer every day, every hour, every minute. But I couldn’t make myself move. Couldn’t make myself care about anything except the image of Madigan’s face that was burned into my brain. The way she’d looked at me on New Year’s Eve. The way her eyes had shimmered with unshed tears. The way she’d smiled even though I could see her heart breaking. The way she’d felt in my arms. The way she’d kissed me like she was trying to memorize the taste of my mouth. Like she was trying to capture something she could hold on to in the darkness.

Like she knew it might be the last time.

My chest constricted, pain radiating outward until my entire body ached with it. The sensation spread like wildfire through my ribcage, burning and twisting until even my fingertips tingled with the agony of it. I pressed my hand against my sternum, trying to ease the pressure, applying enough force that I could feel my heartbeat pounding against my palm, but it didn’t help. Nothing helped. Not the breathing exercises. Not the whiskey. Not the work that usually consumed me and pushed everything else away. This was what love felt like when it was being ripped away from you. When you could see it, could touch it for one perfect night, and then had to watch it disappear again into the darkness. When you had to stand there, helpless and hollow, as the distance stretched between you once more.

This was what it felt like to be powerless. To be stripped of every advantage, every weapon, every shield you’d spent years constructing.

I’d spent my entire adult life building power. Accumulating it. Wielding it like a blade I’d sharpened to a razor’s edge. I’d become the head of the Valentinetti family through blood and strategy and sheer force of will. Had connections that reached into every corner of the underworld—from the docks to the courthouses, from the precincts to the penthouses. Had enough money and influence to make problems disappear with a phone call. A single word from me could end careers, ruin lives, erase people from existence as if they’d never been born.

And none of it mattered. None of it meant a goddamn thing.

Because I couldn’t protect the two people who mattered most. The two people who made all of this—the empire, the power, the legacy—actually mean something.

Couldn’t bring my wife home. Couldn’t give my son his mother. Couldn’t even guarantee their safety because I didn’t know all the players in this game. Didn’t know who was pulling the strings, or what they wanted, or how far they were willing to go. Didn’t know which faces at the negotiating table were genuine and which were masks hiding enemies who wanted to see me bleed.

I was fighting blindly. Swinging at shadows and ghosts.

Fighting enemies I couldn’t see. Fighting a system that had existed for generations and had survived every attempt to dismantle it—had absorbed rebellions and coups and revolutions and emerged stronger each time. Fighting against the weight of history and tradition and blood ties that bound people together more tightly than any contract. Ties that made loyalty run deeper than reason, deeper than self-preservation.

And I was losing. God help me, I was losing.

The realization hit me like a physical blow, stealing the breath from my lungs. I staggered back against the couch, my hands gripping the edge hard enough to hurt, hard enough that the leather creaked under my fingers.

I was losing. The truth of it settled over me like a shroud.

Not the war—not yet. We were making progress. Gathering intelligence piece by painstaking piece. Building alliances with people who had their own reasons to see the Society fall. Identifying weaknesses in the Society’s structure, finding the cracks in what had seemed like an impenetrable fortress.

But I was losing myself. Losing the core of who I’d been, who I’d tried so hard to become. The man Madigan had fallen in love with—the one who’d tried to be good, who’d believed he could escape the violence and build something clean, something worth passing down to our son—that man was gone. Dead. Buried under months of cold calculation and ruthless efficiency. Under layers of blood and lies and compromises that had seemed necessary at the time but had cost me pieces of my soul I’d never get back.

I’d become exactly what Giovanni had warned me about. What Luciano had predicted with that knowing smile of his. What I’d sworn on my mother’s grave I’d never be.

A monster. The very thing I’d fought against my entire life.

The kind of man who could order someone’s death without flinching, without losing a moment of sleep over it. Who could torture information out of people and sleep soundly afterward, their screams nothing more than background noise. Who could look at human beings—people with families, with hopes, with lives as complex as my own—and see only obstacles to be removed or tools to be used. Resources to be exploited or eliminated depending on their utility to my cause.

I’d told myself it was necessary. That I was doing it for them. For Madigan and Henry. That the ends justified the means, that you couldn’t fight monsters without becoming one yourself, that once I’d eliminated the threats and brought her home, I could go back to being the man she’d married. The man who’d held her on our wedding day and promised to love her, honor her, protect her. The man who’d cradled our newborn son and vowed to give him a better life than I’d had.

But that was a lie. A convenient fiction I’d told myself to maintain some illusion of normalcy, some pretense that I was still the person I used to be. You couldn’t do the things I’d done and remain unchanged. Couldn’t wade through that much blood and violence and come out clean on the other side. Couldn’t pull the trigger that many times, couldn’t watch that many eyes go dim, couldn’t scrub that much crimson from your hands without it leaving a permanent stain. The darkness had seeped into me, slow and insidious at first, like ink spreading through water. Had become part of me, woven into the very fabric of who I was now. Had transformed me into something I barely recognized when I caught my reflection in the mirror—something cold and hard and utterly ruthless. And the worst part? The thing that should have terrified me, but somehow didn’t?

I didn’t care.

I didn’t care that I’d become a monster. Didn’t care about the body count that kept climbing higher with each passing day, each new confrontation, each desperate attempt to find them. Didn’t care about the moral lines I’d crossed, or the ethical boundaries I’d obliterated, or the pieces of my soul I’d sold off bit by bit like a man pawning his possessions to pay a debt. Because if being a monster was what it took to bring her home, to bring them both home safe, then I’d be the worst monster the world had ever seen. I’d embrace it. Would wear that title like armor. I’d burn down the entire fucking Society. Would eliminate every member, every ally, every associate, every person who stood between me and my family. Every last one of them. Would wage war until there was nothing left but ashes and blood and the smoking ruins of everything they’d built over decades of operating in the shadows.

And I wouldn’t feel guilty about it.

Wouldn’t lose sleep over it.

Wouldn’t lie awake at night questioning my methods or second-guessing my decisions.