"He’s an untamable monster,"

The concrete corridor offered no alcoves, no maintenance doors, and no shadows deep enough to conceal a human frame.

The heavy footsteps advanced with terrifying rhythm: Click. Clack. Click. Clack.

I pressed my back flat against the cold steel door of Cell 213, pulled the heavy flashlight tight against my ribs, and reached into my pocket for the master keycard.

A shadow stretched down the corridor—long, broad-shouldered, and distorted. A man stepped into the faint fluorescent glow.

He was forty-two years old, standing six-foot-two, with the same aristocratic jawline as Dominic Vale, but his hair was slicked back with expensive pomade. He wore an immaculate camel-hair overcoat over an Italian silk suit, a gold signet ring glinting on his right pinky finger as he drummed his manicured nails against the silver head of a walking cane.

Marcus Vale. The underboss of the Chicago Syndicate.

He stopped ten paces away, a venomous smile spreading across his thin lips. "Miss Hayes, the agency in Manhattan assured me you were an expert in developmental psychology, not industrial espionage. I see they understated your qualifications."

I forced my chin up, ignoring the fiery agony from my ribs. "You're keeping your sister-in-law in a dog cage, Marcus."

Marcus let out a quiet, appreciative chuckle. "Kalliope is not a sister-in-law, Miss Hayes. She is an unfortunate accounting discrepancy. Four years ago, my brother’s late wife, Julianna, made the mistake of cooperating with the federal grand jury in Boston. She had forty gigabytes of offshore manifests stored on a private flash drive. Kalliope was helping her."

Marcus reached inside his camel-hair coat, his hand emerging with a small, sleek .380 automatic pistol fitted with a titanium suppressor.

"You were supposed to flee into the night, Miss Hayes. But you had to touch the lock."

"Shoot me, Marcus," I said, my voice rising slightly toward the open security grate of Cell 213. "The acoustic sensors on this corridor are hardwired into the central communications console in the master bedroom. The moment that round leaves the barrel, Dominic’s guards will seal every blast door in this wing."

Marcus’s eyes flickered with a microsecond of doubt. In that fraction of a second, I hurled the heavy four-pound brass flashlight straight at his face.

CRACK.

The solid metal struck Marcus squarely across the bridge of his nose. Blood sprayed across his silk tie, his head snapping back with a sickening crunch. The suppressed pistol discharged, the bullet chewing into the ceiling plaster.

Marcus roared in fury, staggering backward, clutching his shattered nose.

I bolted down the concrete corridor at a dead sprint, ignoring the tearing agony in my ribs, and slammed my entire weight against the heavy double iron doors at the entrance of the north wing. I drove the manual deadbolt home with a concussive CLANG.

I spun around, panting, clutching my side.

Standing ten feet away in the shadows of the master gallery, holding a twelve-gauge tactical shotgun at the low ready, was Dominic Vale.

Beside him, clutching the hem of his father's trousers, was four-year-old Noah.