THE NURSERY WALL

The red blinking lights reflected like miniature drops of fresh blood in the polished oak floorboards of the nursery.

I didn’t move. For thirty-four years, men had learned to read the absolute, terrifying stillness that overtook my body whenever a threat presented itself. But this wasn't a rival syndicate bidding for my shipping lanes or a traitor within my ranks trying to siphon funds from my accounts. This was my home. This was the fortress I had built with three-foot-thick reinforced concrete, guarded by ex-military operatives, protected by millions of dollars in cutting-edge security systems.

And someone had breached it. From the inside.

“Marco,” I said, my voice dropping into a register that made the seasoned security chief flinch.

“Boss,” he answered instantly, his hand still hovering inches from the wall cavity, frozen as if touching the device might trigger a secondary payload.

“Get the doctors and the nannies out of this room. Now.”

Dr. Gable and the neurologist didn’t need to be told twice. They scrambled backward toward the door, their faces pale, terrified of being caught in the crossfire of a world they only read about in newspapers. Elena swept into the room a second later, her maternal panic overriding her fear as she scooped Sophie into her arms, burying the little girl’s face against her shoulder.

“Elena,” I said softly, though the command was absolute. “Take Sophie to the ground-floor drawing room. Lock the doors. Do not open them for anyone except Marco or me.”

“Mr. Moretti, please,” Elena whispered, tears welling in her eyes. “She didn’t mean—she’s just a child—”

“She saved my children’s lives tonight, Elena,” I interrupted, meeting her terrified gaze. “Go.”

When the heavy oak nursery door clicked shut, only Marco and I remained in the room, flanked by the three empty cribs. Theo, Miles, and Nora were safely down the hall, their muffled cries having faded completely the moment they crossed the threshold into the hallway.

“Tear it down,” I ordered.

Marco didn’t hesitate. He pulled a combat knife from his tactical rig, jammed the tip into the plaster surrounding the ventilation cavity, and began carving away the drywall with savage, controlled strokes. Chunks of white plaster and gray insulation rained down onto the rug.

Within seconds, the narrow gap widened.

Marco reached deep into the darkness, his forearm disappearing past his elbow. He grunted, his muscles straining against an invisible resistance, before pulling his arm backward.

In his hand was a small, sleek black box no larger than a deck of cards. A tangle of fiber-optic wires trailed from its base, disappearing back into the wall like the roots of a parasitic weed.

“It’s a localized transmission relay,” Marco murmured, inspecting the device under the nursery lights. “Military grade. It doesn’t connect to our Wi-Fi network. It operates on a closed-circuit frequency, bouncing signals straight out to an independent receiver.”

I stepped closer, my eyes locked on the sleek casing. Stamped on the back in tiny, laser-etched lettering was a serial number and a corporate logo.

Vance Technologies.

A cold spike of adrenaline shot through my veins. Julian Vance. The same man who had spent the last two years trying to muscle in on my North Side construction contracts. The same man who knew I had recently become a father—and who had every reason in the world to neutralize my bloodline before my children could grow to inherit the Moretti empire.

“Trace the relay line,” I commanded, my hands curling into fists. “Find out where those cables lead.”

Marco followed the fiber-optic wires back into the wall cavity, tracking them upward toward the ceiling, where they vanished into a vertical conduit pipe.

“That conduit runs straight up,” Marco said, rising to his feet and wiping plaster dust from his hands. He looked at the ceiling, his face darkening with a grim realization. “That’s the service shaft for the master suite on the third floor.”

The third floor.

My floor.

The private sanctuary where no one—not my guards, not my staff, not even my closest business associates—was ever permitted to enter without explicit invitation.

I looked back down at Sophie’s words echoing in my mind: “The one who comes when you sleep.”

For months, I had been waking up with a persistent, nagging sense of unease. Small things out of place. Documents shifted on my desk. A drawer left a fraction of an inch open. I had blamed it on exhaustion, on the crushing weight of running a syndicate while trying to raise three motherless infants alone.