Chapter 1
"The most feared mafia boss in Chicago came home three hours early and found his housekeeper secretly feeding four identical little boys at the dining table no one had touched since his wife died. He was about to demand an explanation when one boy pointed at him and asked, “Elena, is that the man from the picture?” The spoon fell from her hand.
My name is Alejandro Moretti.
For twenty years, men across Chicago had learned to lower their voices when they said that name.
But that Tuesday afternoon, inside my own mansion, I was the one who couldn't speak.
I'd returned unexpectedly because a meeting downtown had been canceled.
No guards knew I was coming.
Neither did Elena.
I heard voices from the dining room.
Children's voices.
That alone made my hand move instinctively beneath my jacket.
Children did not enter my home.
Strangers certainly didn't.
Then I reached the doorway.
Elena, my housekeeper of eleven years, sat at the enormous mahogany table.
Around her were four little boys.
Identical.
Maybe four years old.
Brown hair. Pale skin. Simple blue shirts.
Elena carefully divided yellow rice between four porcelain plates.
“Slowly, my little birds. There's enough.”
One boy laughed.
I stopped breathing.
His nose.
His mouth.
Even the slight crooked smile.
I knew that face.
Because I'd seen it every morning of my childhood in the mirror.
I looked at the other three.
The resemblance was worse.
Four copies of the same child.
Four children who looked disturbingly like me.
My wife, Sofia, had died five years earlier.
We had never had children.
At least...
that's what I had believed.
One boy suddenly noticed me.
He stared for several seconds.
Then his entire face brightened.
“Elena!”
She looked up.
The boy pointed directly at me.
“Is that the man from the picture?”
The spoon slipped from Elena's fingers.
Clink.
Her face went white.
I stepped into the room.
“What picture?”
Nobody answered.
“Elena.”
She immediately stood and moved between me and the boys.
That frightened me more than anything else.
Elena had watched armed men enter this house.
She had seen people twice her size lose their nerve around me.
She had never once stood in my way.
Until now.
“Who are these children?”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“Alejandro...”
“Who. Are. They?”
The smallest boy reached into his little backpack.
Elena spun around.
“No, Mateo!”
Too late.
He pulled out an old photograph.
My chest tightened.
It was Sofia.
My dead wife.
She was smiling at the camera.
And beside her...
was Elena.
Written across the bottom in Sofia's handwriting were five words:
KEEP THEM SAFE FROM ALEJANDRO.
I looked at Elena.
Then at the four boys.
She was crying now.
“Alejandro,” she whispered, “Sofia made me promise you would never find them.”
I couldn't move.
“Why?”
Elena glanced toward the windows.
Her expression suddenly changed.
Fear.
Not fear of me.
Fear of something outside.
She grabbed the four boys.
“Because Sofia wasn't protecting them from you.”
My hand went beneath my jacket.
“Then who?”
Before Elena could answer, one of my guards shouted from downstairs.
“BOSS!”
Three black SUVs had just stopped outside my gates.
Elena closed her eyes.
May you like
Then whispered the words that made my blood run cold.
“They found the boys.”
