Noah Marconi was about to climb onto his chair at the children’s table

By dawn, the Marconi estate was quiet. The surviving Commission mercenaries had retreated, leaving dozens of their dead on the manicured lawns. Raffaele stood in his ruined study, the morning sun casting bright, crisp light over the shattered glass and bullet-pocked mahogany.

Vincent entered the room, his suit torn and covered in dust. "The perimeter is secured, Boss. The cleanup crews are already moving the bodies. We won."

"We survived, Vincent. We haven't won," Raffaele corrected coldly, his American accent sharp and unyielding. "Salvatore will regroup. He will hire more mercenaries. He will not stop until my family is dead."

"Then what do we do?"

Raffaele walked over to the desk, pulling a heavily encrypted tablet from a hidden drawer. "We locate the Commission's fallback stronghold. Salvatore won't be in Manhattan anymore. He'll be hiding."

"Our cyber division tracked his emergency communications during the assault," Vincent reported, pulling up a map on the screen. "He evacuated to a fortified bunker complex in the Catskills. It's heavily guarded by anti-air systems and a private army."

Raffaele stared at the map, his movie-star handsome face twisting into a mask of pure, sociopathic determination. "They expect us to lick our wounds and rebuild our walls. They don't expect us to bring the apocalypse to their doorstep."