The first thing that died was the security camera above the east gate.

The second was every light in Moretti Manor.

The third was the illusion that Dante Moretti controlled everything inside his walls.

At precisely 11:47 p.m., the most heavily guarded private estate on Long Island went blind.

No warning. No countdown. No second chance.

One moment, two hundred and forty security cameras monitored every inch of the thirty-acre property. Motion detectors scanned the gardens. Thermal sensors watched the tree line. Electronic locks protected seventeen reinforced entrances.

The next moment, every monitor in the underground security center turned black.

Then a single message appeared.

HELLO, MR. GRUMPY.

Security chief Marcus Bell stared at the screen.

“What the hell?”

The message disappeared. A cartoon rabbit appeared in its place. It waved. Then the entire system shut down.

“Code Black!” Marcus roared into his radio. “All units, defensive positions! We have a complete systems breach!”

The response was immediate. Armed guards abandoned their posts and rushed toward the manor. Steel shutters began descending over the windows, only to stop halfway. Emergency generators coughed once and fell silent.

Someone had not merely cut the power. Someone had convinced the estate's own technology to betray its master.

Three floors below the mansion, Dante Moretti was in the middle of deciding whether a man deserved to live.

He sat at the head of a black marble conference table, dressed in a charcoal suit that cost more than most Americans earned in three months.

At twenty-nine, Dante had already become the most feared man in New York's criminal underworld. They called him the Ghost. Not because he disappeared. Because people who crossed him tended to.

Across the table, a sweating accountant named Peter Walsh was explaining why eleven million dollars had vanished from a shipping account.

“I swear, Mr. Moretti, the transfers were authorized—”

Dante raised one finger. Peter stopped speaking.

Dante examined a microscopic speck of dust on his cuff. His expression darkened.

“Who cleaned this room?”

Nobody answered.

Dante removed a pristine white handkerchief and brushed the offending particle away.

“I asked a question.”

His lieutenant, Luca Romano, leaned forward. “I'll have the cleaning staff replaced.”

“All of them.”

“Yes, boss.”

Peter looked as though he might faint.

Then the lights went out.

A mechanical click echoed through the room. The conference table's concealed emergency lighting failed to activate. For three seconds, absolute darkness swallowed the War Room.

Dante did not move.

“Luca.”

“Here.”

“Status.”

Before Luca could answer, Marcus's voice exploded through the emergency radio.

“Boss! We've lost the perimeter! Cameras, infrared, electronic locks, everything!”

Dante's eyes narrowed. “External attack?”

“Unknown. The system is completely compromised.”

“By whom?”

A pause. “That's the problem, sir. We can't find an intrusion signature.”

Dante slowly stood. His chair barely made a sound.

“Then find whoever is standing on my property.”

He opened the hidden compartment beneath the table and removed a gold-plated Desert Eagle.

Peter made a strangled noise.

Dante looked at him. “Sit.”

Peter sat so quickly his chair scraped the floor. Dante's jaw tightened at the noise. Even during a possible assassination attempt, disorder irritated him.

Luca activated a battery-powered tactical lamp. Its beam cut through the darkness. The War Room emerged in harsh fragments: polished marble, armored walls, six armed men, and the enormous Moretti family crest above the sealed entrance.

“Could be the Russians,” Luca said.

“Or the Vance family,” Marcus suggested through the radio.

Dante's expression turned colder. Victoria Vance. His so-called fiancée. A political arrangement between two powerful families, negotiated without his consent and maintained only because dissolving it prematurely would destabilize several important alliances.

He had never kissed Victoria. He barely tolerated sharing oxygen with her.

“If Victoria arranged this,” Dante said, “she has finally given me a reason to cancel the engagement.”

A strange crackle interrupted the radio. Then a tiny voice spoke.

“Oopsie.”

Every man froze. The voice was high, sweet, unmistakably feminine. A child.

Marcus sounded bewildered. “Boss, did you hear that?”

Dante tightened his grip on the pistol. “Trace it.”

“We can't. It came through every internal speaker simultaneously.”

Another crackle. A soft giggle. Then the same little voice whispered, “Mr. Fluffington, we did a good job.”

Luca stared at the radio. “What kind of psychological warfare is this?”

Dante said nothing. He had survived three assassination attempts, two internal coups, and a coordinated attack that had destroyed half his Brooklyn operations. None of those enemies had opened with a giggling toddler.

That made this situation considerably more disturbing.

“Marcus,” he said, “how many intruders?”

“We're checking.”

“Check faster.”

Outside, rain hammered the mansion's enormous windows. Lightning illuminated the gardens. For one brief second, a guard stationed near the front entrance glimpsed something yellow moving beneath the ornamental trees.

He raised his flashlight. “Movement at the north path!”

“Identify!”

The guard squinted through the rain. “Small target. Very small.”

“Drone?”

“Negative.”

“Animal?”

Another flash of lightning. The guard stared.

“Sir...”

“Report!”

“I think... I think it's a little girl.”

Silence filled the radio channel.

Then Luca laughed once. A nervous, disbelieving sound. “A little girl?”

The guard continued, “Yellow raincoat. Pink boots. Carrying something.”

“What?”

“A stuffed rabbit.”

Dante's face remained unreadable. But something in his chest shifted.

A rabbit. He had once known a woman who collected ridiculous stuffed animals. A woman who laughed at his expensive suits and called him an emotionally constipated refrigerator.

Elena.

The name struck him without warning. Four years. Four years since she disappeared. Four years since the night he had been shown evidence that she betrayed him. Four years since he had allowed his pride to become a weapon against the only woman he had ever loved.

Dante buried the thought.

“Secure the child,” he ordered. “No unnecessary force.”

A guard approached the tiny figure near the front steps.

“Hey, sweetheart! You can't be here!”

The child looked up. She wore a bright yellow raincoat with little duck-shaped buttons. Her dark curls stuck to her cheeks. A battered gray rabbit dangled from one arm.

“Is this Daddy's house?” she asked.

The guard blinked. “Whose house?”

“Mr. Dante Moretti.”

His stomach dropped. “Who told you that name?”

The little girl sighed. It was the exhausted sigh of someone dealing with a particularly stupid adult.

“Google.”

Then she lifted her rabbit. Its remaining glass eye flashed red.

The guard's flashlight died. His radio emitted a shrill squeal. And the massive front doors unlocked with a thunderous clunk.

Far beneath the mansion, Marcus watched his last functioning diagnostic screen display a single sentence.

DELIVERY IN PROGRESS.

He swallowed. “Boss?”

Dante stared at the reinforced War Room entrance. “What?”

Marcus's voice had become strangely thin.

“Whatever hacked us...”

A metallic grinding noise came from the corridor. The tactical doors were unlocking.

“...it's coming downstairs.”

Dante raised his pistol. Six guards followed. The doors began to open.

And somewhere beyond them, a tiny pair of pink rain boots squeaked against the marble floor.