The Mafia Boss’s Baby Had Been Crying for Hours—Then He Saw Me, Reached Out His Tiny Arms, and His Father Went Pale at My Name Tag

Before Claire could speak, the sickening sound of a pneumatic bolt firing broke the silence.

Vivienne gasped, her eyes going wide with shock. She looked down at her chest. A steel harpoon, dripping with neurotoxin, protruded through her sternum, fired directly from the automated defense turret mounted on the Patriarch’s motorized chair.

"Defective stock," the old man hissed coldly, his withered hand resting on the firing trigger. "Sentiment is a fatal anomaly. It must be culled."

Vivienne collapsed to her knees, choking on crimson foam. Claire lunged forward, catching her sister as she fell, horror washing over her. "No! Vivienne!"

"Get them... out..." Vivienne gasped, her fingers clawing weakly at Claire's sleeve before slumping limp against the cold steel floor.

"Dante!" Claire screamed.

Below them, the deck shuddered violently. A deafening alarm began to blare in alternating pulses of red and white.

*WARNING: CORE CONTAINMENT PURGE INITIATED. DETONATION IN FOUR MINUTES.*

"The old monster activated the scuttle protocol manually!" Dante shouted, his voice echoing from the lower catwalk. He had bypassed the gallery and breached the secondary control station directly overlooking the ship's churning reactor core. "The cooling vents are locked down! The only way to stop the immediate nuclear cascade is to manually override the hydraulic pressure valves inside the reactor chamber!"

"Dante, no!" Claire yelled, leaning over the railing, tears blinding her eyes. "The radiation in that chamber—you'll never make it out!"

Dante looked up at her through the haze of smoke and flashing warning strobes. His suit was shredded, his face bruised and smeared with blood, but his posture was that of a king who had already made his peace with eternity.

"I spent my whole life building an empire of blood and fear, Claire," Dante said, his voice terrifyingly calm through the comm unit in her ear. "The only good thing I ever did was bring you into that house to hold my son. Take our boys. Miller has cleared a submersible launch craft on Deck Three."

"I am not leaving you!" she screamed, the weight of the two children against her chest feeling heavier than the entire world.

"You have to," Dante said softly, stepping toward the heavy airlock of the melting reactor room. "Because if you die, the world burns. And if they live, our family survives. Go, Claire. That’s an order from your husband."