It happened at 3:00 AM.

The rain was still beating against the hospital windows when the elevator dinged on the fourth floor. Raphael was sitting outside Clara’s ICU room, the pebble gripped tightly in his fist.

The doors opened, but no nurses stepped out. Instead, three men in medical scrubs walked into the corridor. Their scrubs were too clean, their postures too rigid. And their hands were hidden in their pockets.

Raphael didn't wait for them to draw.

He stood up, kicking a metal medical cart directly into the path of the first man, pinning him against the wall. Before the other two could pull their suppressed weapons, Raphael was moving.

He struck with the silent, brutal efficiency of a man raised in the shadows of the docks. He caught the second man’s wrist, twisting it until the bone snapped, taking the dropped weapon before it hit the floor.

The third man raised his gun. Raphael fired twice.

The silenced shots sounded like heavy coughs. The man dropped.

Raphael stood in the quiet corridor, surrounded by three incapacitated assassins. He looked down at them, his eyes cold and devoid of mercy. He dragged them into the stairwell, out of sight of Clara's door, and wiped his hands on a towel from the cart.

He walked back to Clara’s room. Through the glass, he watched the machines pumping air into her lungs, measuring the fragile beats of her failing heart.

The Morettis hadn't just tried to kill him. They had tried to kill her.

Raphael pulled his phone from his pocket. He dialed a number he hadn't used in a decade.

"Assemble everyone," Raphael said into the receiver, his voice dropping back to that terrifying, lethal whisper. "Burn the Moretti empire to the ground. Leave Lorenzo for me."