Chapter 1 The Genius Child Explodes the Mafia Headquarters

# Chapter 1: The Genius Child Explodes the Mafia Headquarters

I never meant for my daughter to blow up a mafia headquarters before kindergarten graduation. But then again, I never meant for her to exist at all.

My name is Jocelyn Hayes, and five years ago, I made the most calculated theft of my life. Not money, not weapons—though God knows I've stolen plenty of both. No, I stole genetic material from one of the most dangerous men in the city: Alexander Marsh, the infamous godfather who burned my family's legacy to the ground.

Today was "Visitation Day" at his compound—a twisted PR event where the Marsh Family pretends they're a legitimate business enterprise. Local politicians, corrupt cops, and potential business partners all mingle while their children run around a perfectly manicured garden. Nobody mentions the bodies buried underneath it.

I adjusted my wig and glasses, grateful that Marsh had never actually seen my face up close. My daughter Luna skipped beside me, her dark curls bouncing with each step, completely oblivious that we were walking into the lion's den.

"Remember what I told you?" I whispered, squeezing her tiny hand.

Luna looked up at me with those ice-blue eyes—his eyes—and nodded solemnly. "Pretend to be normal. No talk about guns or bombs."

"That's my girl."

We passed through metal detectors that beeped when Luna walked through. A guard waved a wand over her, zeroing in on her tiny charm bracelet.

"What's this?" he asked, bending down to her level.

Luna smiled sweetly. "A present from Santa."

The guard chuckled and waved us through, completely missing the fact that each charm contained enough data to hack their security systems. Not that we were here for that. Today was purely reconnaissance—to see the man whose DNA made half my daughter, to understand what I might be up against as she grew older.

I never expected her to wander off.

One minute she was beside me, the next she had disappeared into the crowd. Panic seized my throat as I searched frantically, calculating how quickly I could reach the weapons hidden in my purse if needed.

Then I heard gasps and turned to see a circle forming around something—or someone—near the security station.

"The firing pin is too loose," Luna's high-pitched voice carried across the garden. "And this trigger? Way too stiff. Bad design. Daddy would be mad."

I pushed through the crowd to find my five-year-old daughter sitting cross-legged on the marble floor, surrounded by the disassembled parts of what had been a guard's sidearm just moments ago. The guard stood frozen, mouth agape, while Luna's tiny fingers expertly sorted springs and pins.

"Luna!" I hissed, moving to scoop her up, but a hand gripped my shoulder, stopping me cold.

"Let her finish," a deep voice commanded. The crowd parted like the Red Sea, and there he was: Alexander Marsh. Taller than I remembered from surveillance photos, his broad shoulders stretching the seams of a three-thousand-dollar suit. A jagged scar ran along his jawline—my family's handiwork from years ago.

He knelt beside Luna, studying her with unnervingly intense eyes. "Who taught you to do this, little one?"

Luna shrugged, not looking up from her work. "Nobody. It's easy. Like Legos but boring."

A dangerous smile spread across Marsh's face. "What's your name?"

"Luna Hayes," she answered, and I silently cursed. We had practiced using a fake surname, but Luna had a five-year-old's talent for remembering important things at all the wrong times.

"Hayes," Marsh repeated, his eyes flicking briefly to me before returning to Luna. "And where's your father?"

"Don't have one," Luna said, snapping the reassembled gun closed with a decisive click. She handed it back to the stunned guard with a sigh. "Trigger's too dull. Diff-rent... diffi-cult to pull. Needs oil. Bad safety design. Diff-rent rating."

She held up her hand, tiny fingers showing one digit. "One star."

Several of Marsh's men chuckled nervously, but Marsh himself wasn't laughing. His eyes were fixed on Luna's wrist, where her sleeve had pulled back to reveal a crescent-shaped birthmark.

I saw the blood drain from his face as he reached for his own wrist, where I knew a bullet had torn through flesh years ago, leaving an identical scar. His eyes darted to mine—suspicious, calculating.

"Hayes," he said again, standing to his full height. "I don't believe we've met formally."

"We haven't," I replied, my voice steady despite my racing heart. "Jennifer Hayes. Luna's mother."

"Well, Jennifer," he said, clearly not believing me for a second, "would you and your remarkable daughter join me for tea? I rarely meet children with such... specific talents."

Before I could formulate an excuse, Luna tugged at his sleeve. "Do you have cookies? Mom only lets me have the yucky ones with raisins."

Marsh's laugh was genuine this time, startling everyone around him. "I think we can do better than raisin cookies."

And so we followed the devil into his lair, my daughter skipping happily beside the man who had ordered the execution of my entire family, completely unaware that she was the living embodiment of my revenge.

Three hours later, we sat in Marsh's private office while Luna played with educational toys in the corner—puzzles that would challenge most adults. Marsh hadn't taken his eyes off her since the gun incident, especially after he noticed she was left-handed, just like him.

"Remarkable child," he said, sliding a crystal tumbler of whiskey toward me. "Her father must be very proud."

"Her father isn't in the picture," I replied, leaving the drink untouched.

"Shame," Marsh said, taking a deliberate sip. "She has unusual talents for her age. Almost... inherited ones."

I forced a smile. "She's just precocious."

"Indeed." He pressed a button on his desk. "Which is why I took the liberty of running a little test while you were enjoying our tour."

My blood turned to ice as his assistant entered, handing him a folder. Inside was what I knew would be a DNA test, run from the straw Luna had used for her juice.

"Fascinating results," Marsh said, sliding the paper across to me. "Care to explain how your daughter shares fifty percent of my genetic markers, yet the test concludes we're not related?"

I kept my face neutral, though inside I was calculating the distance to the door, the number of guards, the weapons concealed on my body. "Perhaps your lab made a mistake."

"My lab doesn't make mistakes." His voice was soft, dangerous. "Which means either you've engineered a child with my DNA—which is technologically improbable—or..."

"Or?"

"Or you stole from me in the most intimate way possible." His eyes had turned to arctic ice. "Who are you really, Jennifer Hayes? If that's even your name."

The explosion cut off whatever I might have said next. Not a big one—just enough smoke and noise to trigger the compound's alarms. Luna looked up from her corner, eyes wide with excitement rather than fear.

"Oopsie," she said, holding up what looked like a broken crayon but was actually one of my homemade smoke devices. "I think I broke it, Mommy."

Marsh's security team burst through the door, shouting about a perimeter breach. In the chaos, I grabbed Luna and bolted for the exit route I'd memorized, Marsh's voice booming behind us: "LOCK DOWN THE COMPOUND! DON'T LET THEM LEAVE!"

We made it to the garden when Luna pulled another "crayon" from her pocket and threw it with surprising accuracy at a decorative fountain. The resulting explosion was significantly more substantial, sending water and concrete shrapnel in all directions.

"Luna!" I gasped, ducking behind a hedge as guards scattered in confusion. "That was supposed to be for emergency only!"

She grinned up at me, missing her two front teeth. "Is this not 'mergency, Mommy?"

I couldn't argue with her logic as we used the distraction to slip through a service entrance and into the catering van I'd arranged as our escape vehicle. As we drove away, I could see Marsh in my rearview mirror, standing amidst the chaos, watching us go with a look of fascination rather than anger.

I knew we had twenty-four hours at most before he found us. Less, probably, given how resourceful he was rumored to be.

That night, I packed our essentials while Luna slept peacefully, unaware that her little performance had just accelerated my timeline by several years. I was still shoving weapons into hidden compartments in our luggage when the front door of our apartment crashed open.

There stood Alexander Marsh, his suit pristine despite the earlier explosions, flanked by two men holding automatic weapons.

"Hello, not-Jennifer," he said, eyes scanning the apartment until they landed on my half-assembled rocket launcher propped against the refrigerator. I'd been using it to intimidate the appliance, which had been making suspicious noises all week. "Planning a war?"

I straightened, abandoning any pretense. "Just routine maintenance."

"Of course," he said, stepping further inside. "Now, shall we start over? Who are you, and why does my DNA test show that your daughter is genetically mine, yet flagged as 'not a direct relation'?"

I smirked, letting years of carefully constructed aliases fall away. "Maybe because when you steal from a sperm bank, the computer doesn't register it as a 'direct relation'."

His eyes widened slightly—the only indication that I'd caught him off guard. "Sperm bank," he repeated flatly.

"What, did you think that 'anonymous donation' you made years ago was actually anonymous?" I laughed, the sound brittle even to my own ears. "You of all people should know nothing is truly anonymous in this city."

He moved closer, invading my space with deliberate menace. "You still haven't told me your real name."

"Does it matter?" I asked, hand inching toward the knife strapped to my thigh. "You've figured out what's important—Luna is yours biologically. Congratulations, it's a girl. Now get out of my home."

"Oh, I'm not going anywhere," Marsh said, his smile chilling. "And neither are you or my daughter."

From the hallway came a small voice: "Daddy, is that you?"

We both turned to see Luna standing in her rocket ship pajamas, clutching her favorite teddy bear—the one with the switchblade sewn into its paw.

"Are we playing hide and seek?" she asked, pulling something from her pocket that made both of Marsh's guards step back. "Because I have smoke bombs. Wanna play?"

Before either of us could stop her, she threw the homemade device onto the floor, filling the apartment with thick smoke. I lunged for her, but Marsh was faster, scooping her up as the guards shouted in confusion.

"Daddy's taking you home, princess," I heard him say as the smoke detector's shrill beep joined the chaos.

Then came Luna's delighted laugh, followed by a much louder explosion that shook the entire building. She'd triggered her "special" toy—the one I'd explicitly labeled "NEVER TOUCH."

The last thing I saw before the floor collapsed beneath us was Luna's beaming face as she clung to Marsh's neck, shouting over the roar of destruction:

"This is the BEST hide and seek EVER!"