The first thing I remember is the sound of gunfire. Not the kind that wakes you up screaming—the kind that lulls you to sleep. Pop, pop, pop in the distance, like a twisted lullaby echoing through the warehouse district of Ravenwood City. Most kids grow up with nursery rhymes and bedtime stories. I grew up with the rhythmic click of magazines being loaded and the smell of gunpowder mixed with cheap whiskey. My name is Riley Chen, and I was raised by 108 wanted criminals. I know what you're thinking. How does a person end up with 108 fathers? The answer is simple, really. I called the right guy "Dad" at exactly the right moment. Or the wrong moment, depending on how you look at it. According to the story I've been told a thousand times—each telling more dramatic than the last—I was left on the doorstep of the Crimson Phoenix headquarters on a freezing January night twenty-three years ago. No note, no explanation, just a baby wrapped in a ratty blanket that probably cost three dollars at a thrift store. The doorstep I was abandoned on just happened to belong to the most feared crime syndicate on the East Coast. Lucky me. The way Big Tommy tells it—and Big Tommy never shuts up about it—he was the one who found me. He'd been coming back from a "collection run" (translation: breaking someone's kneecaps for unpaid debts) when he nearly tripped over the basket I was in. "Thought it was a bomb at first," he always says, slapping his massive knee and laughing until his whole body shakes. "Almost called the bomb squad. Then you opened those little eyes and looked right at me." What I did next changed my entire life. I said, "Dada." Now, I was probably just making baby noises. I was a newborn, for crying out loud. But Big Tommy swears on his mother's grave—the same mother he allegedly helped fake her death for insurance fraud—that I looked directly at him and called him Dad. And Big Tommy? Six-foot-five, two hundred and sixty pounds of pure muscle and bad decisions, covered in prison tattoos and wanted in four states? He melted like butter on hot asphalt. "GUYS!" he'd screamed, cradling me like I was made of glass. "GUYS, GET OUT HERE! I'M A DAD!" Within minutes, the entire syndicate had poured out of the warehouse. Hitmen, drug runners, hackers, con artists, forgers, arms dealers—you name it, the Crimson Phoenix had it. And every single one of them crowded around to look at the baby that had called Big Tommy "Dad." Then I made my second critical mistake. I smiled. That was it. Game over. I had accidentally charmed my way into the hearts of 108 of the most dangerous men in Ravenwood City. By sunrise, they'd held a vote—because even criminals have democratic processes, apparently—and decided unanimously to keep me. To raise me. To be my family. Marcus "The Blade" Santoro, the syndicate's second-in-command and a man rumored to have killed seventeen people with nothing but a butter knife, was the one who made the formal declaration. "This child is now under the protection of the Crimson Phoenix," he'd announced, his scarred face unusually soft as he looked down at me. "Anyone who harms them answers to all of us. This baby is ours. We are all fathers now." And just like that, I became the most protected child in criminal history. Growing up in a crime syndicate isn't like growing up in a normal family. For starters, there's no such thing as a quiet dinner. With 108 dads, every meal is a logistical nightmare. By the time I was five, I'd learned to navigate the chaos of the communal dining hall where tables were constantly covered in a mix of legitimate takeout and suspiciously unlabeled containers. "Riley! Eat your vegetables!" That would be Dad #47, Chen Wei, a former Triad enforcer who'd defected and joined the Phoenix. He'd appointed himself my nutritionist, despite the fact that he survived entirely on instant ramen and cigarettes. "The kid doesn't want vegetables, Wei. Riley, have some pizza!" Dad #23, Joey "Two-Times" Romano, would counter, sliding an entire pizza box toward me. Joey had gotten his nickname because he always shot people twice. He was also the most lenient of my dads, which wasn't saying much. "Pizza isn't breakfast!" Dad #89, Dr. Yuri Volkov—yes, we had a doctor, and yes, he was wanted for performing illegal surgeries—would interject. "Growing child needs protein. Here, Riley, have steak." It was 7 AM. This was my normal. School was another adventure entirely. The Crimson Phoenix couldn't exactly enroll me in public school without raising questions, so they did what any responsible criminal organization would do: they hired tutors. Legitimate ones, somehow. I suspect blackmail was involved, but I learned not to ask too many questions. My math tutor, Mrs. Henderson, was a sweet elderly woman who had no idea that the "security guards" who escorted her to and from the warehouse were actually wanted felons. She thought she was teaching at a "private educational facility for gifted children." She wasn't entirely wrong. I was the only child, which technically made it private. And I was gifted—mainly in the art of lockpicking, thanks to Dad #12, Samuel "Slim" Jenkins, a master thief who'd decided that every child should know how to pick a lock by age seven. "It's a life skill," he'd insisted when Dad #3, Jackson "Jax" Monroe, the syndicate's weapons expert, had objected. "She's seven!" Jax had shouted. "Exactly! I didn't learn until I was nine, and I suffered for it!" These were the arguments that shaped my childhood. But despite the chaos, despite the danger, despite the fact that my family was literally wanted by the FBI, I never felt unloved. If anything, I felt too loved. Suffocatingly, overwhelmingly, aggressively loved. When I was ten, I tried to go to a friend's birthday party. A girl from my online tutoring group had invited me to a skating rink. I thought I was being subtle when I mentioned it during dinner. I was wrong. "Absolutely not," came the immediate chorus from at least thirty dads simultaneously. "It's not safe," Dad #1, Victor "The Viper" Castellano, the actual leader of the Crimson Phoenix, declared. Victor rarely spoke during family matters, preferring to let the others debate while he observed. But when he did speak, everyone listened. "We don't know these people. We don't know the security of the venue. We don't know the structural integrity of the building." "I can case the joint first," offered Dad #56, Marcus "Ghost" Thompson, an infiltration specialist who could break into anywhere undetected. "I'll run background checks on every family attending," added Dad #78, David Park, our resident hacker. "I'll inspect the skates for tampering," said Dad #34, Leonard "Lenny" Kowalski, who was paranoid about everything. It escalated from there. By the time they were done "planning," the proposal involved a twelve-man security detail, three getaway cars, two snipers on adjacent rooftops, and a full medical team on standby. I didn't go to the party. This was my life. Surrounded by love, suffocated by protection, and constantly navigating the bizarre intersection of normal childhood and organized crime. I learned early on that my family was different. That what we did was illegal. That the men who tucked me in at night and taught me how to ride a bike were the same men who appeared on wanted posters throughout the city. But I also learned that family isn't about blood. It's about choice. And 108 dangerous criminals had chosen me.