At two in the morning, a six-year-old girl pushed a vacuum twice her size across a mafia boss's private study, her baby sister asleep against her back in a knotted shawl. She wasn't scared of him.

At 4:15 AM, the fog over the Charles River Esplanade was thick enough to swallow a ship whole.

A sleek, black sprinter van sat parked in the dark shadows beneath the weeping willows near the Hatch Shell performance stage. Its engine idled with a quiet, low rumble, its rear doors cracked open three inches to let the cool night air cut through the smell of stale coffee and tobacco.

Inside sat Dominic Vancura.

He was fifty-two, thick-necked, with graying hair slicked back from a scarred forehead. He sat in a swivel chair facing a wall of monitors, tapping his fingers impatiently against his knee while wearing a high-end radio headset.

"Where the hell are they?" Dominic growled into the microphone. "They were supposed to clear the Beacon Hill shaft twenty minutes ago."

"Static on the line, Boss," his driver muttered from the front seat, looking into the side mirrors. "Tunnel comms are blocked. Might be the fog."

"They don't get blocked," Dominic spat, pulling a heavy revolver from his coat. "If Duca found that shaft—"

"If I found the shaft, Dominic?" a voice spoke from the shadows behind the van.

Dominic froze.

The rear doors of the sprinter van were violently ripped off their hinges with a screech of shearing steel.

Before Dominic’s men could raise their weapons, four flashbang grenades bounced off the van floor, detonating in a blinding, deafening explosion of light and thunder.

BANG-BANG-BANG!

The van windows blew outward in a shower of crystallized safety glass.

Dominic was thrown sideways, his ears ringing violently, his vision swimming in bright white spots. He scrambled across the ruined floorboards, reaching for his dropped revolver, his hands slippery with sweat.

A heavy boot stepped onto his wrist, crushing his hand against the steel floor of the van.

Dominic screamed as bone cracked under the pressure.

Roman Duca stood over him, towering against the gray mist of the riverbank, his charcoal coat completely spotless, his face an impenetrable mask of granite.

Behind Roman, six blacked-out SUVs had boxed the sprinter van onto the grass, their high-beam headlights cutting through the fog like pillars of white fire. Twenty armed operators surrounded the perimeter, their laser sights painting red dots across the remaining Vancura bodyguards on the grass.

"Roman..." Dominic gasped, coughing up smoke, his eyes wide with white-hot terror. "How... how did you—"

"You made a mistake, Dominic," Roman said, stepping down onto Dominic’s wrist until the rival boss wept in pain. "You thought you were dealing with a businessman who grew soft in a Beacon Hill mansion."

"I have your sister, Dominic," Roman added, his voice dropping into a low, terrifying whisper that carried over the sound of the idling engines. "She’s safe. She’s out of your wall. And she gave me every bank account, every safehouse, and every police payoff you’ve used for the last seven years."

Dominic’s face turned gray. "You... you wouldn't... she’s family—"

"Family?" Roman laughed—a dark, cold sound that had zero humor in it. "You locked your own sister in a two-foot brick shaft to spy on my home. You threatened her child. You don't know what family means, Dominic."

Roman reached down, grabbed Dominic by his lapels, and hauled his massive frame out of the van, throwing him onto the wet grass at the edge of the Charles River.

Dominic scrambled backward in the mud, clutching his broken wrist, staring up at the circle of armed men surrounding him.

"What are you going to do to me?" Dominic wept, his bravado completely shattered.

Roman looked down at him, then turned his gaze back toward the warm lights of his mansion glowing faintly on the crest of Beacon Hill in the distance.

"I'm not going to kill you, Dominic," Roman said calmly.

Dominic blinked, a faint spark of hope flashing in his eyes. "You... you aren't?"

"No," Roman said, motioning to two federal agents in dark trench coats who stepped out from behind the lead SUV, carrying a thick stack of federal arrest warrants. "I gave the audio drives, the financial records, and Claire’s full testimony to the United States Attorney an hour ago. You're going to spent the rest of your life in a maximum-security federal cell in Colorado. And every dollar your family owns is being seized by the court."

Dominic let out a pathetic howl of anguish as the federal agents slapped heavy steel cuffs onto his wrists, dragging him toward an unmarked sedan.

Roman turned his back on his former rival, walking back toward his SUV as the first pale light of dawn began to break over the Boston skyline.

"Boss?" Silas asked, opening the door for him. "Where to?"

Roman looked at his watch.