Eighty-seven minutes into the flight, the infant son of one of New York’s most feared mafia bosses was still screaming, and everyone in first class had stopped pretending not to be terrified. Three bottles

"Let me go!" I screamed, thrashing wildly, sinking my teeth into Vance’s wrist through his leather glove.

Vance snarled in pain, striking me across the face with his open hand. The blow sent me sprawling into the wet gravel, the taste of copper exploding on my tongue. "Shut up, you miserable brat! You and that pathetic mother of yours cost me forty million dollars tonight!"

He yanked me to my feet, wrapping an arm around my neck in a crushing chokehold, pressing the hot barrel of a customized silver revolver against my temple.

Ahead of us, emerging from the burning smoke of the shattered warehouse, three figures walked forward into the glare of the van’s remaining headlight.

In the center was Vincent Moretti. His tactical vest was scorched, his face streaked with soot and blood, but his eyes were blazing with the fury of an archangel. To his left was Franco, carrying a smoking combat shotgun.

And to his right, leaning heavily on Franco’s shoulder, was Dr. Eleanor Ward.

"Mom!" I sobbed, the cry tearing out of my chest.

Her face was bruised, her lip split, and her clothing torn from days of captivity, but the moment Eleanor heard my voice, her head snapped up. All the exhaustion vanished from her hazel eyes, replaced by the feral, unbreakable rage of a mother whose child was in peril.

"Leah!" she cried, stumbling forward, but Franco gently held her back. "Vance, let her go! You have the codes! Take the offshore accounts and run! Just let my baby go!"

"The codes are useless now, Eleanor!" Vance spat, his grip tightening on my windpipe until spots danced before my eyes. "Moretti’s hacker burned the ledger onto the global financial wire ten minutes ago! Magistrate Cole is already in federal custody! My empire is gone!"

"Then your life is gone too, Julian," Vincent said, his voice terrifyingly calm as he took a slow, deliberate step forward. He lowered his pistol to his side, showing completely empty hands. "Look around you. Your men are dead or fleeing. You have one bullet in that antique revolver, and you're surrounded by three tons of burning scrap metal."

"Take one more step, Moretti, and I paint this gravel with her brains!" Vance screamed, his voice cracking into sheer madness.

"You won't shoot her," Vincent said softly, stepping closer. "Because the moment you pull that trigger, Leah ceases to be a shield. And you know what I will do to you once she hits the ground."

Vance’s hand began to tremble against my skull. The cold steel of the gun barrel rattled against my bone. The pressure on my neck was suffocating, but through the haze of pain, I remembered what Vincent had told me on the tarmac: *You see the truth when everyone else is blind.*

I looked down at Vance’s feet.

He was standing directly on top of the rusted iron grate of the drainage overflow pipe—the very pipe Vincent had used to infiltrate the complex. And sticking out from the seam of the grate was a six-inch length of frayed steel winch cable, left behind by the maintenance crews.

I didn't try to pull away from his grip.

Instead, I went completely limp, dropping all sixty pounds of my dead weight toward the ground.

The sudden drop pulled Vance off balance. His revolver jerked upward into the air. In that split second of confusion, I hooked my sneaker behind the exposed winch cable and yanked it with everything I had.

The cable snagged Vance’s ankle. With his center of gravity already broken, he tripped backward onto the iron grate, his gun discharging harmlessly into the stormy clouds above.

*BANG.*

"Now!" I screamed into the mud.

Vincent didn't need an invitation.

Before Vance could recover his footing, Vincent crossed the fifteen feet of distance like a predatory cat. His combat boot came down on Vance’s wrist with a sickening snap, sending the silver revolver skittering into the dark waters of the bay.

With a fluid, brutal motion, Vincent hoisted Vance up by his lapels, slamming his spine against the steel frame of a shipping container.

"This is for my son," Vincent whispered.

He drove a savage right hook into Vance’s jaw, knocking three teeth onto the gravel.

"And this," Vincent continued, his voice dropping into a subterranean growl as he drew his combat knife, "is for Eleanor and her girls."

I didn't watch the rest.

I scrambled across the wet gravel on my hands and knees until warm, trembling arms scooped me up from the dirt.

"Leah! Oh God, Leah!"

My mother collapsed onto the ground with me, burying her face into my wet hair, weeping so violently her whole body shook. I buried my face into the crook of her neck, breathing in the familiar scent of lavender soap and old paper that still clung to her skin despite the horrors of the last four days.

"I found the bug, Mom," I sobbed into her shoulder. "I found the bug under the table, and I saved the baby, and I brought them to you..."

"I know, my brave girl. I know," Eleanor whispered through her tears, kissing my cheeks, my forehead, my bruised lip. "You were the anchor. You saved us all."

A shadow fell over us.

Vincent stood there, wiping his blade with a clean handkerchief before sheathing it. The monstrous rage that had possessed him moments before was entirely gone. He looked down at my mother and me, his slate-gray eyes softening into something resembling peace.