In front of seventy employees, my mafia boss's jealous fiancée grabbed my hair and cut off the braid I'd grown for years to honor my dead grandmother.

The maze of shipping containers was a suffocating labyrinth of rusted steel, dripping condensation, and suffocating darkness.

Every shadow felt alive, every gust of wind whistling through the narrow gaps between the giant metal boxes sounded like a whispered threat. I pressed my back against the corrugated wall of a forty-foot container, my breathing controlled and shallow, exactly as Adrian had drilled into me during our countless hours in the underground training bunker.

My suppressed carbine was held tight against my chest, the thermal scope glowing with a faint, ghostly green light in the pitch blackness.

Through the headset clipped to my ear, the encrypted comms crackled with bursts of static and clipped tactical chatter.

*"Alpha team, breach successful at the starboard cargo hatch..."*

*"Beta team taking heavy fire from the sniper nest on crane four... Watch your crossfire!"*

*"Where is the boss? Leader is off grid—repeat, leader’s signal is fluctuating near the central elevator shaft..."*

I tapped the comms button with my thumb. "This is Elena. I’m tracking solo along the secondary gantry level. I have eyes on the auxiliary stairwell leading up to the main bridge. No hostile presence detected yet."

A heavy pause followed before Adrian’s voice cut through the static, strained and breathless. *"Negative, Elena. Pull back immediately. Intelligence was bad—Julian didn't just bug the pier, he flooded the lower decks with heavy-grade gas. If you go up that stairwell without a rebreather, you'll pass out in two minutes."*

"I’m already at the base of the stairs, Adrian," I whispered back, my eyes scanning the dim, flickering emergency lights casting long, eerie shadows across the metal steps. "And I see footprints in the condensation. Someone just went up. Someone carrying a heavy limp... or dragging dead weight."

*"Elena, goddamnit, that’s an order—"*

I clicked the comms off.

I couldn't afford to wait. If Julian managed to upload the encrypted ledger to the offshore syndicate servers, Adrian’s entire empire would be wiped out in seconds, leaving him vulnerable, broke, and hunted by every rival family from here to Sicily. More importantly, Bianca was up there. The woman who had humiliated me, who had taken scissors to the hair that represented my only remaining tie to my grandmother.

Some debts couldn't be settled by proxy. They had to be collected in person.

I slipped the gas mask from my tactical belt, snapping it securely over my face and adjusting the straps until the seal was airtight. The world narrowed down to the harsh, mechanical sound of my own filtered breathing and the rhythmic thump of my racing heart.

I stepped past the heavy steel fire door and began ascending the industrial stairwell, climbing higher into the belly of the massive freighter.

The air grew heavier with every level I climbed, thick with the chemical stench of ozone and old machine oil. The metal stairs vibrated beneath my combat boots, echoing faintly against the hollow bulkheads of the ship.

As I reached the intermediate landing of the bridge control deck, the heavy oak doors leading into the main operations room were ajar. A thin sliver of pale fluorescent light spilled out across the grey grating.

I froze, flattening my body against the bulkhead.

Voices drifted out from inside—sharp, frantic, and laced with rising hysteria.

"...you absolute idiot, Julian!" Bianca’s voice shrieked, the usual haughty poise completely shattered. "You said the Cole guards wouldn't breach the perimeter for at least an hour! Look at the monitors! They've already taken the lower decks!"

"Shut your mouth, Bianca!" Julian snapped back, his voice tight and trembling with suppressed rage. "If you hadn't spent half an hour parading around the manor playing petty games with that damn maid, we would have had the mainframe wiped before they even crossed the county line!"

"Don't you dare blame this on me!" Bianca snarled, her heels clicking furiously against the steel floor as she paced back and forth. "You promised me the crown! You promised me Adrian’s head on a silver platter! And now we're trapped on a rust bucket in the middle of a freezing harbor while your so-called invincible mercenaries get slaughtered downstairs!"

I slowly edged closer to the partially opened door, raising my carbine until the thermal sight was aligned with the gap in the frame.

Through the scope, the thermal signatures glowed bright orange against the cold metal background of the bridge. Julian stood hunched over the primary navigation console, his fingers flying across the digital keyboard as he desperately tried to bypass the security encryption locking down the ship's engine controls. A few feet away, Bianca stood near the massive shatterproof windows overlooking the stormy bay, her velvet coat stained with soot, her face pale and twisted with panic.

And then, I saw the third signature.

Lying slumped against the base of the central server rack was a dark, motionless mass. Marcus.

His tactical vest was soaked in a spreading pool of bright, thermal-orange liquid. Blood.

Julian hadn't just used his own men as pawns; when Marcus failed to stop Adrian in the manor, Julian had apparently decided that loose ends needed to be tied permanently.

"The transfer is at ninety-four percent," Julian muttered, his voice manic as he watched the progress bar crawl across the glowing monitor. "Just give me two more minutes... just two more minutes and Adrian won't even have a chair to sit on."

"And if he catches us before then?" Bianca whispered, her voice trembling as she clutched her arms tightly around herself. "What happens to us, Julian?"

Julian didn't look up from the screen. A cold, callous smile touched his lips. "Then we burn the ship down with all of us in it."

I didn't wait for two more minutes.

With a swift, practiced kick, I slammed my boot against the heavy steel door, sending it crashing wide open into the bridge.