Mafia boss Bennett Hale thought the young maid in his mansion was only there to clean, until he came home early and found her crying beside his dying mother, gently shaving away the last of her hair. Then his mother looked him in the eye and revealed why Clara had really come into their lives, and suddenly everything Bennett thought his power and money had bought him meant nothing.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Muzzle flashes strobed through the pitch-black warehouse alley like jagged lightning.

Dominic and my men instantly opened fire, heavy automatic rounds tearing through the fiberglass body panels of Vane's SUVs. Glass shattered, tires blew out with loud thundering bursts, and scream after scream echoed over the roaring rain.

Vincent Vane dove behind the engine block of his lead vehicle, his voice shrieking in absolute fury. "KILL THEM! KILL THEM ALL!"

"FALL BACK TO THE TRUCK!" I roared, firing three rounds into a charging Vane shooter, dropping him into the wet concrete before turning back toward my SUV.

A bullet struck the rear window of my vehicle, spider-webbing the reinforced ballistic glass into a million white cracks.

Inside, I saw Clara screaming, covering her head with her arms on the floorboards.

I yanked the heavy rear door open, slid inside, and slammed it shut as two high-caliber rounds slammed into the steel door frame with deafening THUDS.

"DRIVE!" I yelled to my driver.

The heavy SUV roared to life, its four-wheel-drive tires spinning violently against the wet asphalt before catching traction. We rocketed out of the alley, smashing through a rusted chain-link gate and fishtailing out onto the main avenue.

Behind us, two of Vane's surviving chase vehicles surged out of the pier, their high beams blindingly bright in our rearview mirrors.

Clara was trembling on the floor, her hands wrapped around her head, crying hysterically. "I'm sorry! Bennett, I'm so sorry! This is my fault!"

I reached down with one hand, grabbing her shoulder, pulling her up onto the leather seat beside me. "Shut up, Clara!" I shouted over the sound of gunfire hitting our trunk. "It's not your fault! Did your mother give you a ledger?!"

"I DON'T KNOW WHAT A LEDGER IS!" she sobbed, clutching my coat like a lifeline. "She gave me a key! A silver key on a leather string! She told me never to lose it!"

My chest went tight. "Where is the key?"

"It's in my room at the mansion!" she cried. "In the pocket of my old jacket!"

I looked back through the cracked rear window. The two black chase cars were gaining on us, their front bumpers glowing red in the dark as their engines pushed to the limit.

I grabbed the tactical radio mounted on the center console. "Dominic! Are you behind us?"

"I'm two blocks back, Boss!" Dominic’s voice crackled through the speaker, heavy with static and heavy breathing. "They've got six shooters in those cars! We can't make it back to Riverdale without bringing them straight to your mother's house!"

"We don't go to Riverdale," I said, my teeth grinding together. "We take them to the iron yard in Queens. Setup a bottleneck at Gate 4."

"Copy that, Boss. God help us."

I lowered the radio and looked down at Clara. Her face was pale, her gray eyes staring at me with a terrifying combination of fear and trust.

"Why didn't you leave?" I asked her, my voice dropping beneath the roar of the engine. "When you realized who I was... when you realized what my father did to yours... why didn't you run away?"

Clara looked at her small, trembling hands—the same hands that had shaved my mother's hair twenty-four hours ago.

"Because when I walked into your mother's room six months ago," Clara whispered softly, "I saw a woman who was dying alone in a giant, empty palace. She looked just like my mother did before she passed. And I realized... no matter how evil your father was... your mother was just a victim, too."