I came home early and nearly fired the young maid I found sitting on my kitchen floor, making my three daughters laugh for the first time since their mother was murdered. But before I could throw her out, my eldest daughter grabbed my coat, looked me straight in the eyes, and spoke her first words in fourteen months: “Daddy killed Mommy.”

Midnight arrived with a heavy, suffocating fog that blanketed the East River.

I stood on the second-story gantry inside Warehouse 7 at Pier 42, looking down through a pair of night-vision binoculars at the concrete floor below. The air smelled of salt water, diesel exhaust, and cold rust.

Beside me, Cassian was adjusting the suppressor on his tactical rifle. Below us, twenty of my best men were concealed behind stacks of wooden pallets, shipping crates, and stationary forklifts.

“Target is approaching,” Viktor’s low voice crackled through my earpiece from his position near the gatehouse. “Three vehicles. Two dark SUVs and a medium flatbed truck. No headlights.”

“Let them enter the courtyard,” I said into my lapel mic. “Hold fire until the rear SUV crosses the threshold. I want all of them inside the net.”

The heavy iron gates of Pier 42 creaked open slowly as a bribe-paid guard stepped aside. The three vehicles rolled silently into the fog-filled yard, their tires crunching over loose gravel. They stopped forty feet from the main entrance of Warehouse 7.

The doors of the SUVs opened. Eight men stepped out into the damp night air. They were dressed in dark tactical gear, carrying short-barreled automatic weapons—cartel soldiers, heavily trained, moving with tactical precision.

In the center of the group stepped a man wearing a long leather coat. He walked with a slight limp, his right hand resting inside his pocket.

I raised my binoculars, focusing on his face.

The jagged scar running from his temple to his jaw was unmistakable in the green hue of the night-vision scope.

Hector Mendoza.

A dark, vicious wave of satisfaction washed through me. He had taken the bait. The fake manifest log detailing a shipment of smuggled military hardware had brought the snake straight out of his hole.

“Cassian,” I whispered. “Take the driver of the lead SUV. Viktor, seal the gates behind them. Execute.”

A fraction of a second later, the sharp, muffled thwip of Cassian’s silenced rifle echoed through the warehouse.

Fifty yards away, the driver of the lead SUV slumped forward against the steering wheel, a clean hole appearing in the center of his forehead.

Before the body could hit the horn, the floodlights mounted to the warehouse ceiling burst to life, illuminating the yard in a blinding, five-thousand-watt wall of white light.

“Russo Syndicate!” Cassian’s voice boomed over the warehouse PA system. “Drop your weapons and get on the ground! Now!”

The cartel soldiers didn't drop their weapons. They were hardened men who knew that surrendering to Dominic Russo meant a slow death in a basement.

They opened fire immediately, spraying automatic rounds toward the high gantry.

Sparks showered down as bullets chipped away at the iron beams near my head. I didn't flinch. I reached under my coat, pulled my custom twin Sig Sauer handguns, and stepped up to the railing.

The firefight was short, violent, and absolute.

My men opened fire from three elevated positions, catching the cartel squad in a lethal crossfire. Within forty seconds, six of Mendoza’s soldiers were dead on the concrete floor, their blood pooling in the rainwater. The remaining two were brought down by non-lethal leg shots from Viktor’s team as they tried to scramble back toward the gates.

In the center of the slaughter, Hector Mendoza stood motionless.

He hadn't drawn a weapon. He hadn't run. He simply stood in the bright floodlights, his long coat splattered with his men’s blood, looking up at the high gantry where I stood.

I lowered my weapons, tucked them back into my holsters, and walked down the iron staircase to the warehouse floor.

My leather boots clicked against the concrete as I walked through the smoke and the smell of cordite, stopping six feet in front of the man who had ordered the murder of my wife.

Hector stared at me, his eyes dark, sunken, and burning with a mad, feverish intensity.

“Dominic Russo,” Hector rasped, his voice sounding like dry leaves blowing across pavement. “The Great King of New York.”

Without a word, I brought my right hand across his face in a brutal, backhanded blow that sent him crashing to his knees on the bloody concrete.

Viktor stepped up instantly, kicking Hector’s hands behind his back and snapping heavy steel zip-ties around his wrists.

I bent down, grabbing Hector by his thin hair and yanking his head back so he was forced to look into my eyes.

“You spoke to my daughter,” I whispered, my voice dropping so low that only he could hear it over the idling engine of the flatbed truck. “You used a toy to tell a five-year-old girl that I killed her mother.”

Hector let out a wet, coughing laugh, blood staining his yellowed teeth.

“She needed to know... the truth, Russo,” Hector spat, glaring at me with pure hatred. “You did kill her. You put her in that car! You knew we were coming for you, but you stayed in your high castle while your sweet Isabella drove through Queens unprotected!”

I tightened my grip on his hair, pulling his head back further until his skin stretched taut across his throat.

“Who gave you the walkie-talkie frequency?” I asked calmly. “Who told you my daughters were in the kitchen at two o'clock yesterday?”

Hector sneered, his eyes filled with dark triumph. “Shoot me, Russo. Put a bullet in my head like you did my brother. You’ll never find out. The worm is already inside your apple. The strike is already set.”

I stared at him for three seconds. Then, slowly, I let go of his hair and stood up.

“Take him to the basement under the estate,” I told Cassian. “Do not kill him yet. Set up the interrogation kit.”

“Boss!” Gabriel rushed through the warehouse doors, his face pale, his phone pressed tightly against his ear.

I turned quickly. “What happened?”

Gabriel looked at me with horror in his eyes.

“The estate guards just reported in,” Gabriel gasped. “Five minutes ago, a fire broke out in the east wing garage. During the evacuation, a black van blew through the secondary gate.”