The Mafia boss thought his maid was stealing from him, but when he finally opened her canvas bag, everything he believed about her shattered.

The office transformed into an absolute kill-zone within two seconds.

The heavy walnut desk absorbed three blasts of 12-gauge buckshot, sending oak splinters raining down on Dominic and Daniel as they lay side-by-side on the dusty floor.

“Your security detail has terrible loyalty control, little brother!” Daniel yelled over the deafening noise of automatic gunfire, pulling a spare speed-loader from his pocket.

“They aren't my men!” Dominic shouted back, pulling his Sig Sauer up over the top of the desk and blind-firing three rounds toward the balcony doors. “They’re Voronin syndicate mercenaries! You brought wolves into my house, Daniel!”

“I paid them three million dollars!” Daniel growled, snapping his revolver shut. “They were supposed to hold the perimeter!”

“They were paid five million by the Moretti family to make sure neither of us survived tonight!” Mara’s voice echoed from behind the steel vault door.

She was crouched beside Victor, who was laying down suppressive fire toward the balcony with two pistols.

Dominic looked at Daniel. His twin brother was covered in dust, bleeding from a minor cut on his forehead, holding a six-shot revolver like a man who had spent his life fighting in narrow alleys.

“You have six shots left?” Dominic asked.

“Five,” Daniel corrected with a grim smirk. “I don't miss.”

“On three, we flush them toward the balcony,” Dominic said, pulling a flashbang grenade from Victor’s tactical pouch on the floor. “You take the left. I take the right.”

Daniel looked at Dominic, his gray eyes narrowing. “Why are you helping me? I came here to kill you.”

“You came here because you were angry at a ghost,” Dominic said, pulling the ring pin from the flashbang with his teeth. “I’m the only living person in this city who actually shares your blood. Now shut up and get ready.”

“One!” Dominic counted.

“Two!” Daniel gritted his teeth, his hand locking onto his revolver.

“THREE!”

Dominic tossed the flashbang through the shattered glass doors onto the stone balcony.

BOOM-FLASH.

A blinding white light and a deafening shockwave exploded across the terrace. The two mercenaries on the balcony shrieked, clutching their ears and eyes.

Dominic and Daniel stood up as one, moving with an eerie, identical precision.

Dominic fired four rapid shots to the right, neutralizing the primary shooter, while Daniel stepped through the dust cloud, raising his heavy revolver and firing three precise shots to the left.

Both shooters collapsed onto the stone terrace.

Silence fell over the west wing once more, broken only by the distant wail of police sirens beginning to echo from the city center five miles away.

Daniel stood on the balcony, his coat blowing in the damp wind, his revolver smoking in his hand. He looked down at the fallen mercenaries, then back at Dominic, who was standing in the doorway with his gun lowered.

Victor stepped up beside Dominic, his weapon secured in its holster.

“House perimeter is clear, Boss,” Victor reported, wiping sweat from his eyes. “The rest of the mercenary squad fled when the emergency sirens started.”

Dominic nodded slowly. He walked out onto the balcony, stopping two feet away from his twin brother.

The rain fell lightly between them, washing the dust and blood from their faces.

“What now, Daniel?” Dominic asked quietly.

Daniel looked down at the velvet box sitting on the edge of the desk inside the room—the box containing the two lockets and the silver cufflinks.

“I spent my whole life thinking that if I killed Marcus’s favorite son, the pain would stop,” Daniel said, his voice flat, exhausted, and hollow. “It didn't.”

“Marcus didn't have a favorite son,” Dominic said, looking out over the dark estate gardens below. “He had two tools he tried to shape for his own legacy. I survived him by becoming cold. You survived him by becoming dangerous.”

He reached into his inner suit pocket, pulled out the gold patriarch ring—the seal of the Vale family empire—and tossed it to Daniel.

Daniel caught it out of the air, looking down at the heavy gold band in his palm.

“What is this?” Daniel asked.

“It’s fifty percent of everything Marcus tried to keep from you,” Dominic said. “The legal assets, the European accounts, the shipping lines. Half of it is yours. But the crime syndicate... the blood money... I’m dismantling it.”