Gabriel’s eyes did not leave Evan’s face. Fourteen years of blood, sweat, midnight phone calls, and silent understandings hung in the quiet foyer of the mansion, reduced to the steady, deceptive hum of the grandfather clock.

Gabriel lowered his weapon, the barrel smoking slightly in the chilled air of the shattered foyer. He walked over to the fallen mercenary, knelt down, and reached into the tactical vest pocket.

His fingers brushed against a heavy steel thumb drive—and a folded piece of heavy parchment paper.

He unfolded it. Inside was a handwritten manifest listing every single offshore account Evan Cross had tried to siphon funds into before his arrest, along with a secondary list of names Gabriel hadn't seen since his days running the South Side docks.

At the bottom of the list was a single sentence, written in harsh, jagged handwriting: “The restructuring was only phase one. The port authority belongs to the ghost.”

“Who is the ghost?” Gabriel asked, turning his head back toward the concrete pillar.

The girl was standing there now, dusting off her oversized hoodie. She looked down at the dead mercenary, then back up at Gabriel.

“Our father,” she said simply. “And he doesn’t want your money, Mr. Rowan. He wants the whole city back.”

Gabriel stared at her, the pieces clicking into place with the brutal precision of a vault mechanism locking shut. Evan Cross wasn’t the mastermind of the corporate coup. He was just a pawn managed by someone who had been hiding in the shadows of Rowan Freight since the very beginning—someone who knew every secret Gabriel thought he had buried deep in the past.

“What’s your name?” Gabriel asked, his voice softening just a fraction.

“Maya,” she said. “Maya Vance.”

Gabriel’s breath caught in his throat. Vance. As in Diane Vance, the former head of legal compliance currently sitting in a federal holding cell awaiting trial.