Lucian’s voice didn’t carry its usual thunder. It was low, raspy, and stripped of the quiet arrogance that usually made grown men bow their heads in his presence. The heavy, gold-embossed pen in his coat pocket—the one he used to sign death warrants disguised as trade agreements—seemed to weigh him down like lead.

The rain had turned into a thick, suffocating fog over the East River.

Pier 42 was a graveyard of rusting shipping containers and rotting wooden planks. At 11:45 PM, the sky was pitch black, save for the sickly yellow glow of industrial floodlights cutting through the mist.

I stood inside the control room of a crane tower fifty feet above the pier, wearing a tactical black coat, night-vision goggles resting on my head, and a suppressed sniper rifle propped against the window sill. Down on the tarmac, Elena was inside an armored SUV three hundred yards away, monitoring our perimeter drones. Nico was safe, miles away in an underground bunker protected by an elite private security force that cost me five million dollars an hour.

Tonight, I wasn't a mother mourning a broken marriage. I was the executioner.

Through the scope of my rifle, I watched the dark silhouette of an unflagged cargo ship glided silently into the dock. The ship’s heavy iron ramp lowered with a loud, metallic screech, smashing against the concrete.

A fleet of six black SUVs pulled off the ship. Dozens of men in military-grade body armor stepped out into the damp night, carrying heavy assault rifles.

At the center of the column stood Bianca Romano.

She looked entirely out of place amidst the grease and rust, wearing a pristine white trench coat that practically glowed in the dark—a poetic echo of the white silk dress she wore on that Sicilian terrace while my world fell apart.

beside her stepped Lucian.

My heart gave a sickening, violent thud against my ribs. Seeing him in the flesh after three days felt like taking a hit of poison. He looked haggard, his jaw shadowed by dark stubble, his dark suit rumpled. But his eyes were wide, bloodshot, and frantic—the eyes of a man who had backed himself into an inescapable corner.

“Is everything secured?” Lucian’s voice crackled through the intercepted radio frequency in my earpiece.

“The perimeter is clear, Don Lucian,” one of the Sicilian commanders replied in heavily accented English. “Don Carmine’s strike force is ready. We proceed to the Greenwich Village brownstone in twenty minutes. The woman and the sister will be neutralized. The boy will be secured.”

Neutralized.

Lucian didn't contradict him. He didn't say, Don't hurt my wife. He just stared at the ground, took a deep drag from his cigarette, and blew the smoke into the freezing air.

“Just get the child,” Lucian said, his voice cold, lifeless, devoid of humanity. “Everything else is collateral.”

Up in the tower, I slowly rested my index finger against the light steel curve of the rifle trigger. Tears threatened to sting my eyes, but I blinked them back instantly. The last shred of love I had held for the man I married seven years ago evaporated into the cold night air.

He had given the order to kill me.

“Elena,” I whispered into my collar mic. “Initiate Phase One.”

“Copy that, sister,” Elena’s voice echoed back. “Let’s light up the sky.”

A split second later, a deafening explosion shattered the silence of Pier 42.

One of the secondary cargo containers fifty yards behind Lucian’s convoy detonated in a blinding burst of fire and orange light. The blast wave shattered the windows of the SUVs, sending a wall of shrapnel ripping through the air.

Shouts and screams erupted in Italian and English as the Sicilian mercenaries scrambled for cover.

“Ambush! Ambush!” a commander yelled, firing blindly into the fog.

Lucian immediately grabbed Bianca by her white coat, dragging her behind an armored vehicle, pulling his custom silver gun from his holster. “Where is it coming from?!”

Before anyone could locate the threat, the floodlights illuminating the pier abruptly died, plunging the entire dock into pitch-black darkness.

Down below, pure chaos took hold. But through my night-vision lens, the world was illuminated in sharp, glowing neon green.

I tracked the white coat moving frantically behind the rear bumper of the lead SUV. Bianca was screaming, clutching Lucian’s arm in sheer terror, all her high-society elegance completely stripped away.

I centered the reticle directly onto her shoulder.

Crack.

The silenced rifle kicked softly against my shoulder. Down on the pier, Bianca shrieked as a heavy bullet tore through her collarbone, spinning her around and slamming her against the wet pavement.

“Bianca!” Lucian roared, dropping to his knees to drag her behind the wheel well, his eyes scanning the surrounding crane towers in absolute horror.

He looked up directly at my tower window. Through the magnification of my scope, our eyes met across the five-hundred-foot gap. He couldn't see me in the dark, but he knew.

I switched my radio transmitter to the frequency Lucian’s earpiece was locked into.

“Hello, Lucian,” I whispered into the microphone, my voice ringing loud and crystal clear in his ear.

Lucian froze on the blood-soaked concrete, his hand hovering over Bianca’s bleeding shoulder.

“S-Serena?” he stuttered, his voice laced with absolute disbelief and horror. “Where are you? What are you doing?!”

“I’m looking at you through a thermal scope, Lucian,” I said, my voice dead, smooth, and terrifyingly calm. “I’m looking at the man who just ordered his mercenaries to murder the mother of his child.”

“Serena, listen to me!” Lucian yelled frantically into his mic, ducking as another round of controlled gunfire from Marco’s men—who had now moved in from the flanks—ripped through his remaining bodyguards. “It wasn't like that! Carmine forced my hand! I was going to bring you in after—”

“Save it,” I cut him off. “I gave you seven years of my life. I gave you my loyalty, my grace, and my forgiveness for every dirty secret you kept in the dark. But you took the one day I needed you—the day our son was born—and threw it in the dirt for a mob chief’s daughter and a territorial deal.”

“I love you, Serena!” Lucian screamed into the radio, tears finally cutting tracks through the grease on his face. “I swear to God, I love you!”

“You don't love me, Lucian,” I replied, taking a slow, steady breath. “You loved owning me. But you don't own me anymore.”

I shifted the reticle three inches to the left, lining up the shot directly with the fuel tank of the armored Maybach sitting right next to him.