The heavy oak door slammed shut behind Dr. Harrison Cole, his muffled curses echoing down the marble-tiled corridor of the Falcone estate. Carmine didn't even blink. He kept his Smith & Wesson steady until the estate's heavy security gates groaned, signaling the disgraced surgeon’s departure.

He didn't look at the titanium cylinder, but he could smell it.

"Silas Vance," Gabriel said, the name tasting like poison on his tongue. "Julian was a corporate parasite. Silas is a ghost. He spent fifteen years in deep-cover industrial espionage for rival syndicates in Eastern Europe before turning his focus to Wall Street logistics."

"He mentioned my mother," I said, pacing across the Persian rug. The words hung heavily in the air between us. "He said she was fired from the industrial labs forty years ago for stealing company secrets. Gabriel, that's a lie. My mother spent her entire life scrubbing factory floors and working sweatshop lines. She couldn't even afford a textbook, let alone steal high-grade chemical formulas."

Gabriel turned slowly from the fireplace, his dark eyes locking onto mine. "People lie about their pasts, Maya, especially when they're trying to protect the people they love. Your mother raised you alone in a two-room apartment with crushing medical debt. Why would she hide a past in industrial chemistry?"

"To keep us alive," I replied, a cold knot tightening in my stomach. "If Silas knows about her... if the people who made that thread knew her..."

"Then you aren't just an auditor who got lucky," Gabriel finished, stepping across the room and grabbing my shoulders with hands that felt like warm steel. "You are the missing link. Silas didn't come here to threaten you. He came here to recruit you, or to eliminate you before you figured out what your mother really left behind."

The door burst open, and Carmine rushed in, looking paler than I had ever seen him.

"Boss! We tracked Silas's car to the old Queens textile district. The abandoned manufacturing plant where your mother used to work."