The rain pelted the roof of the armored black Cadillac with the force of falling lead. Inside, the cabin was suffocatingly silent, save for the rhythmic, mechanical swipe of the windshield wipers. I reached into my coat pocket, my thumb grazing the damp, frayed fabric of Miss Rose.

Back inside the subterranean tactical bunker beneath my Westchester estate, the atmosphere was vastly different from the blood-soaked floors of Red Hook.

The wounds on Elena’s wrists had been treated, and both she and Lily were sleeping soundly in the secure guest wing upstairs, guarded by four of my most loyal men.

I stood before the digital display terminal, watching the encrypted files Niko had extracted from Colombo’s private terminal scroll down the screen. Rows of offshore bank accounts, encrypted messaging logs, and financial routing codes flashed in bright green text.

Niko sat across the stainless-steel table, a cup of black coffee between his bandaged hands.

"The funds didn't route through local shell companies," I said, my fingers flying across the keyboard, decoding the metadata layer by layer. "They went through an international trust based in Zurich."

"A trust that requires dual signatures," Niko added, leaning forward. "One from Colombo, and one from a member of your own executive board. Someone with active clearance to authorize multi-million-dollar syndicate acquisitions without your secondary sign-off."

"That narrows the list down to three men," Marco stated, walking into the bunker with a fresh dossier in his hand. "Salvatore, Viktor, and Dominic."

I stopped typing. The name Dominic hung in the air like a phantom limb.

"Not Dominic," I said coldly. "Dominic took a bullet in his shoulder during the docks war of 2012 to save my life. He’s as loyal as they come."

"Then that leaves Salvatore and Viktor," Marco replied, tossing the dossier onto the table. "Viktor has been expanding his shipping routes into Canada independently over the past six months. Salvatore has been quietly liquidating his real estate holdings in New York."

I stared at the glowing screen. The final decryption layer of the Zurich trust file finished loading, displaying the unmasked digital signature of the secondary account holder.

The name on the screen wasn't Viktor.

It wasn't Salvatore, either.

It was a name I hadn't expected to see for another ten years—someone who had sat at my right hand, managed my personal security details, and sworn an oath of absolute blood allegiance over my brother's grave.