The silence on the terrace was absolute. You could have heard a velvet petal drop onto the Italian marble.

"Clear!" the lead operative barked in a raspy Italian accent, stepping further into the study.

"Not quite," I said.

I fired twice.

The suppressed crack of the Sig Sauer tore through the silence of the room. The lead operative dropped instantly, his rifle clattering against the Persian rug. The second man spun around, trying to bring his barrel up, but a burst of automatic fire from the doorway shattered his shoulder—Grace, positioned in the hallway with a submachine gun, had caught him dead-center.

The third man threw himself behind the mahogany sofa, breathing heavily, pressing the transmit button on his comms unit.

"We've been compromised! It's a—"

He didn't get to finish the sentence.

I vaulted over the top of my desk, landing hard on the floor beside the sofa, and kicked his rifle away before he could swing the muzzle toward me. He reached for a secondary blade tucked into his boot, but I grabbed his wrist, twisting it until bone snapped with a sickening crunch.

He screamed, his eyes rolling back in agony as I pressed the cold barrel of my pistol directly against his forehead.

"Where is Moretti?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

"F-Fuck you," the man choked out, blood pooling on the carpet beneath his shattered arm.

"Wrong answer," I said, cocking the hammer.

Before I could pull the trigger, the comms unit clipped to his tactical vest crackled to life. A deep, raspy voice echoed through the static—a voice I hadn't heard in five years, but one I would recognize in the middle of a hurricane.

“Ah, Evan. I must admit, I underestimated you. Sending Vanessa was a gamble, but keeping you alive was my greatest masterpiece.”

I stared down at the radio unit, my thumb pressing the talk button.

"You should have stayed in the grave, Dante."

Moretti laughed on the other end—a dry, rattling sound that filled the bloody study. “Graves are for amateurs, my friend. And as for your little estate... look out the front window.”

My head snapped toward the floor-to-ceiling windows.

Across the manicured lawn, standing by the edge of the rose garden where I had played a gardener just two days ago, was a tall, lean figure in a tailored overcoat. Even from fifty yards away, the scar across his left cheek caught the moonlight.