The silence that followed Sophie’s whisper wasn’t the quiet of an empty house; it was the suffocating stillness of a loaded barrel pressed against the back of the skull.

The Vance estate by the bay looked like a decaying museum. Victorian shingles peeling in the salt air, windows dark against the moonlight, and an overgrown garden that mirrored the desolate state of its owner's mind.

We didn't bother knocking.

Vince put his shoulder through the side French doors, the wood splintering with a sharp crack that echoed across the water. Three of my enforcers poured in behind me, weapons drawn, sweeping the lower floor in absolute silence.

The house was freezing. No heat running through the radiators, just the damp chill of the Atlantic seaboard creeping up through the floorboards.

“Clear!” Vince hissed from the hallway.

I walked into the grand parlor. In the center of the room, sitting in a high-backed leather armchair facing a cold hearth, sat an old man wrapped in a wool blanket, an oxygen tank hissing softly beside him.

Arthur Vance didn't turn around as we entered. He just stared into the ash.

“You’re late, Dominic,” the old man rasped, his voice sounding like dry leaves scraping across concrete. “I expected you an hour after Yuri found the server ping.”

I stepped forward, pressing the cold barrel of my Glock directly against the temple of his weathered, pale skull. Vance didn't even flinch. He just took a slow, rattling breath from his nasal cannula.

“You killed her,” I whispered, the words tasting like copper and gall in my mouth. “Isabelle had nothing to do with our war. She was out of the life. She was dropping Sophie off at school.”

“Isabelle was smart,” Vance murmured, his clouded eyes reflecting the moonlight. “Too smart. She found the ledger, Dominic. Not your drug ledgers—your offshore accounts containing the names of every federal judge, senator, and prosecutor on our payroll. She was going to take the girls and walk away. She came to me to cut a deal.”

My finger tightened slightly on the trigger. “And you killed her anyway?”

“I didn't pull the trigger,” Vance said with a dry, wheezing chuckle that ended in a coughing fit. “The Department of Justice wanted you broken. They knew a dead wife wouldn't do it—a dead wife just makes a tyrant go to war. But silence? Traumatized, mute children who look at their father and see an executioner? That’s a prison of a completely different design.”

“Where is she?” I snarled, pressing the gun harder against his temple.

“Where is who?”

“Don't play games with me, old man. Grace isn't just your daughter. She’s part of this.”

Vance’s smile widened, exposing yellowed teeth. “Grace is the only smart one in this family. She didn't want to destroy you from the outside, Dominic. She wanted to show your daughters what a real home feels like—without guns, without blood on the cuffs, and without a father whose shadow blocks out the sun. She played her part beautifully, didn't she?”

Before I could pull the trigger, the front door of the estate flew open.

A flashlight beam cut through the darkness of the parlor, followed by a voice that made my blood run colder than the Atlantic wind.

“Drop the gun, Dominic.”

I turned my head.

Standing in the doorway, holding a service pistol with a steady, military-grade grip, was Grace. But she wasn't wearing an oversized housekeeper’s apron anymore. She was wearing a tactical vest over a dark turtleneck, her hair pulled back into a tight bun, her eyes completely devoid of the warmth she had shown my daughters just hours earlier.