omg The crime boss who terrified an entire city was betrayed at a peace dinner, poisoned in front of his own men, and left to die in the dark. Minutes later, two little girls in matching school uniforms found him—but instead of screaming, one checked his pulse while the other whispered, “We only have minutes before he dies… and before they come back.”

The rain had turned into a thick, low-lying fog by the time my unmarked black SUV pulled onto the winding roads of Bel-Air.

The Vance Estate was a monstrosity of modern concrete and reinforced glass, perched on a cliffside overlooking the glowing expanse of the city. High perimeter walls lined with infrared cameras and motion sensors made an uninvited entrance impossible under normal circumstances.

Inside the SUV, Lily sat in the passenger seat with a stolen laptop connected to a portable radio jammer. Emma sat in the back, checking the seals on the two remaining auto-injectors.

“The main power line runs through a substation two hundred yards down the hill,” Lily said, her fingers flying across the keyboard. “I’ve already bypassed the secondary backup generators using Father’s override code. The moment you trip the manual breaker at the substation, the estate goes completely dark for six minutes.”

“And the basement vault?” I asked, adjusting the heavy tactical vest over my dark suit.

“The lower levels rely on pneumatic locks,” Emma chimed in from the back. “When power fails, the pressure drops. The vault door where they keep Julian will unseal. But you’ll have to drag him out yourself—he doesn't know you, and he’s trained to attack anyone who enters without Grandfather’s passcode.”

I picked up two flashbang grenades and clipped them to my belt, followed by a suppressed submachine gun I’d pulled from the safehouse armory.

“If I’m not back out in five minutes,” I said, looking at Lily in the rearview mirror, “take the SUV and drive to the harbor. Don't look back.”

“You’ll be back,” Emma said coldly. “You still need your antidote.”

I stepped out of the SUV into the freezing fog, slipping down the embankment toward the power substation. My left hand was entirely numb now, wrapped tightly in tactical tape so I could still grip the fore-end of the submachine gun. The poison was creeping up my neck; my throat felt narrow, swallowing blood every few seconds.

I reached the transformer box, smashed the padlocked latch with the butt of my pistol, and threw the main heavy-duty breaker switch.

A violent shower of blue sparks erupted into the night air.

Up the hill, the massive LED floodlights illuminating the Vance Estate flickered once, twice, and died. The entire compound plunged into pitch darkness.

“Timer starting,” Lily’s voice crackled through my earpiece. “Five minutes, fifty-nine seconds.”

I sprinted up the hill, my boots tearing through the wet manicured lawns. The adrenaline was fading again, my heart hammering in my ears like a cracked drum, but muscle memory took over.

I hit the perimeter fence, used an overhanging oak branch to clear the razor wire, and dropped into the main courtyard.

Shouts echoed across the dark grounds. Private security guards were scrambling, their flashlights cutting useless beams through the thick fog.

“Generator’s down! Check the perimeter!” a voice barked.

I moved like a ghost through the shadows of the lower terrace, slipping through a side service entrance where the magnetic locks had disengaged. I descended the polished marble stairs into the subterranean level, my weapon raised.

The air grew colder, smelling of ozone and wet concrete.

At the end of a long, narrow hallway stood the reinforced vault door. As Lily had promised, the pneumatic seals were hissing, yellow emergency lights flashing faintly as the pressure dumped.

I kicked the vault door open.

Inside, sitting on a metal cot in a windowless concrete room, was a young boy. He had his father’s sharp jaw and his sisters’ unmistakable, hyper-focused blue eyes. In his hand, he held a sharpened piece of rebar, stood in a low, defensive stance.

“Get away from me,” the boy growled, his voice surprisingly deep for a twelve-year-old.

“Julian?” I asked, lowering my weapon slightly. “Your sisters sent me.”

He didn't drop the rebar. “My sisters are dead. Grandfather killed them five years ago.”

“They escaped tonight,” I said, stepping into the light of the hallway. “They’re sitting in an SUV outside. They gave me this.”

I tossed him the worn leather ledger notebook Lily had handed me at the safehouse.

Julian caught it with his left hand, his eyes scanning the first page. The hostility in his posture evaporated instantly, replaced by a sudden, overwhelming shock.

“Lily’s handwriting...” he whispered.

“We have three minutes before the backup systems reboot,” I snarled, grabbing his shoulder with my right arm. “Move!”

We turned back toward the hallway, but before we could take three steps, a light flickered overhead.

A heavy metallic click echoed down the corridor.

The security doors at the far end slammed shut, emergency red strobes bursting into life. The main system hadn't been fully bypassed—Victor Vance’s security chief had initiated a manual lockdown from the main control room.

From the top of the stairwell, a door opened, and a tall, silver-haired man in a bespoke three-piece suit walked down, flanked by four guards armed with assault rifles.

Victor Vance.

“I must admit, Carter,” Victor said, his voice smooth, cultured, and devoid of emotion as he looked at me through the reinforced glass of the security partition. “Dominic told me you were dead in an alley. He severely underestimated your resilience.”

I shoved Julian behind me, raising my weapon with my good right hand.

“Your grand-daughters are alive, Vance,” I said, my voice dripping with dark fury. “And by tomorrow morning, every federal agency in the country will have your private ledgers.”

Victor Vance smiled, a slow, predatory turn of his lips.

“My grand-daughters are children, Carter. And you are a dying man holding a gun you can barely lift. Did you really think you could tear down my family from the dirt?”