My name is Julian Hale. At thirty-four, I had more money than I could spend and enough influence to make powerful men answer my calls at midnight. Hotels.

The rain fell in heavy, blinding sheets over the Industrial River District.

At 1:30 AM, the abandoned dockside warehouse looked like a rusted carcass rising from the muddy banks of the Chicago River. Inside, bright halogen work lights illuminated a concrete floor scattered with wooden crates, shipping containers, and heavy machinery.

In a makeshift office on the second-floor gantry overlooking the main floor, Elias Vance sat behind a folding table. He was a tall, lean man with sharp features, salt-and-pepper hair, and a prominent silver ring featuring a dark red ruby on his right thumb.

He wore high-end audio headphones, leaning over a laptop screen that displayed a static digital feed. Beside him sat a bottle of expensive bourbon and two armed men in dark raincoats.

"Anything yet?" one of the guards asked, blowing on his cold hands.

Elias adjusted his headphones, a arrogant smirk playing on his lips. "Patience, Thomas. Julian Hale is a proud man. He won't run to that room while his staff is awake. But right now, his whole house is on lockdown. The little girl played her part perfectly. The seed of doubt is planted."

"You think the kid really said it?" the guard asked. "She's three years old. What if she messed up the line?"

"She didn't mess up," Elias chuckled, taking a sip of bourbon. "I gave her a handful of imported chocolates and told her it was a secret game. Children love secret games. Julian heard his dead daughter's name from a baby's mouth tonight. By three in the morning, he'll be on his knees in that west wing study, weeping over those old pictures like a broken old man. And when he does, we record it, send it to the commission, and take his shipping routes before sunrise."

Suddenly, the audio feed coming through Elias's headphones flickered with heavy static.

Crackle. Snap.

Elias tapped his headset. "What the hell?"

Through the static, a crisp, terrifyingly familiar voice cut through the line, sounding as clear as if the speaker were standing right inside the room.

"Elias."

Elias froze, his bourbon glass stopping inches from his lips.

The static cleared completely. The laptop monitor flickered, and instead of the dark, empty west wing study in Beverly Hills, the screen abruptly displayed a live video feed from a dark, moving vehicle.

Julian Hale was sitting in the back of a black armored SUV, staring directly into the camera lens with cold, calm, predatory eyes.

"I hope the signal quality is up to your standards, Elias," Julian's voice echoed through the headset. "I know how particular you are about your equipment."

Elias slammed his headphones onto the desk, scrambling to his feet, his chair screeching against the concrete floor. "Shut it off! Truncate the IP!"

"Boss!" the guard shouted, looking out the glass window of the gantry office down at the main floor. "We've lost the perimeter cameras!"

Before anyone could react, a massive explosion shook the warehouse foundation.

BOOM!

The heavy steel roller doors at the front of the building were blown completely off their hinges in a flash of orange fire and twisted metal. Heavy black smoke poured into the building as two armored tactical vehicles smashed through the wreckage, their high-intensity LED bars blinding the six Vance enforcers stationed on the ground floor.

"Inbound! We have inbound!" a guard shouted downstairs, pulling his automatic rifle.

Suppressed gunfire erupted across the floor.

Pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft!

Julian's tactical team, clad in dark Kevlar armor with night-vision goggles, poured out of the vehicles like shadows, moving in a flawless diamond formation. Within twelve seconds, all six floor guards were neutralized, falling to the concrete without firing a single effective return shot.

Up on the gantry, Elias Vance was sweating profusely, his face pale with shock. He pulled a silver 9mm pistol from his shoulder holster, his hands shaking violently for the first time in twenty years.

"Get us out the back door! Now!" Elias screamed to his remaining two guards.

They turned toward the metal fire exit staircase behind the office, but before they could lay a hand on the door handle, the heavy iron door burst open with incredible force.

Marco stepped through the threshold, holding a heavy tactical shotgun.

BANG!

The guard on the right was lifted off his feet by the force of the blast, flying backward over the metal railing to the concrete floor thirty feet below. The second guard tried to raise his weapon, but Marco delivered a brutal side-kick to his knee, snapping the joint, followed by a heavy pistol-whip to the side of his skull that knocked him instantly unconscious.

Elias backed away, raising his silver pistol, his thumb hovering over the safety.

"Don't move, Elias," a deep, quiet voice commanded from the dark hallway behind Marco.

Julian Hale stepped out of the shadows.

He wore a tailored black coat over a dark suit, completely unbothered by the rain dripping from his collar. His expression was utterly void of anger, passion, or fear. It was the face of a executioner who had arrived to perform a routine duty.

Elias looked at the barrel of Marco's shotgun, then at Julian's dark, hollow eyes. He slowly lowered his gun, letting it clatter onto the metal floorboards.

"Julian..." Elias rasped, lifting his hands, trying to summon his old arrogance. "This is a violation of the commission treaty. You can't attack a family commander without a formal sit-down—"

Julian didn't answer. He stepped forward, caught Elias by the throat with his gloved left hand, and slammed him violently against the metal wall of the gantry.

"You brought my dead daughter into your cheap games," Julian said, his voice dropping to a whisper that cut colder than the rain outside. "And you used a three-year-old child to do it."

"It was just business!" Elias choked out, his eyes bulging as Julian's grip tightened around his windpipe. "It was Victor's idea! Victor planned the whole thing! I was just executing the play!"

Julian leaned in close, his dark eyes reflecting the flickering halogen lights above.

"Where is Victor tonight, Elias?"

"He's... he's at the casino club in Midtown..." Elias gasped, air rapidly leaving his lungs. "He's waiting for my call... please, Julian... we can make a deal... shipping routes... five million in cash... anything!"

Julian looked at the heavy silver ring on Elias's right thumb—the ring that little Amara had described in my dining room.

Without a word, Julian reached out, grabbed Elias's thumb, and twisted it backward with a sharp, sickening CRACK.

Elias let out a blood-curdling scream that echoed through the empty warehouse.

Julian pulled the silver ring off the broken digit, holding it up to the light, before dropping it into his coat pocket.

"Tell your brother I'm coming for his casino next," Julian whispered into Elias's ear.

Then, Julian tossed him to Marco like a sack of trash.

"Tie him up," Julian ordered, turning back toward the stairs. "Deliver him to the state police headquarters downtown with an anonymous tip regarding his outstanding federal warrants. Let him spend the next thirty years in a maximum-security cell thinking about children's games."

"And Victor, Boss?" Marco asked, racking the slide of his shotgun.