The warehouse smelled like rust and spilled diesel, and Marco Vitale was on his knees, both hands pressed flat against the concrete like that would somehow keep him upright. "Please," he said. "Please, I can, I can fix this, I swear to you, I can fix it, just, just give me, give me another week, that's all I'm asking, one week." Silas Cross stood over him with his hands in his pockets, not even looking down yet. He was watching the two men behind Marco instead, the ones who'd dragged him in here, checking their faces for anything that looked like hesitation. There wasn't any. Good. That meant the message had already gotten through before he'd even opened his mouth. "You were supposed to move forty crates," Silas said. His voice didn't rise. It never did. "You moved twelve. And you told my people the other twenty eight got seized at the port." "They did, they, I swear, I swear on my mother, they got." "They didn't." Silas crouched down, slow, unhurried, until he was eye level with

"Somebody help her, oh God, somebody help her, she's not, she's not breathing right." The scream had come from the hallway, and by the time Silas reached the door a second voice had joined it, high and panicked, and then a third, the whole house tipping over into chaos in the space of ten seconds. He pushed past Dominic without a word, out into the corridor, and found a knot of guests already gathered around a woman on the floor, an older woman in a black dress, her hand pressed flat against her own chest, gasping in short, wet pulls that didn't sound like they were pulling in enough air. "She just collapsed," someone was saying. "She was fine, she was fine a second ago, and then she just." Silas crouched beside her without thinking about it, two fingers finding the pulse at her throat, counting, and it was there, thin and fast, skipping in a way that told him this wasn't theater and it wasn't grief either. This was a body actually failing. "Someone call for an ambulance," he said

The parking garage was three levels underground, and Silas heard the footsteps behind him before he saw them, quick, uneven, someone trying to close distance without breaking into a run. He didn't turn around. He let his hand drift toward the gun at his waist instead, fingers loose, ready, and kept walking toward the pillar the voice on the phone had named as a meeting point, counting the footsteps behind him by their rhythm alone. "Cross." He turned then, fast, and found not an attacker but a woman, mid-thirties maybe, dark coat pulled tight against the concrete cold, her breath coming quick and visible in the garage's dim light. She stopped six feet from him, hands visible, palms out, the universal signal of someone who understood exactly how dangerous the man in front of her could be. "You're not who I was told to expect," Silas said. "The call was mine. I just didn't want to say who I was over a line that might not have been as private as I needed it to be." She lowered her

"That's not possible." Naomi's hands had gone white around the steering wheel, knuckles bloodless. "There's nobody, there's no one who even knows I still have contact with anyone from that world, I made sure of that, I built a whole life specifically so nobody would ever, ever connect me back to." "Someone did." Silas kept his voice level, watching the exit ramp in the side mirror, waiting for headlights that hadn't come yet but might. "Think. Who knew you were meeting me tonight." "Nobody. I didn't tell a single." She stopped. Her mouth stayed open around the next word for a second too long. "Naomi." "My assistant," she said slowly, like the sentence was being pulled out of her against her will. "I told my assistant I had a late meeting. I didn't say who with, I swear to you I didn't say a name, but I had her clear my calendar and she asked where, she asked where I'd be in case anything came up, and I told her the garage on Fifth. I didn't think, I never thought." "How long has

Silas had his gun leveled at Voss's chest before the man finished speaking, and Voss didn't flinch, didn't raise his hands, just stood there in the mouth of the alley with the streetlight throwing long shadows across a face Silas had only ever seen in a photograph clipped to the inside of a file folder."Give me one reason," Silas said, "not to put a bullet in you right now.""Because I'm the only one of the seven who tried to stop it." Voss's voice stayed even, unhurried, the voice of a man who'd rehearsed standing in front of a loaded gun more than once in his life. "And because your father wrote that down himself, in his own hand, in a document currently sitting in Naomi's jacket pocket. Ask her. She's read it. You've read it. You already know I'm telling the truth."Silas's eyes flicked to Naomi for half a second, and she gave the smallest, tightest nod, confirming it, though her whole body had gone rigid beside him, still braced for the alley to erupt in gunfire the way the last