"I HUGGED A DEADLY BILLIONAIRE BY MISTAKE!" HE SAVED MY BROTHER, BUT HIS PRIVATE AUDIT REVEALED A SICK TRUTH ABOUT OUR PAST

Mason looked down from his harness, his eyes locking onto Claire through the haze of rain and diesel smoke. "Don't do it, Claire! Don't give him anything! He's going to kill us anyway!"

"Shut up!" one of the guards on the catwalk snarled, stepping forward to strike Mason across the ribs with the barrel of his shotgun.

That single step was the only opening Gabriel needed.

Gabriel didn't reach for his gun. He simply raised his left hand and formed a fist.

From the darkened steel rafters sixty feet above the catwalk, two laser-guided red dots appeared simultaneously—one on the chest of the guard beside Mason, the other directly on the center of Julian Vance’s forehead.

A sharp, pneumatic thwack-thwack echoed from the ceiling.

The guard holding the shotgun collapsed instantly, tumbling over the railing and crashing onto the lower conveyor belt with a dull thud.

Julian froze. His eyes bulged as he saw the bright red beam burning against his own wet overcoat. He looked up into the darkness of the ceiling beams, where two of Gabriel’s elite tactical operators were positioned with suppressed sniper rifles, completely invisible to the floor below.

"You think I came here alone, Julian?" Gabriel asked, taking a slow, rhythmic step forward. "You've worked for my family for twenty years. When have you ever seen a Mercer walk into an exchange without holding every card in the deck?"

Julian’s face twisted into an expression of cornered, feral malice. "If I go down, the Mercer name goes with me, Gabriel! Your father approved every single counterfeit bond! Every bribe! Every execution! You think the city will let you keep your towers when the state attorney reads this?"

"My father is dead," Gabriel replied coldly, stopping at the base of the metal staircase leading to the catwalk. "His sins died with him. But yours are still breathing."

Julian’s thumb twitched on the winch button. "Then we all die together!"

Before Julian could depress the trigger, Claire stepped out from behind Gabriel.

She didn't run. She didn't hesitate. With all the strength in her arms, honed by years of lifting thirty-pound boxes of bond paper and turning heavy iron press levers, she hurled the heavy ceramic backup pistol straight up at the catwalk.

The heavy steel grip struck Julian directly across his shattered glasses.

Julian screamed in pain, dropping the remote control. The plastic box hit the steel grate and bounced off the edge, falling twenty feet toward the concrete floor.

Gabriel caught the falling remote out of the air with his left hand as easily as if it were an apple falling from a tree. With his thumb, he immediately engaged the emergency brake.

The crane winch groaned and locked in place. Mason swung to a halt, three feet above the spinning steel teeth of the machine.

On the catwalk, Julian scrambled on all fours, trying to reach a discarded revolver on the floor.

Gabriel ascended the metal staircase four steps at a time. The sound of his leather soles on the steel treads was like the countdown of an execution clock. When he reached the platform, he kicked the revolver off the edge into the abyss below, grabbed Julian by the collar of his ruined coat, and lifted the older man completely off his feet, pinning him against the corrugated metal siding.

Julian clawed at Gabriel’s wrists, his breath rattling in his throat. "Gabriel... please... mercy..."

Gabriel’s gray eyes were black with fury. The scar on his eyebrow burned white against his skin.

"My mother gave this city hospitals, Julian," Gabriel whispered, his voice vibrating with absolute judgment. "My foundation gave young men like Mason Bennett a chance to build things instead of breaking them. And you turned her name into a slaughterhouse."

Gabriel shifted his grip, hauling Julian toward the railing overlooking the shredder.

"Gabriel, stop!"

A voice pierced through the mechanical roar.

Claire stood at the foot of the catwalk stairs, her clothes drenched, her hair plastered to her neck, her hands steady as she held her father's green ledger against her ribs.

"Don't do it," she said.

Gabriel turned his head, his breathing deep and controlled. "He killed your parents, Claire. He tried to throw your brother into a shredder. The river is right behind us. Nobody would ever find him."

"My father didn't write this book so you could become another monster on the news, Gabriel," Claire said, taking two slow steps up the metal stairs. Her eyes were fierce, clear, and unyielding. "He wrote this book so the truth would come out in the daylight. If you drop him into that machine, you're not honoring your mother. You're just proving that Julian was right about you."

Gabriel stared at her. The silence between them stretched across the deafening roar of the scrap yard. For ten agonizing seconds, the fate of Gabriel Mercer’s soul hung on the razor's edge of a single choice.

Slowly, Gabriel lowered Julian back onto the steel decking, slamming him facedown into the grate and planting a heavy boot between the traitor’s shoulder blades.