She braced herself for a public slap in the middle of the crowded ballroom, but the man who blocked the blow delivered a verbal knockout so powerful that it physically paralyzed her legs.

The descent in the private freight elevator felt like dropping down an abandoned mineshaft.

The walls were bare, industrial gray steel, scratched and scuffed by decades of moving luggage, furniture, and catering supplies. The single overhead fluorescent bulb flickered with a faint, irritating hum, casting a sickly greenish glow over James, Dante, and Claire.

Yes, Claire insisted on coming.

When James told her to stay behind with Noah, she had simply looked at him with those unblinking eyes and said, "If I stay here alone, the first person Marcus sends up through the service stairwell will find an easy target. If I come with you, I'm another set of eyes in a building you don't fully control yet." She hadn't backed down. And for reasons James couldn't entirely explain, he hadn't argued with her.

Ding.

The elevator car shuddered to a halt. The heavy steel doors slid open with a grinding screech, revealing the damp, concrete expanse of service bay four.

The air smelled of stale diesel exhaust, wet asphalt, and rotting cardboard. Shadows stretched long and distorted across the concrete floor, thrown by flickering overhead halogen lamps that buzzed in the damp night air. Rows of empty metal dumpsters and stacked wooden pallets formed a jagged maze of dark alleyways inside the massive subterranean room.

"Stay behind me," James murmured, stepping out of the elevator with his hand resting near his coat pocket. Dante flanked his right side, weapon drawn and held low, while Claire slipped silently along the left wall, using the shadow of a massive industrial water heater to mask her movements.

They moved with practiced, silent coordination. Every boot step was deliberate, heel-to-toe, avoiding the puddles of dirty rainwater pooling near the drainage grates.

"James!"

The voice echoed off the concrete walls, bouncing from corner to corner so it was impossible to tell where it was coming from. It sounded smooth, raspy, and soaked with malicious amusement.

"I knew you’d come down, nephew," Marcus’s voice rang out again. "Always the hero. Always trying to clean up the messes your father left behind. Just like a good little soldier."

James stopped near the center of the bay, his eyes scanning the dark gaps between the stacked pallets. "Show yourself, Marcus. You're trespassing on private property, and your little ghost act is over."

A slow, mocking chuckle drifted down from the metal catwalk suspended ten feet above the floor.

A figure stepped out of the shadows onto the grating. Marcus Vance looked remarkably well for a man who had supposedly been dead for three years. His hair was cropped short and silver at the temples, a jagged white scar cutting across his left cheekbone down into his collar. He wore a heavy wool trench coat, his hands tucked casually into his pockets, looking down at James with the lazy arrogance of a cat watching a cornered mouse.

"Private property?" Marcus sneered, leaning his forearms against the iron railing of the catwalk. "James, my boy, this entire hotel was built on land your grandfather stole from my share of the trust back in the seventies. I’m not trespassing. I’m simply redecorating."

"You're going to prison, Marcus," James said, his voice level and cold. "Vivian already sang like a canary before her lawyers could even file bail. We have the wire transfers. We have the shell corporation logs. You have nowhere left to run."

Marcus tilted his head, a cold smile playing on his lips. "Prison? James, please. Do you really think I care about federal penitentiaries? I didn't come back for the money. I came back for the boy."

Marcus raised two fingers and whistled sharply.

From behind a row of stacked wooden crates near the back exit, two heavily armed men in black tactical gear emerged, dragging a third figure between them.

Claire’s breath hitched in her throat.

It wasn't a guard. It was one of the hotel’s night-shift receptionists—a young woman whose hands were zip-tied behind her back, a strip of duct tape slapped brutally across her mouth.

"Let her go, Marcus!" Dante roared, taking a half-step forward with his weapon raised.

"Ah, ah, ah," Marcus wagged a finger playfully from the catwalk. "Put the gun down, Dante, or the girl takes a bullet through the kneecap. I’m not a unreasonable man, James. You hand over the boy—quietly, no paperwork, no cops—and I walk out of here. You keep your precious empire, your name stays clean, and nobody else has to bleed tonight."

James stared up at his uncle. The distance between them was only thirty feet, but the chasm of blood and betrayal was immeasurable.