Three bullets tore into my body because I threw myself between a gunman and the six-year-old heir to New York’s most feared billionaire mafia family.

By midnight, the subterranean war room beneath Blackthorne House was illuminated by the glow of twenty digital tactical displays.

Dominic stood at the head of the long steel conference table, flanked by Marco, his chief of operations, and six senior captains who controlled the five boroughs' distribution routes.

I sat at Dominic's right side, dressed in a dark cashmere sweater and tailored trousers, the surgical dressing hidden beneath the soft wool.

On the center display wall, live satellite tracking followed a sixty-foot luxury yacht named The Sea Falcon, idling three miles off the coast of Montauk in international waters.

"Julian Vance and Harold Mercer boarded that vessel at nine o'clock tonight," Marco reported, pointing a laser at the yacht's transponder. "They are hosting a private closing dinner with four international logistics brokers to finalize the forged conveyance of the Vance-Sterling deep-water leases."

"What is their security complement?" Dominic asked.

"Twelve armed private security contractors," Marco replied. "High-grade tactical weapons, surface radar, and twin-engine escape tenders."

Dominic turned to me, his expression an unreadable mask of absolute authority.

"Under maritime law, Corinne," Dominic said, "the original handwritten deed of trust executed by your father in 1998 contains an emergency revocation clause. If the rightful heir presents the physical charter in the presence of two maritime notaries before the midnight escrow clears, the entire transaction collapses automatically."

I pulled a small, water-damaged silver key from the chain around my neck—the key I had carried through eight years of hiding, the key to my father's private vault in the historic Battery Park maritime registry.

"I have the charter, Dominic," I said, my hazel eyes burning with unyielding, ancestral fire. "Let's take the harbor back."