By the time I dropped a fork in front of Dominic Vance, half the restaurant had already decided I was dead. At Leon’s on the Magnificent Mile, everyone knew the rule. Serve Chicago’s most feared mafia boss quietly.

The final phase began before dawn.

With the ledger decrypted and Marcone’s crew dismantled, Dominic didn't wait for Victor Rossi to mount an assault. He mobilized the entire Vance logistics network, coordinating with federal task forces to seal off the South Shore freight terminal.

I sat in the command van beside Mateo, monitoring the live tactical feeds.

"Rossi is barricaded inside the control tower with fourteen mercenaries," Mateo reported, tracing the thermal signatures on the screen. "He knows the federal marshals are on their way. He's rigged the fuel storage tanks along the dock to blow."

"Where is Dominic?" I asked, panic spiking in my chest.

"He went in through the lower intake tunnels," Mateo said, racking his rifle. "He’s taking Rossi himself."

I couldn't sit in that van.

Grabbing a tactical radio and a heavy utility wrench from the equipment rack, I slipped out into the fog. My father had spent twenty years auditing these exact docks; he used to bring me here on Saturday mornings. I knew the maintenance ladders and ventilation shafts better than any mercenary on Rossi's payroll.

I sprinted through the shadows of the shipping containers, climbing the rusted external iron stairwell of the fuel control building.

Inside the upper catwalk, Dominic was locked in a brutal, hand-to-hand struggle with Victor Rossi—a towering, ruthless veteran of the old Chicago families. Rossi held a remote detonator in his left hand, slashing at Dominic with a combat blade in his right.

Dominic’s forearm was bloodied, his shirt torn, but he was driving Rossi backward toward the railing.

"You think you won, Vance?" Rossi laughed, his face twisted in madness as his thumb hovered over the red trigger. "If I go down, half the harbor burns with me!"

I didn't think. I didn't hesitate.

I hurled the heavy iron utility wrench across the catwalk with all the strength in my body.

The steel wrench struck Rossi squarely across the back of his right shoulder with a sickening crunch. The blade dropped from his fingers, his concentration shattering for half a second.

That half-second was all Dominic needed.

Dominic lunged forward, sweeping Rossi’s legs, disarming the detonator with a sweeping kick, and driving a devastating right hook into Rossi’s jaw that sent the syndicate boss crashing through the plate-glass window onto the reinforced lower roof.

Rossi lay unconscious, bleeding into the broken shards of glass.

Dominic snatched the detonator, disarming the circuit with three rapid keystrokes.

He looked up at the catwalk where I stood, breathless, trembling, clutching the iron rail.