BENEATH THE MARBLE AND BLOOD: THE DELIVERY DRIVER WHO BROUGHT A MAFIA EMPIRE TO ITS KNEES

The barrel was three feet from my forehead.

My pistol had been knocked loose during the fall, lying five feet away in a puddle of muddy motor oil. My left shoulder was screaming in agony, bruised from the impact against the canvas tarps.

Vanessa took a step closer, savoring the moment. Her diamond rings sparkled against the dull metal of the revolver.

"You ruined my party," she hissed, her voice trembling with manic intensity. "You made Dominic look at me like I was dirt in front of the entire city. Did you really think someone like you could touch someone like me and walk away?"

"You're not untouchable, Vanessa," I wheezed, keeping my eyes locked on hers while my right foot subtly slid backward, finding purchase against the rough concrete. "You're just a spoiled little girl hiding behind your father’s payroll."

"Say goodbye, delivery girl."

Her knuckle whitened on the trigger.

I didn't try to dodge the bullet; you can't outrun lead at three feet.

Instead, I exploded upward, driving my heel directly into the soft flesh of her knee joint.

Crack.

Vanessa shrieked in agony as her knee bent violently inward. The gun discharged, the bullet ricocheting harmlessly off the concrete ceiling, deafening us both in the enclosed space.

Before she could recover, I grabbed her wrist with both hands, twisting it downward in an aggressive wrist-lock that tore the tendons in her forearm. The revolver tumbled from her useless fingers. I followed through with an open-palm strike straight to her chin. Her head snapped back, teeth clacking together, and she collapsed into the mud, clutching her dislocated knee and wailing in high-pitched agony.

I scooped up the revolver, cocking the hammer back with a heavy, definitive click.

"Get up," I said coldly.

"My leg... you broke my leg!" she sobbed, all of her aristocratic arrogance melting into pathetic, shivering terror. "Please... don't shoot me! I'll give you whatever you want! Money! Millions!"

"Where is the ledger's physical drive?" I demanded, pressing the cold steel to her temple. "Dominic said Dad left an algorithm on me, but the algorithm needs a hardware key. Where is it?!"

"I don't know!" she screamed. "My father keeps it in his safe at the downtown penthouse! He’s had it for eight years, but nobody could crack the 256-bit encryption without the cipher key Thomas took to his grave! Please, don't kill me!"

Heavy footsteps echoed through the smoke.

Marcus Whitmore emerged from the wreckage of the crushed SUV, his fine coat torn, a bloody gash across his temple. But he wasn't looking at his screaming daughter. He was looking at Dominic, who had just stepped out of the shadows behind him, a gun pressed firmly to the back of the elder Whitmore's skull.

"Drop your weapons! All of you!" Dominic roared across the cavernous warehouse.

The remaining four mercenaries, seeing their boss captured and the warehouse surrounded by arriving police cruisers whose sirens wailed in the distance—called not by Dominic, but by the harbor patrol—lowered their rifles and dropped to their knees.

Marcus laughed, a dry, bloody chuckle. "You think you've won, Dominic? The city council belongs to me. The feds take my checks. Even if you kill me, the files in my penthouse will automatically upload to an offshore server in seventy-two hours, exposing your entire organization to the Department of Justice."

"They won't upload," I called out, limping forward while dragging Vanessa by her tactical collar like a sack of garbage.

Marcus turned his head, his eyes widening as he saw his daughter broken and crying in the dirt. "Vanessa!"

"She told me where the hardware drive is, Marcus," I said, stopping beside Dominic. "Your penthouse safe. And within seventy-two hours, Dominic and I are going to decrypt every single dollar, every bribe, and every murder you ever paid for—including my father’s."

Marcus's face drained of color. "You... you're Thomas's kid."

"My name is Avery Carter," I said, staring directly into the eyes of the man who ordered my father beaten to death. "And you owe my family eight years of interest."

Dominic struck Marcus across the back of the neck with the butt of his weapon, dropping the older man unconscious to the floor.

He turned to look at me, taking in my bruised face, my torn clothes, and the fierce fire burning in my eyes. Without a word, he reached out, his hand gently brushing a lock of hair from my forehead.

"The police are two minutes out," Dominic said softly. "We need to move your mother and disappear before the state troopers lock down the district."