The morning my four-year-old daughter ordered the most feared man in our city to sit in the corner, I was holding a lemon in one hand and wondering whether I had enough cash to disappear before his men found my body.

What followed took less than seven seconds.

Julian spun around toward the mezzanine, raising his pistol to fire upward.

In that fraction of a second, Marcus moved. The mountain of a man lunged forward, his heavy combat boot slamming into Julian’s ribs with the force of a battering ram.

Julian went flying sideways, crashing into the hood of the Suburban. His pistol skittered across the concrete, stopping inches from my shoe.

I didn't think. I kicked the gun under the car, dove forward, and scooped Lily into my arms, throwing my entire body over hers as Marcus drew his sidearm.

*“Down!”* Marcus bellowed.

From the mezzanine, Vincent dropped twenty feet to the garage floor, landing with the supple, fluid grace of a man half his age. His shoes clicked against the concrete as he walked toward the Suburban.

Julian was coughing violently on the ground, clutching his shattered ribs, blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. He looked up, his spectacles cracked and askew, watching Vincent approach like a condemned man watching the blade descend.

“Vincent,” Julian wheezed, crawling backward until his back hit the garage wall. “Vincent, listen to me. The Morettis have forty men at the gates. They have the port authority bought off. You can't survive this war without my connections—”

Vincent stopped three feet away.

He reached down, picked up a stray lemon that had somehow rolled all the way from the kitchen into the garage corridor, and weighed it in his palm.

“Thirty years ago, Julian,” Vincent said quietly. “My brother Anthony sat in this very garage and handed you a scholarship to Columbia Law School. He told you that you were family.”

“Anthony was weak!” Julian spat, his face pale with pain and terror. “He wanted to turn legitimate! He wanted to give away everything our fathers built to pay for orphanages and public clinics! Just like Daniel!”

Vincent’s expression didn't change. It remained carved from granite, cold, empty, and pitiless.

“Daniel wasn't weak,” Vincent said. “Daniel was the only Marquette who ever understood what strength was.”

Vincent tossed the lemon aside. He drew a polished black semi-automatic from beneath his coat.

“Vincent, please—” Julian begged, raising his trembling hands. “We can make a deal. I have thirty million in Zurich. It’s yours. All of it—”

“Rule Four,” Vincent murmured.

Julian blinked through his shattered glasses. “What?”

“Say sorry if you are loud,” Vincent said softly.

He didn't fire.

Instead, Vincent stepped back, nodding once to Marcus.

“Call the federal prosecutor in Manhattan,” Vincent commanded. “Give them the drive from Elena’s pocket. Tell them Julian Vance is waiting in the cellar with the complete financial records of the Moretti family’s operations on the eastern seaboard.”

Julian’s eyes widened with pure, unadulterated horror.

“No,” Julian screamed, trying to scramble to his feet. “No, Vincent! Kill me! Shoot me! If you hand me to the feds, the Morettis will skin me alive in federal prison!”

“I know,” Vincent replied, turning his back on him. “Marcus, clear the perimeter. The Morettis won't enter these gates once they see the federal cruisers rolling up the maple drive.”

Marcus grabbed Julian by the collar of his designer shirt, hauling him off the floor like a sack of trash, and dragged him toward the reinforced security cells beneath the house.

Julian’s screams echoed down the concrete corridor until the heavy steel door slammed shut, cutting off the noise entirely.

The garage became silent once more.

The only sound was the low, steady rumble of the Suburban’s engine and the ragged sound of my own breathing.

I sat on the cold floor, holding Lily so tightly against my chest I could feel the rapid, fluttery beat of her heart against my ribs. She was trembling slightly, but she wasn't crying.

Vincent walked over to where we sat.

He slowly knelt down on one knee, his expensive black trousers sinking into the dust and shattered glass.

He looked at Lily.

Lily peeked out from behind my shoulder, her eyes wide, still clutching Barnaby by his ragged ear.

“Mister?” she whispered.

Vincent slowly reached out his hand, palm up, open and empty.

“Did I make too much noise?” he asked.

Lily looked at the shattered skylight above, then at the blood on the hood of the car, and finally into the fierce, tired eyes of the man the entire city feared.

“Yes,” she said solemnly.

Vincent bowed his head.