BLOODLINE AT THIRTY THOUSAND FEET

The massive sliding doors of Hangar Nine rattled against the howling Denver blizzard. Inside, parked between a decommissioned Learjet and rows of industrial freight crates, twenty luxury vehicles sat with their headlights beaming toward the center of the concrete floor.

Standing in the glare were forty armed men.

On the left stood Antonio Russo, the sixty-year-old patriarch of the Russo syndicate, leaning on an ivory cane with eight of his top capos flanking him. On the right, wearing a tailored shearling coat and smoking a hand-rolled cigar, was Marco Valenti. Behind Marco stood Dennis Vance, the scar on his eyebrow twitching in the cold drafts cutting through the corrugated steel walls.

“He's late,” Marco sneered, checking his platinum watch. It was 11:45 PM. “The coward took a commercial flight to dodge our spotters at the private airstrip. He’s probably hiding in a downtown hotel waiting for his lawyers.”

“Damon Prescott doesn't hide, Marco,” Russo said gravelly, his old eyes scanning the dark rafters above. “That’s why he ruled this territory for fifteen years while you sat behind a desk balancing his ledgers. If you miss your shot tonight, there won't be a hole deep enough in North America to bury you.”

Before Marco could reply, the heavy pedestrian security door at the rear of the hangar was kicked off its hinges with a deafening crash.

The heavy steel slab slammed onto the concrete floor, echoing like thunder.

A single figure walked through the swirling snow of the doorway.

I stepped into the headlight beams alone. My long black overcoat was unbuttoned, my hands resting loosely at my sides, the cold snow melting on my shoulders. Behind me, the dark silhouette of the tarmac stretched into blackness; Frank and my loyalists were stationed at every perimeter exit, invisible in the snowstorm.

Silence fell over the forty men like a guillotine.

Marco took an involuntary step back, his cigar freezing halfway to his mouth. Dennis Vance shifted his weight, his hand instantly darting toward the submachine gun slung across his chest.

“Damon,” Marco stammered, recovering his arrogant grin with effort. “You made it. We were beginning to think you’d abandoned your obligations to the commission.”

I didn’t answer immediately. I walked forward with measured, rhythmic footsteps, the leather soles of my boots clicking against the grease-stained concrete until I stood exactly twelve paces from Marco and Russo.

“You’ve been busy while I was away, Marco,” I said smoothly, my voice reverberating off the steel walls without me even raising it. “Rewriting company policy. Selling northern shipping routes to the Russos. Falsifying death certificates.”

Dennis Vance’s scarred eyebrow twitched violently.

Marco’s smile faltered, but he forced a chuckle. “Business requires evolution, Damon. The Russo family offered a fifty-fifty split on the intermodal rail line. You were getting soft. Spending months brooding over a woman who abandoned you three years ago. The organization needed a leader, not a mourning ghost.”

“A woman who abandoned me?” I asked softly.

I reached into my inner coat pocket. Dennis instantly raised his weapon, but I ignored him completely, pulling out the bundle of yellowed envelopes tied with the cracked rubber band.

I tossed the stack onto the hood of Marco’s Mercedes.

The envelopes scattered under the halogen glare. *RECIPIENT DECEASED.* VALENTI LOGISTICS.

Marco looked down at the letters, and all the color drained from his face until he looked like a corpse.

“You told Dennis to threaten her,” I said, my voice dropping into that chilling, quiet register that made even Russo’s veterans shift uncomfortably. “You told him to tell Cassandra I was dead. You stole three years of my children's lives so you could keep me isolated, broken, and focused on dying in an ambush you set up in Reno.”

Russo’s head snapped toward Marco. “Children? What is he talking about, Valenti?”

“He’s lying!” Marco shouted, panic cracking his polished facade. “He’s trying to divide us! Dennis, drop him!”

Dennis swung the barrel of his weapon toward my chest.

He never squeezed the trigger.

A high-caliber sniper round shattered the reinforced skylight seventy feet above us, punching through Dennis Vance’s shoulder before he could align his sights. The force spun him around, slamming him into the side of the Mercedes as his weapon clattered across the floor.

Before the echo of the gunshot faded, the side roll-up doors of the hangar blasted open. Three armored Suburbans tore inside, headlights blinding Marco’s flank, as twelve of my father’s original guard poured out with assault rifles trained directly on every man in the room.

Russo’s men instinctively dropped their weapons, raising their hands.

“Hold!” Russo roared, slamming his cane against the concrete. “Hold your fire! We had nothing to do with this!”

I walked past the bleeding enforcer on the ground and stopped inches from Marco Valenti. Marco was shaking so violently his cigar fell from his fingers, rolling across the concrete toward my shoe.

Just like the red crayon had three hours ago.

“You took their first words from me,” I whispered, staring into his dilated pupils. “You took their first steps. You made their mother wash blood from strangers' coats in a freezing basement.”

“Damon, please,” Marco choked out, tears of absolute terror running down his cheeks. “We built this together. Your father—”

“My father would have skinned you alive in front of the city hall,” I said.

I didn't draw my gun. Instead, I turned my back on him and looked at Antonio Russo.

“Russo,” I said clearly.

The old boss swallowed hard, nodding slowly. “I'm listening, Damon.”

“The treaty stands at seventy-thirty, my favor. You will surrender all logistics nodes between here and Seattle by sunrise. And you will ensure that Marco’s entire offshore network is transferred to a blind trust bearing the names Luke and Violet Prescott.”

Russo let out a slow, relieved breath. “Consider it done. And Valenti?”

I walked toward the open hangar doors, where the falling snow was beginning to settle on the dark tarmac.