The first bullet missed my face by less than an inch, and the man I had spent three years waiting to see dead was bleeding beneath booth four. I could have stayed behind the bar and let Arthur Costello die—but instead, I stood up, took down the men sent to kill him, and made the most feared mafia boss in New York finally ask who I really was.

Arthur had officially inducted me into the inner circle under the cover identity of “Agent Jensen,” a specialized risk-assessment consultant brought in from an overseas private security firm. The captains and capos who rotated through the safe house—brutal men with broken noses and tailored suits—looked at me with a mixture of suspicion and grudging respect after Frank leaked the story of how I had taken down two armed hitmen with a soda siphon and a wine bottle.

“She’s out of her mind,” Frank muttered, slamming a stack of intercepted shipping manifests onto my desk while I typed furiously into the encrypted terminal. “Boss, you can't trust her with the European ledger. If she takes this data to the FBI, the whole syndicate goes down in flames before Friday’s summit.”

“If Khloe wanted the FBI involved, Frank, she would have called them three years ago,” Arthur replied from the shadows of the corner, nursing a cup of black coffee. He looked better today, the color returning to his cheeks, though his left arm remained in a tactical sling. “She doesn't want an indictment. She wants blood. And right now, her analytical skills are ten times sharper than yours.”

I ignored their bickering and highlighted a series of anomalous wire transfers routed through a shell company registered in the Cayman Islands under the name Apex Maritime.

“There,” I said, spinning the monitor around so they could see the data flow. “Marcus isn't just skimming from the docks. He’s been quietly liquidating the syndicate’s secondary assets for the past six months, funneling millions into a private mercenary outfit operating out of a decommissioned naval yard in Bayonne, New Jersey. That’s where his private strike team came from on Tuesday.”

Arthur leaned over the desk, his eyes narrowing as he studied the corporate registry. “The Bayonne yard. That property belongs to a front company tied to the Russian Bratva. Marcus is cutting a deal behind my back to hand our shipping lanes over to the Russians in exchange for military backing at the Friday summit.”

“Which means,” I added, standing up and pulling my tactical jacket over my shoulders, “Marcus is holding a private strategy meeting at his waterfront estate in Greenwich, Connecticut, tonight. If we want to dismantle his network before the summit, we need to get inside his mansion and download his master encryption drive.”

Frank choked on his coffee. “Get inside his mansion? Greenwich is a fortress! He has fifty armed guards, motion sensors, and patrols every three minutes! It’s suicide!”

“It’s only suicide if they know we’re coming,” I said, grabbing my tactical go-bag from the chair. I looked directly at Arthur. “You’re supposed to be recovering from an assassination attempt. The rumor on the street is that you’re on your deathbed. Marcus will be celebrating his victory tonight, surrounded by his inner circle, letting his guard down.”