They dragged my maid into the middle of my mansion and called her a thief in front of my entire staff—but when a pendant slipped from beneath her collar, I realized the accusation was a setup. She wasn’t just a servant. She was the last living witness to the massacre that destroyed my family fifteen years ago.

The private Sikorsky helicopter touched down on the illuminated helipad atop the Sterling Tower in downtown Boston just as the first pale streaks of dawn began to bleed across the gray Atlantic horizon.

The rotors whined down into a low, dying hum, kicking up a fierce downdraft of cold morning air that rattled my dark overcoat against my legs.

Marcus stepped out first, his assault rifle held at a low ready, followed closely by two of my elite security operatives. I stepped out behind them, my eyes fixed on the heavy glass penthouse doors leading into Damon Sterling’s private domain.

There were no guards waiting for us on the roof. Sterling was arrogant. He believed his mercenaries had wiped out the Duca estate hours ago. He believed the ghost from the past had been permanently put back in her grave.

We blew the electronic lock on the penthouse doors with a localized magnetic charge.

The heavy glass panels swung inward, shattering the pristine, minimalist silence of the billionaire’s multi-story sky-villa. Floor-to-ceiling windows offered a panoramic view of the Boston harbor below, glittering under the cold morning sun.

Damon Sterling stood by the wet bar in the center of the penthouse, wearing a silk bathrobe, pouring himself a glass of scotch as if he were waiting for a business associate to arrive for a routine merger.

He didn't turn around immediately when the heavy footsteps echoed across his hardwood floors.

“I told your little commando team not to call me unless the cleanup was total,” Sterling said smoothly, swirling the amber liquid in his glass. “So, did the maid scream, or did she go quietly like a good little ghost?”

I stopped ten feet behind him.

Marcus and the guards fanned out, securing the perimeter of the penthouse, cutting off every exit.

Sterling finally turned around.

The moment his eyes landed on my face—not his dead mercenary captain, not a smoking gun, but me—the glass slipped from his fingers, shattering against the marble floor, splashing scotch across his expensive slippers.

“Lorenzo...” he choked out, color instantly draining from his tanned, aristocratic face. “How... how are you here? The team... the estate—”

“The team is currently tied up in my basement holding cells, Damon,” I said, walking slowly toward him, my voice dangerously calm. “Just like Renata is currently cooling on my marble floor.”

Sterling staggered backward until the edge of the granite bar pressed against his lower back. His hands trembled so violently he jammed them into the pockets of his silk bathrobe to hide the panic.

“It was business,” Sterling babbled, sweat beading on his forehead. “Your father... your father was standing in the way of the shipping monopoly in the North Atlantic. It wasn't personal, Lorenzo. It was just numbers on a balance sheet!”

“My family wasn't a balance sheet,” I said, closing the final distance between us until I was standing right in front of him.

I didn't draw my gun. I didn't need to.

I reached out with my bare hands, grabbed him by the lapels of his silk robe, and hoisted him off his feet, slamming him hard against the glass wall overlooking a five-hundred-foot drop to the street below.

Sterling clawed frantically at my wrists, gasping for air as the glass bowed outward beneath his weight.

“Please, Lorenzo!” he begged, tears springing to his eyes. “I have money! I have shares! I can sign over half my empire to you! Whatever you want!”

“I don't want your money, Damon,” I whispered into his ear, my voice like ice grinding against stone. “I want what you took from me fifteen years ago.”

“I can’t bring them back!”

“No,” I agreed. “You can’t. But you can join them.”

I held him over the edge for three agonizing seconds, letting the cold Boston wind whip through his hair and show him the exact height of the abyss he had engineered for my family. Then, with a sudden, savage jerk, I hauled him back inside and threw him onto the floor at my feet.

Sterling lay there coughing, curled into a fetal position, sobbing like a broken child.

I looked down at him, brushing a speck of dust from my lapel, and motioned to Marcus.

“Tie him up,” I ordered coldly. “Load him into the chopper. We’re taking him back to Connecticut.”

“What are we going to do with him, Boss?” Marcus asked, securing zip-ties around Sterling’s wrists.

“We’re going to rebuild my father’s estate,” I said, turning toward the penthouse doors as the morning sun fully broke over the horizon, casting a fierce, golden light across the city. “And every brick of it is going to be laid on the foundation of everything he built.”