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I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I need to get my wife now,” I growl. “Not in a few fucking minutes.”

“Come on,” Paolo says. “We have enough men to get the show on the road—”

“And if the buyer shows up with his own security?” Gio asks.

Okay, he has a point there. Fuck.

“We split up. I’ll take the front, Paolo the back, and you, Gio, keep an eye on the road and stay close. Once backup arrives, you follow me in.”

Giving no one else time to argue or delay me, I run toward the house. Paolo’s hot on my heels, and when I turn left, he sprints right, toward the building’s rear.

Luckily, the door is unlocked, and I push it open with the barrel of my gun leading the way. The front room is empty, furniture covered in sheets, dust thick enough to write in.

A hallway stretches toward the back of the house, and I’m halfway down it when the first shot cracks from somewhere upstairs. The bullet punches into the wall six inches from my head, plaster dust raining down on my shoulder, and I drop to one knee behind the partial cover of a doorframe.

The fire is returned from somewhere outside—my men, engaging whoever’s on the second floor. And then the house erupts.

Gunfire from everywhere at once. Upstairs, downstairs, outside where Paolo should be circling the rear. The walls are thin enough that each shot sounds like it’s happening in the same room, and I push forward because standing still gets you killed.

A man appears at the end of the hallway, armed and panicked, raising his weapon too slowly. I put two rounds in his chest and step over him without breaking stride.

So much for wondering whether the buyer brought security. Harry sure as fuck didn’t suddenly grow an army of his own.

More shots from outside.

Closer now, rhythmic, the controlled fire of someone who knows what they’re doing. Then a burst—three shots in quick succession—and Gio’s voice in my ear, tight with something I haven’t heard from him in years.

“Paolo’s hit. Rear of the property, east side. Multiple rounds.”

My stride doesn’t falter. Can’t falter. Kira is in this house somewhere, and turning back means leaving her with Harry longer.

“How bad?”

“Don’t know yet. Men moving to extract.”

“Get him out. Now.”

“Working on it.”

I reach the kitchen at the back of the house. Also empty, though a door stands open to the yard, cold air pouring in, and beyond it I can hear shouting and more gunfire.

Then I hear a whimper.

Kira.

The sound’s choked and desperate, coming from a room off the kitchen that might have been a pantry once. The door is closed. Locked, from the sound of it, when I try the handle.

I kick it. Once, twice, the wood splinters around the latch, and the door flies inward.

And there she is, my beautiful wife.

She’s on her feet, but barely. Blood tracks from her hairline down the left side of her face, dried to a rusty brown along her temple, with fresh blood still seeping from the cut near her forehead. Her eyes find mine, wide and terrified, and the relief that floods them almost knocks me off my feet.

Harry stands behind her, one arm locked around her waist, the other pressing a pistol into her side hard enough that I can see her flinch with each shift of his weight. His face is a wreck—bloodshot eyes, skin gone sallow from stress and whatever he’s been drinking.

“You.” The word comes out mangled, spit flying from his lips. “After all these years where I’ve worked for you… and then you… you took everything. Every fucking penny. NovaGen. The accounts. Everything I built—”

“You built nothing,” I interrupt. My voice is so quietly lethal the gunfire from outside nearly drowns it. “And you were never loyal to anyone but yourself, Harry. You sold your wife and daughter. You’re a middleman with a gun, and the gun’s the only interesting thing about you.”