The Calumet industrial slip was a desolate expanse of rusted shipping cranes, stagnant canal water, and decaying brick factories.

Inside Warehouse 9, Matteo Bellini paced restlessly across the concrete floor, clutching a satellite phone.

"What do you mean the comms went dark?!" Matteo screamed in Italian to his contact in Gary. "The utility van should have signaled an hour ago! Call Corrado! Find out if the girl is in custody!"

The line hissed with dead air.

"Corrado?" Matteo demanded.

A sharp, metallic clatter echoed from the far end of the warehouse rafters.

Matteo spun around, his hand flying to the custom Beretta at his hip. "Who’s there?!"

The twelve Italian mercenaries scattered across the warehouse raised their automatic rifles, scanning the dark catwalks overhead.

Suddenly, every high-pressure sodium floodlight mounted along the warehouse walls shattered in a simultaneous, deafening succession of suppressed sniper shots.

POP-POP-POP-POP!

Darkness plunged through the cavernous space.

Then came the red beams.

Dozens of high-intensity laser sights cut through the dusty gloom, crisscrossing the concrete floor like a web of burning crimson threads.

"DROP THE WEAPONS!" a voice echoed through the rafters—not from a megaphone, but with the cold, booming clarity of an executioner.

"FIRE!" Matteo shrieked, firing blindly into the catwalks.

Muzzle flashes strobed through the warehouse like industrial lightning. But Alessandro’s men had not come to trade bullets in an open gunfight.

From the roof skylights, tactical ropes dropped. Six Rienzi breach teams rappelled into the room with overwhelming precision, detonating concussion charges that blew the mercenaries off their feet.

In under two minutes, the firefight was over.

Ten of Matteo’s men were dead or incapacitated, bleeding onto the oil-stained concrete. The other two had thrown their rifles into the canal through the broken loading bay doors, kneeling with their hands locked behind their heads.

Matteo Bellini staggered backward, his expensive coat torn, his Beretta empty, clicking uselessly on an open chamber.

His back slammed against a rusted shipping container.

Footsteps echoed across the concrete. Slow, deliberate, heavy.

Alessandro emerged from the shadows of the container stacks. He was alone. He wasn't carrying a rifle; his hands were at his sides, his face an unreadable, merciless mask.

Matteo looked wildly around the ruined warehouse, his aristocratic arrogance disintegrating into raw, animal panic.

"You... you can't touch me, Rienzi," Matteo stammered, raising his chin in a pathetic attempt at defiance. "I am Don Lorenzo’s heir! If I don't return to Florence, the entire Camorra will declare war! They will burn every ship you own in the Atlantic!"

Alessandro stopped two feet from him.

He didn't hit him. He didn't draw his gun. He simply reached out, his gloved fingers closing around Matteo’s silk necktie, lifting the younger man up until his toes barely skimmed the concrete.

"Your father sold you out, Matteo," Alessandro whispered.

Matteo choked, clutching at Alessandro’s wrists. "What... what are you talking about?!"

Alessandro leaned in close, his dark eyes boring into Matteo’s soul.

"An hour ago, while you were waiting for your Canadian weapons, my maritime brokers closed a deal with Don Lorenzo in Rome. I gave him the shipping rights to our Mediterranean citrus lines in exchange for a single signed document."

Alessandro pulled a folded sheet of parchment from his coat pocket and held it before Matteo’s bulging eyes.

It was an official proclamation bearing the ancient wax seal of the Bellini syndicate.

MATTEO BELLINI IS STRIPPED OF TITLE, INHERITANCE, AND PROTECTION. HIS ACTIONS IN AMERICA ARE HIS OWN.

Matteo’s face turned gray. "No... no, Papa wouldn't..."

"In this life, Matteo, everyone has a price," Alessandro said, his voice dropping into pure ice. "Your father chose his empire over a reckless son who couldn't even kidnap a three-year-old child."

Alessandro released his grip. Matteo dropped to his knees in the dirt, gasping for breath, completely destroyed.

Alessandro looked down at him with utter disgust.

"Dante," Alessandro called over his shoulder.

"Boss."

"Put him on an unmarked cargo ship bound for Tangier. If he ever sets foot in North America again, throw him overboard."