Fifty-nine. Sixty. Her palms were numb. The air entering her lungs felt like frozen needles, but she didn't stop.

The elimination of the Marcone family sent shockwaves through the city's underworld.

For decades, five major families had maintained a fragile peace across the five boroughs. Victor Vance’s swift, total destruction of Salvatore Marcone’s organization disrupted that balance.

A week after the pier raid, the Commission—the council of the four remaining syndicate bosses—demanded an emergency sit-down at the neutral territory of the Metropolitan Club in Midtown.

The grand dining room was sealed. Four powerful men sat around an antique mahogany table, surrounded by their respective bodyguards.

Victor walked in alone, accompanied only by Marcus.

"You went too far, Victor," said Anthony Ross, the elder statesman of the Brooklyn families, swirling his brandy. "Marcone was a member of the council. You executed him and took his docks without a vote."

"Sal targeted my mother," Victor said calmly, taking his seat at the head of the table. "And then he attempted to abduct my ward. He broke the sacred treaty of '98. Under our law, his life and his territory were forfeit."

"Your ward?" sneered Leo Moretti, the younger, brasher boss of the Bronx operations. "We heard about her. A homeless street rat you plucked out of an alley. You burned down a twenty-million-dollar distribution network for a girl who isn't even Vance blood?"

The temperature in the room plummeted.

Victor slowly turned his head toward Moretti. He didn't raise his voice, but the dark intensity in his eyes made the younger boss's smile falter.

"Say that again, Moretti," Victor invited softly.

Moretti swallowed hard, shifting uncomfortably under Victor’s stare. His bodyguards behind him involuntarily tightened their grips on their jackets.

"I'm saying," Ross interjected quickly, stepping in to diffuse the deadly tension, "that the other families are uneasy, Victor. You hold seventy percent of the port traffic now. The balance is broken."

"Then let us rebalance it," Victor said, pulling a leather binder from Marcus's hands and sliding it into the center of the table. "This is the restructuring proposal for the Eastern Seaboard shipping lines. You each get a fifteen percent share of the non-contraband freight revenues, managed through Vance Logistics."

The bosses blinked in surprise. They had expected a war; instead, Victor was handing them millions in legitimate, unassailable profit.

"What's the catch?" Moretti asked suspiciously.

"The catch," Victor said, leaning forward and resting his hands on the table, "is absolute peace. My ward, Maya Lin, will finish her medical degree without ever seeing another weapon or hearing another threat. If any of your men so much as look at her sideways, I will not call a council meeting. I will do to your family what I did to Sal Marcone’s."

The four bosses looked at each other. The offer was too generous to refuse, and the threat was too real to test.

Ross lifted his glass. "To peace, Victor. And to your ward."