“Oh my God. Who did this to you?” Elena’s voice cracked as the flashlight trembled in her hand.

BOOM!

A deafening explosion rocked the far side of Pier 4 as a massive stack of empty shipping containers collapsed in a mountain of twisted steel and sparks, crushing the SUV Marcus’s guards had arrived in.

The sudden shockwave and blinding flash of fire threw Marcus and his four guards off balance, blinding them in the darkness.

"Down!" Dominic roared at Elena.

Dominic drew his Glock in a flash, firing three precision shots into the fog. Two of Marcus’s guards dropped instantly, their weapons clattering against the concrete.

"Kill him!" Marcus screamed, scrambling behind a heavy steel pillar for cover as the remaining two guards opened fire with automatic submachine guns.

Muzzle flashes strobed through the fog as bullets ripped through the frame of Elena’s Honda Civic, shattering the glass and tearing through the rubber tires.

Elena scrambled on her hands and knees behind a concrete barrier, her heart pounding violently in her ears.

Dominic was moving with lethal efficiency, using the fog and the heavy industrial machinery as cover. He fired twice, dropping a third guard who tried to flank them around a forklift.

"Marcus!" Dominic shouted, his voice echoing off the iron cranes overhead. "This ends tonight!"

Marcus popped out from behind his pillar, firing wildly with a nickel-plated revolver. One of the heavy bullets struck Dominic in his injured shoulder, throwing him backward onto the wet concrete.

"Dominic!" Elena screamed.

Without thinking, driven by pure instinct and adrenaline, Elena reached out, grabbed a heavy steel crowbar resting against a nearby workbench, and sprinted through the fog toward the remaining guard who was advancing on Dominic’s fallen form.

The guard raised his rifle toward Dominic.

Elena swung the steel crowbar with all the weight of her body, slamming it directly into the side of the guard’s knee.

The bone cracked with a sickening snap. The guard let out a hideous scream, falling to his hands and knees.

Dominic instantly raised his pistol and fired a single shot, neutralizing the guard instantly.

Marcus stood alone near the edge of the pier, his silver revolver shaking in his hand, his eyes wide with absolute, pathetic panic. All four of his men were down. The empire he had tried to steal was slipping through his fingers like sand.

"Stay back!" Marcus shrieked, aiming his gun at Elena as she stood beside Dominic. "I'll kill her, Dominic! I swear to God I'll shoot her!"

Dominic stood up slowly, blood soaking through his dark coat from his fresh shoulder wound. He didn't raise his gun. He simply walked toward Marcus with the cold, unstoppable force of an avalanche.

"You touched her son, Marcus," Dominic said, his voice dropping into a register of pure death. "You threatened a child."

"Dominic, please!" Marcus wept, backing up until his heels hit the low wooden guardrail at the edge of the pier, forty feet above the dark, freezing ocean water. "We’re brothers! Same blood!"

"My brother died thirty years ago," Dominic said.

Dominic lunged forward, grabbing Marcus’s wrist and twisting the revolver from his grip, tossing the gun into the dark water below. He grabbed Marcus by the collar of his expensive coat, lifting him off his feet and pinning him over the edge of the guardrail.

Marcus dangled over the dark, churning ocean, screaming in absolute terror. "Don't! Dominic, don't drop me! Please!"

Dominic stared into his half-brother’s terrified gray eyes for three agonizing seconds.

"You're not worth the ink on a murder charge," Dominic growled.

Dominic hauled Marcus back over the rail and slammed him hard onto the concrete floor, pulling a pair of heavy steel zip-ties from a guard’s belt and binding Marcus’s hands and ankles tightly behind his back.

In the distance, the loud, wailing sirens of Boston Police cruisers echoed across the harbor, approaching Pier 4 from every direction.

Dominic turned toward Elena, who stood in the fog, holding the steel crowbar, her hair wild in the wind.

He looked at her with awe, reverence, and unconditional devotion.