The ice had sunk into my bones long before the headlights cut through the Hudson River fog.

The access ramp was slick with mud, ice, and salt.

Elias moved ahead of me, clearing corners with silent efficiency, his weapon raised, his senses completely dialed into the gray, misty surroundings of the urban park above the highway. The sound of sirens was beginning to wail in the far distance, but down here, in the industrial belly of the riverfront, the world felt desolate.

Blood dripped onto the snow.

"He's hit," Elias muttered, pointing to a dark, crimson trail leading toward an abandoned Parks Department maintenance shed tucked beneath a grove of bare, skeletal birch trees. "Marcus clipped him during the initial volley."

We approached the rusted metal door of the shed. It hung slightly ajar, squeaking in the bitter wind.

Elias kicked the door open, stepping inside, slicing the shadows with his weapon.

The shed was dark, smelling of motor oil, decaying fertilizer, and copper. In the far corner, slumped against a stack of rusted lawnmowers, sat Richard.

He was bleeding heavily from a gunshot wound in his left thigh. His face was gray, covered in sweat and grime. The crude splint on his broken wrist had snapped, his arm dangling uselessly at his side. When he saw Elias enter, he let out a pathetic, animalistic whimper, scrambling backward until his head hit the corrugated metal wall.

Then, his eyes drifted past Elias and landed on me.

I stepped through the doorway. In my hands, held firmly in a textbook two-handed grip, was the black pistol Elias had given me.

Richard swallowed hard, his eyes darting frantically between the muzzle of the gun and my face.

"Ava..." Richard rasped, holding up his one good hand, his fingers trembling violently. "Ava, baby... please. You don't know what you're doing. They forced me! Thorne told me he'd kill me if I didn't bring him the kids! He said Elias Vance was using you to destroy his business!"

"You sold us, Richard," I said, my voice eerily calm. The rage inside me had cooled into a block of black ice. "Beneath that bridge, when I begged you to look at our daughters, you called them a curse. You told your brothers to break my bones."

"I was drunk! I was out of my mind with panic about the money!" Richard sobbed, tears cutting clean streaks through the filth on his cheeks. "We can fix this, Ava! You're my wife! In the eyes of God, you belong to me! You can't let this gangster murder the father of your children!"

Elias took one step back, folding his arms across his broad chest, leaning against the doorframe. He made no move to intervene. He was leaving the verdict entirely in my hands.

"You're right about one thing, Richard," I murmured, taking three slow, deliberate steps toward him. "You are the biological father of my daughters."

I raised the weapon, aligning the front sight directly with the center of his forehead.

Richard let out a terrified squeal, shutting his eyes tight, pissing himself in pure, unadulterated cowardice. "Please! Don't shoot! God, Ava, please don't shoot!"

I stood there for five agonizing seconds, watching the man who had ruled my life with terror reduced to a puddle of trembling, weeping filth.

Slowly, deliberately, I lowered the gun.

Richard opened one eye, gasping for air, a sickening glimmer of hope flashing across his face. "You... you still love me. I knew you couldn't do it. You're too soft, Ava—"

*BANG!*

The shot echoed deafeningly inside the metal shed.

Richard screamed as the hollow-point round shattered the concrete floor precisely one inch between his splayed legs, showering his groin with jagged stone fragments.

"I'm not soft, Richard," I said coldly, the smoke curling from the barrel of the gun. "I am just not you. I will not murder an unarmed, pathetic coward in a shed. Because death is too easy for you."

I turned my back on him and looked at Elias.

"Call the police," I told Elias. "Let the district attorney have him. Let the inmates in Rikers Island learn that he tried to murder twin baby girls to clear a gambling debt. Let him rot in an eight-by-ten cell for the next forty years, knowing that his daughters will grow up rich, protected, loved, and calling another man 'Father.'"

Elias stared at me. The shadows in his dark eyes seemed to part, replaced by an expression of pure, unbridled devotion.

He pulled his phone from his pocket, dialed a single digit, and spoke into the receiver. "Commissioner. This is Vance. Send the tactical units to the FDR maintenance depot. I have Richard Miller gift-wrapped for your prosecutors."

Elias hung up, walked over to me, and gently took the warm pistol from my fingers, engaging the safety.