Three gold coins lay on the marble table when I told my maid’s three-year-old daughter she could have any three wishes she wanted. Ellie ignored every toy around her and asked only one question: “Why does Mommy have to say sorry when she didn’t do it?” The moment she said it, I stopped looking at the child and looked at my brother Dante.

The library was a vast, two-story room lined with five thousand leather-bound books, heavy velvet drapes, and a massive mahogany desk sitting before a grand stone fireplace.

Dante was sitting behind the desk.

His face was a horrific mask of purple bruising, white surgical tape crossing his broken nose, his left eye completely swollen shut under a dark blue welt. Sitting in the leather armchairs before the desk were two men in dark gray suits—corporate attorneys holding thick manila folders and open laptops.

When I pushed the heavy double doors open, all three men looked up.

The two attorneys stood up instantly, their faces going pale as they saw me walking into the room. They had read the legal documents, but they were corporate men; they were not prepared for the reality of a six-foot-three man stepping out of the shadows with blood on his boots and a gun at his hip.

"Get out," I told the attorneys.

"Mr. Moretti..." one of the lawyers started, holding up a manila folder. "We have the power of attorney filings signed in Vermont—"

"Get out before I throw you over the balcony," I said, my voice entirely devoid of volume, but filled with a dark, absolute promise.

The two lawyers didn't hesitate. They abandoned their laptops on the table, grabbed their coats, and practically trampled each other as they scrambled out the double doors into the hallway, leaving the heavy doors swinging open behind them.

Dante sat alone behind the mahogany desk.

He looked at me with his one good eye—a gray, bloodshot eye filled with a mixture of blinding rage and deep, visceral terror.

"You think you're smart, Vince?" Dante spat, his voice wet and raspy through his taped nose. "You think taking that maid and her brat to Connecticut changes anything? I own this firm! I own this house! I have the legal power of attorney!"

I walked slowly across the Persian rug until I stood directly before the mahogany desk.

I reached into my coat pocket, pulled out the power of attorney document I had taken from his office safe last night, and laid it flat on the desk between us.

Beside the document, I laid the third gold coin—Sofia's last coin.

Dante stared at the coin, then looked up at my face.

"What is that?" he sneered. "More of your dead kid's toys?"

"That's my third wish, Dante," I said softly.

I reached down, picked up the silver lighter resting near Dante's glass of rye, struck the wheel, and held the bright yellow flame to the corner of the power of attorney document.

The dry white paper caught instantly. Bright blue and orange flames licked up the page, consuming the signatures, the notary stamps, and the four years of legal lies Dante had built to keep me trapped in my own grief.

Dante didn't move. He watched the paper burn down to black ash on his mahogany desk, his breath coming in fast, ragged gasps.

"You can't burn away forty million dollars, Vince," Dante whispered, his voice trembling. "The bank accounts... the shell companies... they're all in my name. You can't touch them without me."

I reached into my pocket, pulled out a small black USB drive that Captain Sullivan had handed me before the boat left Montauk—a drive containing the complete digital audit of Dante's offshore transfers, compiled by my old financial team over the last six hours.

I dropped the drive onto the desk beside the ashes.

"Every transaction you made from the Newark terminal is on that drive, Dante," I said. "Every bribe. Every stolen container. Every illegal wire transfer to the Cayman accounts. At twelve o'clock today, a copy of that drive will be delivered to the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York."

Dante's one good eye widened in absolute, paralyzing horror.

"Vince... no..." he gasped, his hands scrambling across the desk toward the drive. "You can't do that! That's family business! If the feds see those files, I'll go to prison for twenty years!"

"You're not family, Dante," I said, leaning over the desk until my face was three inches from his. "Family protects children. Family doesn't hold undocumented women hostage in the west wing. Family doesn't use a dead nine-year-old girl to steal an empire."

Dante collapsed back into his leather chair, his bloody, taped face buried in his hands, his shoulders shaking as he began to weep—not with anger, but with the pathetic, helpless terror of a man who realized his entire world had crumbled to dust in a single morning.

I picked up the third gold coin from the desk and closed my fingers around it.

"My first wish was to save Ellie and her mother," I whispered to him. "My second wish was to take my house back."

I looked down at the weeping man sitting in the chair.