I showed up at 6:58.
Two minutes early because I'd already driven past her building three times checking the street. Different car each loop. First pass, nothing. Second pass, nothing. Third pass, a black SUV parked two buildings down with the engine running.
I parked and watched it for four minutes.
Driver was on his phone. Passenger eating chips. Music vibrating the windows.
Just two guys waiting for someone.
Nobody.
I got out.
Grabbed the bag from the backseat.
Compartés chocolate. Dark. The kind that came in a matte black box that felt heavy and serious. Cost $180. I almost felt stupid carrying it up her steps but she said don't be cheap and I am a lot of things but cheap is not one of them.
I knocked.
She opened the door still in her overalls from earlier. Paint on her hands. New streak of blue across her left cheekbone that she hadn't noticed yet. Hair loose now, curls everywhere. Barefoot.
She looked at the box in my hand.
Then at me.
"You actually brought chocolate."
"You told me to."
"I was joking about the don't be cheap part." She took the box, opened it, looked inside, closed it again. "Sam. This is like a museum chocolate."
"It's just chocolate."
"It has a certificate inside."
"Eat the chocolate, Katie."
She stepped back to let me in.
Her apartment was exactly what I expected and nothing like I expected at the same time.
Small. Warm. Every wall had something on it, canvases, sketches pinned up with tape, a corkboard above her desk drowning in reference photos and color swatches. String lights along the ceiling that made everything amber. Plants on the windowsill, all alive, which told me she was consistent about something even if nothing else.
The kitchen table had two chairs and was half covered in sketchbooks she'd pushed to one side. Thai food containers already open in the middle. Chopsticks. Paper napkins folded into triangles because she was that kind of person even in her own home.
Smelled like pad thai and turpentine and her vanilla shampoo underneath everything.
I stood in the doorway for a second too long.
"You can come in," she said from the kitchen. "I don't bite. Usually."
I came in.
Sat at the table.
Looked at the painting on the easel across the room. The one I'd seen when I broke in that morning. Blues and reds like fire underwater. Up close it was even more unsettling. Like something was drowning and burning at the same time and couldn't decide which one to finish first.
"You like it?" She came out of the kitchen with two glasses of water. Sat across from me.
"It's heavy."
She looked at it.
"Yeah." She picked up her chopsticks. "I paint what's in my head. My head's been heavy lately."
"Since when?"
She looked at me sideways.
"Since some guy with sad eyes sat at my bar and tipped five hundred dollars and made me feel like the world was about to change."
I looked at my food.
She laughed soft.
"Relax. I'm not proposing. Eat."
We ate.
She talked. I listened.
She told me about the mural commission she almost got. Some hotel in Dumbo wanted a lobby piece, big money, but they wanted her to paint something "neutral and uplifting" and she told them she didn't know how to paint neutral and they stopped calling.
I almost smiled.
"You should've taken it."
"I can't paint fake." She pointed her chopstick at me. "I tried once. Second year of art school. Professor said make something commercial, something that sells. I painted this bright happy beach scene, sunsets, umbrellas, the whole thing." She shook her head. "Worst thing I ever made. Looked like a postcard. Felt like lying."
"Some people make a living lying."
"I know." She looked at me steady. "I don't want to be some people."
Something about the way she said it landed different than she meant it to.
I put my chopsticks down.
Looked at her.
She was already looking at me.
"What's that ring?" she asked.
I looked down at my hand.
Richard's ring. Gold. Small skull. Sitting on my pinky finger where it had always been slightly too big and I'd never cared.
"Belonged to someone I lost."
"Who?"
"Man who took me in when I was five. Found me sleeping behind one of his buildings. Brought me home." I turned the ring once around my finger. "He was not a good man. But he was good to me. There's a difference."
She was quiet for a second.
"What happened to him?"
"Killed. I was eight."
"Sam." Her voice went soft.
"Don't." I shook my head. "I don't need that. I just" I stopped. "I keep the ring because it's the only proof he existed. That it was real. That someone actually wanted me before they knew what I was worth."
She reached across the table.
Put her hand over mine.
Didn't say anything.
Just left it there.
Her fingers were warm. Paint dried into the creases of her knuckles. I looked at our hands together on her kitchen table in the amber light from her string lights with Thai food going cold between us and I felt something so unfamiliar it almost scared me.
Safe.
For about forty-five seconds I felt completely safe.
Then my phone buzzed.
I didn't move.
It buzzed again.
Katie felt the change in my hand before I even looked up. I felt her feel it. The way my fingers went from relaxed to something else underneath hers.
She pulled her hand back slowly.
"You should check it."
"It's fine."
"Sam."
I looked at her.
Her eyes were doing that thing again. Seeing too much.
I picked up the phone.
Unknown number.
One message.
A location pin.
Pier 47, Red Hook.
Then underneath it, four words.
*Come see your inheritance.*
One hour timestamp on the message. Sent 6:51 PM. Seven minutes before I knocked on her door.
They'd been watching me drive past her building.
They saw me park.
They knew exactly where I was.
My jaw tightened.
"Everything okay?" Katie asked.
"Work thing."
"You said that last time." Her voice was careful. Not angry. Just careful. "On the rooftop. Wrong number."
I put the phone face down on the table.
Looked at her.
She deserved better than another lie. I could see that on her face not the face of someone who was afraid, but someone who was getting tired of not being trusted. And something about that tired look hit me harder than anger would have.
"I have to go handle something," I said.
"Okay."
"It's not optional."
"I didn't say it was."
"Katie"
"Sam." She folded her napkin. Set it next to her container. Looked at me straight. "I'm a grown woman. I'm not going to throw a fit because you have to leave. Just" She stopped. Took a breath. "Just don't lie to me about what it is. You don't have to tell me the truth. But don't lie."
I stared at her.
"It's dangerous," I said. "What I do. What I am."
She nodded once. Slow.
"I figured."
"You're not scared."
"I'm terrified." She said it flat, no drama. "But you came back from Lisbon. You sat at my bar with those eyes and you came back. So." She shrugged like it was simple. "Go handle your dangerous thing. Come back."
I stood up.
Grabbed my jacket off the back of the chair.
Stopped at the kitchen drawer.
Opened it.
Pulled out the burner phone I left there that morning and put it on the table in front of her.
She looked at it. Then at me.
"One contact in there," I said. "No name. Just a number. If anything feels wrong tonight anything you call it. I answer in ten seconds."
She looked at the phone for a long moment.
"You put that there this morning." Not a question.
My hand froze on my jacket zipper.
"The drawer was closed when I left for class," she said quiet. "It was open when I got back. Half an inch. I notice things, Sam. I'm an artist. I notice everything."
Silence.
"You were in my apartment."
"I needed to make sure it was safe."
"You broke into my apartment."
"Yes."
She stared at me.
I didn't look away. Didn't apologize. Didn't explain more than that because anything I added would just be noise and she was smart enough to hear through noise.
"Go," she finally said.
"Katie"
"Go do what you have to do." She picked up the burner phone. Looked at it. "And we're going to talk about this when you get back."
I went to the door.
Hand on the frame.
"Lock the deadbolt," I said. "Don't open it for anyone until I text you from this number." I held up my regular phone. "Not a delivery. Not your neighbor. Nobody."
She looked at me with those eyes that saw too much.
"How bad is it?"
I thought about the photo they sent of her.
About Alexei Volkov.
About the cigarette butts on the windowsill across the street.
About Scar Man's last words with his brains already leaving his skull.
*Volkov sends his love.*
"I'm going to fix it," I said.
Which wasn't an answer.
She knew it wasn't an answer.
But she nodded anyway.
I went down the stairs and out into the cold Brooklyn night.
Pier 47 was a fifteen minute drive.
I made it in nine.
Parked three blocks out. Walked the rest. Hood up, hands loose, Glock at my waist and knife on my ankle and every sense I had stripped down to raw animal attention. No music in my ears. No phone calls. Just the sound of the river and the wind off the water and my own breathing staying level.
The pier was old.
City had closed it years ago. Fence around the whole thing with a chain and padlock that someone had already cut open and pushed back into place so it looked untouched from a distance.
I noticed.
I pushed through.
Walked out onto the rotting wood in the dark.
No lights except the city across the water and the red blinking of a distant crane.
I got to the end.
Stopped.
Looked down.
There was a man tied to the mooring post at the base of the pier.
Wrists behind him. Ankles bound. Duct tape over his mouth. Alive , I could see him shivering from up here.
I climbed down.
Got close enough to see his face.
I didn't know him.
Middle aged. Soft hands. Not a fighter. Expensive watch on his wrist. Wedding ring. The kind of man who sits in an office and gives orders and never gets dirty himself.
He saw me and his eyes went wide above the tape.
I crouched down in front of him.
Peeled the tape back slow.
He gasped. Coughed. Tried to say three things at once.
"Please — I don't — they said — please, I have a family"
"Who are you?"
"Brennan. Marcus Brennan. I'm a — I handle transfers, financial" He was shaking hard. "I handle accounts for several clients, I don't ask questions, I just move money"
"You moved the Lisbon money."
His face went white.
"I didn't know what it was," he whispered. "I swear. I just processed the transfer. Routing numbers. I never"
"Who hired you?"
"A man called Petrov. I never met him in person. Everything was remote. I've worked with him three years, never a problem, and then last week two men came to my house" His voice broke. "My wife was home. My kids were home."
I looked at him.
"They left me here," he said. "Said you'd find me. Said to tell you" He swallowed. "Said to tell you the wallet has a second layer. A kill switch. If the wallet isn't returned to its rightful owner within seventy-two hours, every transaction in it broadcasts to Interpol, FBI, Treasury. Every account it touched. Every routing number. Every name."
I went very still.
"Including yours," he whispered.
The river moved under the pier.
Cold and black and indifferent.
I thought about 2.7 billion dollars sitting in a hardware wallet in a safe in my Red Hook warehouse.
I thought about my name every fake name I'd ever used suddenly lighting up on federal databases across three continents.
I thought about Katie's apartment. Her string lights. Her hand over mine.
Then I thought about Richard on his knees on the marble floor.
*Live long enough to make them regret it, kid.*
I cut Brennan's wrists free.
Stood up.
"Go home to your wife," I said. "Don't call anyone. Don't move the accounts. Don't contact Petrov."
He scrambled to his feet. "What are you going to"
"Go."
He went.
I stood at the end of the pier alone.
Seventy-two hours.
Three days to return 2.7 billion dollars to the people who murdered my father.
Or burn.
I pulled out my phone.
Looked at the message again.
*Come see your inheritance.*
I turned Richard's ring on my finger once.
Slow.
Inheritance.
They thought this was a negotiation. Give back the money, maybe walk away. Maybe. The kind of maybe that comes with a bullet in it.
But they made one mistake.
They showed me their hand.
A kill switch means the wallet can be controlled remotely. Which means someone is holding the trigger. Which means there's a person, somewhere, with a device or a code or both.
You find the person.
You take the trigger.
Game changes.
I dialed a number.
It rang twice.
"Yeah." Male voice. Young. Background noise like servers humming.
"Ghost," I said. "It's Invincible."
Silence for a second.
"Thought you were retired."
"I need a trace. Hardware wallet, Volkov family, anything that's been active in the last seventy-two hours. Any signal, any network ping, any ghost transaction."
"That's not a small ask."
"I know what it's worth. Name your number."
Keys clicking.
"Give me six hours."
"You have four."
I hung up.
Looked out at the black water.
Seventy-two hours.
Alexei Volkov thought he was holding a clock over my head.
He had no idea I'd been trained by a woman who could end a life in the time it takes most people to blink.
He had no idea the little prince he was squeezing had spent fourteen years becoming the most dangerous thing in any room he walked into.
And he had no idea that threatening Katie was the last mistake his family was ever going to make.
I texted her from my phone.
*Sam: Still standing. Lock held?*
Three dots.
*Katie 🍑: deadbolt AND the chain. Overachiever.*
Then:
*Katie 🍑: you okay?*
I looked at the message for a long second.
*Sam: Getting there. Don't wait up.*
*Katie 🍑: already painting. Be safe, Sam.*
I put my phone away.
Walked back off the pier into the dark.
Three days.
Seventy-two hours to dismantle a Russian mob empire that had been building for thirty years.
I'd done harder things before breakfast.