Ninety-nine doctors had told me I would never walk again, and after eight years in a wheelchair, I believed them. Then my maid’s little girl broke into the one room everyone was forbidden to enter, laughed in the face of the most feared man in the city—and somehow made my dead foot move.

The heavy armored door slammed directly into Dominic Moretti’s face with the force of a hydraulic ram.

The sharp, sickening sound of breaking bone echoed through the rain as Dominic’s nose and jaw shattered instantly under the steel impact. He was lifted off his feet, thrown backward five yards through the air, and crashed hard onto the wet, muddy pavement, screaming in agony as his silver revolver skidded across the road into the drainage ditch.

"FIRE!" Vince bellowed, thrusting his heavy magnum through the open door gap and pulling the trigger twice.

BOOM! BOOM!

The broad-shouldered bodyguard holding Dominic’s umbrella dropped like a sack of cement, a hole blown clean through his chest.

The remaining three gunmen in the tree line opened fire, but our two surviving security sedans behind us lunged forward, their doors flying open as six of my veteran harbor guards spilled out into the road, returning heavy, disciplined suppressive fire.

TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!

"GET HIM IN!" Vince screamed, grabbing me by the shoulders to pull me back into the safety of the Suburban.

"NO!" I roared.

I didn't pull back.

I grabbed the leather headrest of the driver’s seat with my left hand and the heavy door frame with my right.

And then, as my men exchanged fatal gunfire in the misty coastal fog twenty feet away, I pulled my body forward.

My left leg—dead, heavy, and numb—hung beneath me like a pendulum.

But my right leg... my right leg contracted.

The quadriceps muscle bulged against the dark gray fabric of my wool trousers. The knee locked into place. The ankle stabilized.

I stood up.

I stood on one leg, leaning heavily against the side of the armored vehicle, but I was up. My head was five feet, eleven inches off the ground for the first time in nearly three thousand days.

Dominic Moretti, clutching his bloodied, mangled face on the rain-soaked asphalt ten feet away, looked up through his swollen, bloody eyes.

When he saw me standing there—a six-foot-four ghost in a dark gray suit, framed by the smoke of gun barrels and the red flashing lights of our escort vehicles—his jaw dropped so wide blood spilled down his chin onto his expensive silk shirt.

"Impossible..." Dominic choked out, his voice a gurgling, terrified whisper. "You're... you're a cripple..."

I looked down at him. The ocean breeze blew my silver-streaked hair across my forehead. The rain washed over my face, cold, sweet, and alive.

"Vince," I commanded, my voice cutting through the sound of gunfire like an iron bell. "Put him in the trunk."

"Sir?" Vince gasped, staring at me from the doorframe, his gun trembling in his hand as he looked at my standing leg. "Boss... you're standing..."

"PUT HIM IN THE TRUNK!" I roared.

Vince didn't hesitate. He lunged forward through the rain, grabbed the screaming, half-conscious Dominic by his collar, and dragged his three-hundred-dollar shoes across the wet asphalt, tossing him mercilessly into the rear cargo compartment of the Suburban before slamming the heavy steel tailgate shut.

Our guards suppressed the remaining shooters in the woods, two of them taking non-fatal shoulder hits as they scrambled back into their sedans.

"Clear the trucks!" Vince ordered into his radio headset. "Ram 'em!"

Our lead driver slammed the Suburban into reverse, backed up fifty yards, then floored the engine, slamming our six-thousand-pound reinforced front bumper directly into the side of the cement truck blocking the highway. The heavy truck groaned, its rusted axles buckling under the violent impact as it was shoved aside three feet—just enough for our convoy to shoot through the gap.

I fell back onto the leather bench seat as the Suburban accelerated down the winding coastal road, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

My right leg was trembling violently from the sheer physical exertion. The muscle was burning, filled with lactic acid and raw, unaccustomed trauma.

I leaned back against the headrest, my eyes closed, breathing in gasps.

"Mr. Marino!" Elena cried, leaning over from her seat, her face pale as death. "Are you okay? Are you shot?"

I slowly opened my eyes. I looked down at my right foot.