She Crawled Under a Mafia Boss’s Table to Escape Her Ex—Then He Slid Her a Ledger and Said, “Find My Thief.”

The rain had begun to fall by midnight, slicking the asphalt of the eastern shipping docks with a greasy sheen of oil and water.

Elara sat in the passenger seat of Silas’s matte-black armored Mercedes, her knuckles white as she watched the industrial cranes loom like skeletal giants against the bruised sky. Silas hadn't wanted to bring her—he had tried to lock her in the panic room back at the estate—but she had looked him dead in the eye and told him that if he locked her up, she’d hack his security mainframe and release every financial file he owned.

He had laughed, kissed her forehead, and told her to buckle up.

"Stay in the car," Silas instructed now, his hand resting on the heavy steel grip of a suppressed Sig Sauer P226 as he checked the magazine. "If I’m not back in twenty minutes, use the satellite phone in the glove compartment to call Teddy. He’ll fly you out of the country."

"I'm not going anywhere, Silas," Elara said firmly, unlatching her seatbelt.

Silas turned his head, his dark eyes narrowing. "This isn't a game, Elara. Marcone’s men don't take prisoners, and Dominic is desperate. If he has that hard drive, he has the keys to my entire empire."

"Which is exactly why you need me," she replied, reaching into her coat pocket and pulling out a small, modified tablet linked to the city's traffic grid. "Dominic doesn't know cars. He drives a flashy red Audi R8. I tracked his plate through the toll cameras twenty minutes ago. He’s heading for Pier 4, trying to catch a smuggling freighter out to international waters."

Silas stared at her for a long moment, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across his lips. "God, you’re terrifying."

"Focus, Thorne. We have a traitor to catch."

They slipped out of the vehicle into the sheeting rain. The docks were a labyrinth of stacked shipping containers, towering walls of rusted steel that created a maze of deep shadows and blinding sodium glare.

Footsteps echoed off to their left.

Silas motioned for Elara to stay behind a green twenty-foot container while he melted into the darkness like a ghost. She held her breath, listening to the patter of raindrops hitting her hood and the distant hum of a ship’s engine idling at the pier.

Then, a gunshot cracked through the night.

Bang.

Elara flinched, pressing her back against the corrugated metal.

Another shot answered it—shorter, suppressed, lethal. Silas’s signature sound.

"Over here!" a panicked voice shouted—Dominic.

Footsteps pounded across the gravel, heading directly toward her hiding spot. Elara’s heart hammered against her ribs. She looked around frantically for a weapon, her eyes landing on a heavy iron pipe lying near a puddle.

As Dominic rounded the corner of the container, looking disheveled, bleeding from a graze on his shoulder, and clutching a black laptop bag to his chest, Elara didn't hesitate.

She stepped out from the shadows and swung the iron pipe with every ounce of strength she possessed.

Clang.

The pipe struck Dominic squarely across the shin. He let out a shriek of agony, dropping the bag as he collapsed hard onto the wet gravel.

Before he could scramble for the pistol tucked into his waistband, a heavy Italian leather shoe came down violently on his wrist, pinning his hand to the ground.