The air in Luciel’s private dining room possessed the weight of quiet money, but to Richard Blackwood, it suddenly tasted like ozone before a lightning strike.

While Richard’s private helicopter was lifting off from a Manhattan helipad bound for the coast of Maine, a heavy ground fog rolled off the East River, wrapping the quiet brownstones of 72nd Street in a dense, blinding grey shroud.

Inside the third-floor apartment, Lily sat at a small oak desk near the window, reviewing an admissions application for Columbia University’s literature program.

The apartment was beautiful—hardwood floors, soft cream rugs, high ceilings, and a kitchen stocked with everything she had ever dreamed of. Yet, she felt a strange, lingering knot of anxiety in her stomach.

Outside her door, two of Marcus’s private security guards—ex-British Special Air Service operatives dressed in sharp suits—kept silent watch in the hallway.

Suddenly, the lights inside the apartment flickered twice and died.

The hum of the refrigerator ceased. The streetlights outside went dark as the entire block suffered a sudden, localized power blackout.

Lily froze, her heart hammering against her ribs.

In the hallway, a soft phut-phut sound echoed—the distinct, suppressed discharge of a silenced weapon.

"Marcus?" Lily called out, stepping away from the desk, her voice trembling in the dark.

There was no answer. Only the heavy, wet sound of something dropping onto the hallway carpet.

Lily didn't waste time screaming. Months of surviving on the streets of Manhattan had hardwired her instincts for immediate survival. She spun around, locked the heavy oak door from the inside, and dragged a heavy mahogany bookshelf across the floor, jamming it against the brass doorknob.

A second later, the doorknob rattled violently.

BANG.

A hydraulic ram slammed against the door frame, splintering the oak wood. A gloved hand reached through the crack, trying to clear the deadbolt.

Lily didn't run to the fire escape—she knew from her homeless days that fire escapes were death traps in an ambush. Instead, she grabbed a heavy cast-iron skillet from the kitchen counter, slipped into the small hallway pantry, and pulled the slatted door almost shut.

The apartment door burst inward, sending splinters of wood and plaster across the rug.

Three men in tactical black gear, wearing night-vision goggles and carrying submachine guns, swept into the room with terrifying, silent efficiency.

"Target isn't in the main room," one of the men growled in a low foreign accent. "Check the bedroom. Fast. We have three minutes before Blackwood’s secondary unit arrives."

Lily held her breath inside the dark pantry, pressing her back against the wooden shelves. The cast-iron skillet was heavy in her trembling hands.

One of the tactical operatives stepped toward the pantry, his boots crushing splinters of the shattered door on the floor. He raised his suppressed rifle, using the barrel to push open the slatted pantry door.

The moment the door swung open, Lily didn't freeze.

She swung the cast-iron skillet with every ounce of strength in her body.

CRACK!

The heavy iron caught the operative squarely on the side of his tactical helmet, shattering his night-vision goggles and dropping him like a sack of cement.

"She's here!" the second operative yelled, turning his weapon toward the pantry.

Before he could pull the trigger, the large bay windows overlooking the street shattered inward in a shower of explosive glass!

Two tactical ropes swung through the fog, and Marcus Vance, along with two heavily armed private operators, burst into the apartment like apex predators.

The sound of suppressed gunfire ripped through the room. Within four seconds, the remaining two intruders were neutralized on the floor, their weapons secured.

Marcus unclipped his tactical helmet, sweeping his flashlight across the darkened room until the beam landed on Lily, who stood near the pantry holding her cast-iron skillet, breathing heavily, covered in glass dust but completely unhurt.