Everything changed the moment my daughter released my hand in Lincoln Park and ran toward a little girl sitting alone beneath an oak tree. When Lily turned and shouted, “Dad, she looks exactly like me,” I saw the face of the twin I had never known was alive.

Rain lashed against the steel deck of the MV Corazon as I stepped out from the enclosed gangway. The cargo ship rocked gently against the pier pilings, its dark hull slick with grease and lake water.

The ship's main deck was illuminated only by the intermittent flashes of lightning illuminating the storm clouds above Chicago.

Standing near the ship’s wheelhouse, holding a heavy chrome revolver and flanked by two remaining bodyguards, was Vincenzo Moretti.

"Marcus Blackwell!" Vincenzo shouted over the roar of the wind and rain. His expensive grey suit was soaked, his silver hair plastered across his forehead. "You always were a arrogant bastard!"

I walked steadily across the rain-slicked deck, my Kimber pistol held at low ready. "You should have stayed in Milan, Vincenzo."

"Stayed in Milan?!" Vincenzo laughed hysterically, his voice cracking with rage. "You slaughtered my family! You killed my brother Eduardo! You turned the Moretti name into a joke across Europe!"

"Eduardo killed my wife!" I shouted back, my voice cutting through the thunder. "He killed Grace while she was holding my three-week-old daughter! I gave your family mercy by letting you flee across the ocean, Vincenzo. You repaid that mercy by coming back for my child!"

"She’s a Moretti bloodline too!" Vincenzo screamed, raising his revolver. "Her mother was Clara Vance! Clara owed us five million dollars for her protection in Indiana! The girl belonged to us!"

"She belongs to no one," I growled. "She is my daughter."

Vincenzo’s bodyguards raised their weapons, but before they could fire, two suppressed rifle shots echoed from the grain silo three hundred yards away.

THWIP! THWIP!

Both bodyguards dropped instantly, high-caliber sniper rounds shattering their chests. They collapsed into the swirling deck water.

Vincenzo gasped, panic finally breaking through his arrogant facade. He backed up against the ship’s railing, pointing his shaking revolver at my chest.

"You think you've won, Blackwell?!" Vincenzo wheezed, his eyes wild with desperate madness. "Even if you kill me, the Council knows! They know about the second twin! They will never stop coming for her! They will send assassins, kidnappers, bombers—"

I closed the distance in two lightning-fast strides.

Before Vincenzo could pull the trigger, I grabbed his wrist, twisting it violently outward until the bone snapped with a sickening crack. The chrome revolver clattered onto the deck plates.

I drove my forearm into his throat, pinning him against the ship’s iron railing over the churning, black waters of Lake Michigan sixty feet below.

"Let them come," I whispered into his ear, my face inches from his pale, trembling features. "Let every last one of them come. I will fill the lake with their bodies until there is no one left to remember your name."

"Please..." Vincenzo gasped, clutching my arm, tears mixing with the rain on his face. "Please... Marcus..."

"You made my daughter sit on a wooden bench in sub-zero rain for ten hours," I said coldly. "You made her think she was alone in the world."

I lifted him up over the railing.

"Marcus—!"