The older mafia boss said he was too old to ask her to dance, and her answer put a target on both of them

Berth 4 was a rusted iron relic of Savannah’s nineteenth-century industrial boom, sitting on an isolated bend of the river where the marsh met the deep shipping channels.

Fog swirled thick across the water, smelling of brackish mud, diesel fuel, and decaying pluff mud. The rain had stopped, but the damp cold seeped into everything.

Marcus’s black Rolls-Royce slipped through the rusted chain-link gates at precisely eleven o’clock. Two armed guards in leather jackets motioned them forward with tactical flashlights, directing the car toward the center of the open wharf.

Behind them, no motorcade followed. Marcus had arrived in a single vehicle, driven by Dominic.

Clare sat in the back beside Marcus. She wore a tailored black coat over a dark emerald silk dress, her hair pulled back into a severe, elegant chignon. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap. Beneath the black leather of her handbag, her fingers rested against the cold grip of a small .38 revolver Marcus had taught her to cock and fire four hours earlier in the basement range of Blackwood.

Marcus reached over, his leather-gloved hand covering hers. "Remember: stay three steps behind me. If anything goes sideways, Dominic will put you in the river cabin behind the slipway. You do not wait for me."

"You promised me you wouldn't die tonight, Marcus," she said, looking straight into his eyes. "Keep your promise."

Marcus looked at her, that faint, lethal smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "I have no intention of leaving you to the mercy of this town's bachelors, darling."

Dominic killed the engine. "We’re surrounded, boss. Twelve men visible on the catwalks. At least four on the roofs."

"Amateurs," Marcus remarked casually, adjusting his silver cufflinks. "A professional would hide twenty. Let’s go."

They stepped out into the biting river air.

At the center of the open pier, a makeshift conference had been arranged: a steel folding table, two metal chairs, and a battery-powered halogen floodlight that cast long, grotesque shadows across the wet concrete.

Lorenzo Vance stood beside the table.

He was forty, slick, dressed in a designer camel-hair coat with a gold chain glinting at his throat. He had the restless, twitchy energy of a man who had snorted too much cocaine and possessed too much unearned power. Six men with submachine guns stood in a semi-circle behind him.

"Marcus!" Vance shouted, clapping his hands together with theatrical warmth. "You actually came! And you brought the dancer! Look at you, old man! I guess the rumors are true—there really is no fool like an old fool."

Marcus didn't answer until he reached the edge of the halogen light. He stopped precisely five paces from the table. His posture was upright, his hands loose at his sides, his expression so completely devoid of emotion that Vance’s smile faltered slightly.

"You wanted a conversation, Lorenzo," Marcus said, his voice carrying effortlessly over the low lap of the river against the pilings. "Speak. My time is expensive, and Miss Bennett has a rehearsal schedule to reconstruct."

Vance’s face darkened, offended by the older man’s utter lack of fear. "You think you’re in a position to give orders, Vale? Look around you! I have thirty men on this pier! I have the eastern docks locked down! City council voted three hours ago to revoke your maritime operating license—my councilmen saw to that!"

"Your councilmen are currently being interviewed by the state attorney general’s office regarding twelve offshore accounts in the Caymans," Marcus said, pulling a folded slip of paper from his inner breast pocket and tossing it onto the metal table. "They began talking at nine-thirty. By midnight, your warrants will be signed."

Vance froze. His eyes flicked to the paper, then back to Marcus, a bead of sweat breaking through the hair grease on his forehead. "You're bluffing."

"I have never bluffed in my life, Lorenzo," Marcus said softly. "You are a creature of small appetites. You see a warehouse and think you own an empire. You see a woman and think she is a prize to be stolen. You do not understand how this city breathes."

Vance reached beneath his coat, his hand drifting toward his waistband. "You arrogant old bastard—"

"Take your hand out of your coat, Lorenzo," a new voice called out from the darkness above.

From the rusted catwalk fifty feet above their heads, the red dot of a laser sight appeared on Vance’s chest. Then another appeared on his forehead. Then five more appeared on the men standing behind him.

Vance’s men looked up in sudden, frantic panic.

"You thought Berth 4 was empty when you arrived at noon?" Dominic chuckled from beside the car, holding a tactical detonator in his palm. "My men have owned the catwalks since Tuesday, Vance. You walked into a mousetrap and thought you brought the cheese."

Vance’s breathing turned ragged. He looked at Marcus, his bravado entirely stripped away, revealing the terrified, cornered coward beneath. "Vale... we can make a deal. Fifty-fifty on the container terminals. You keep the north, I keep the south—"

"No deals," Marcus said, taking two slow steps forward. He loomed over the younger man, the full weight of forty years of undisputed dominion bearing down like a mountain. "You burned Miss Bennett’s studio. You terrified her students. You sent cowards to shoot up a room filled with civilian guests."

Marcus reached out, his hand wrapping around Vance’s collar, pulling the younger man down until they were eye to eye.

"You will sign the transfer of all Vance Logistics real estate to the Bennett Arts Foundation," Marcus whispered, each word a hammer blow. "You will board a freighter leaving for Rotterdam at three o’clock this morning. And if your boots ever touch American soil again, Lorenzo, I will not send an army. I will hunt you down myself."

Vance was trembling violently, his eyes darting toward his men, who stood frozen under the network of red laser sights painting their chests.