Tilda stood trembling as her grandmother Berenice brushed gold paint over a bruise on her arm, forcing her to pose like a living statue and softly whispering that gold hid everything.

The wine cellar of the Sterling-Vance mansion had been constructed from imported eighteenth-century French limestone, lined with five thousand bottles of vintage Bordeaux and Champagne. It was cold, damp, and smelled of oak barrels and moldering cork.

Berenice sat on a wooden tasting stool in the center of the vaulted room, her emerald gown bunched around her knees. Two of Florian’s security operatives stood by the heavy iron grate that sealed the stairs.

When the iron door screeched open and Florian descended the stone steps, Berenice did not cower. Unlike her son, she was carved from old money and arrogance; her spine was rigid, her pearl earrings catching the yellow glare of the bare utility bulb hanging above her head.

"You're a thug, Florian," she said, her voice echoing off the stone walls. "You always were. Clara made a mistake lowering herself to our level, thinking she could wash the grease from your family with a church wedding."

Florian pulled up an overturned crate and sat down across from her. He looked at her hands—the hands that had held his granddaughter’s wrist, the hands that had sponged gold over the child's bruises.

"A mistake," Florian repeated quietly. "Is that why you tried to steal her inheritance?"

Berenice laughed, a dry, rattling sound. "Steal? That money belongs in the proper institutions. You made billions moving contraband and controlling corrupt stevedores. The Sterling-Vance name represents the civic foundation of this state. My son was entitled to that trust the moment he married her!"

"You put my daughter in a padded cell with psychiatric patients, Berenice."

"She was becoming inconvenient," Berenice said with icy indifference. "She threatened to take Tilda and leave for Europe. She was going to audit Hadrian’s accounts. If she had opened those books, she would have seen the debts. She would have ruined us."

"So you decided to erase her mind with Thorazine."

"We gave her a restful retreat," Berenice countered, her chin high. "In six months, the state will review her case. Hadrian will be her legal conservator. The trusts will be liquidated, our debts will be paid, and Clara will live comfortably in a private villa in Provence under twenty-four-hour nursing care. She won't know the difference. She won't even remember your name."

Florian sat in silence for ten seconds. The underground room was so quiet they could hear the steady dripping of groundwater through the stone mortar behind the wine racks.

"You know, Berenice," Florian said softly, "thirty years ago, a rival family in Brooklyn tried to kidnap my wife. They thought they could use her to force me to surrender the Red Hook terminals."

Berenice rolled her eyes. "Spare me your war stories, Florian."

"I didn't call the police," Florian continued, ignoring her interruption. "I didn't hire lawyers. I found the man who ordered it, and I locked him inside a walk-in freezer at the Fulton Fish Market. It took him four days to freeze to death. Every twelve hours, I went inside and offered him a cup of hot coffee if he signed over his assets. He signed on day two. I let him freeze anyway."

Berenice’s rigid posture wavered for the first time. The color began to drain from her lips. "You... you wouldn't dare. The entire city saw you leave the gallery with me in custody—"

"The entire city saw nothing," Florian said, leaning forward. "The guests are currently signing non-disclosure agreements prepared by my legal counsel, backed by private dossiers that would dismantle their marriages and careers by dawn. Nobody saw you come down here, Berenice. And nobody will see you leave."

Florian stood up and signaled to his men.

"Take her pearls," Florian ordered. "Take her rings. Leave her in the sub-vault beneath the tasting room. Turn off the heating units."

"Florian!" Berenice screamed, jumping to her feet, her composure finally shattering into hysterics as the guards grabbed her arms. "You can't do this! You can't touch me! Hadrian! Hadrian!"

"Hadrian told me everything, Berenice," Florian said, turning his back on her. "He gave up Pine Ridge in less than a minute. You raised a coward."

As the iron door clanged shut behind him, cutting off Berenice’s shrieks, Cross met Florian at the top of the stairs, holding a satellite phone.

"Boss," Cross said. "We just tracked Dr. Arthur Lindt’s vehicle. He didn't stay at Pine Ridge. He left the facility twenty minutes ago heading north toward the private airstrip at Pittsfield."