MY FATHER GAVE MY SISTER THE DINER I SPENT NINE YEARS SAVING. THEN HE HANDED ME A BROKEN SPATULA IN FRONT OF SIXTY PEOPLE.

I kicked the swinging kitchen doors open, bursting into the dining room with Myron over my shoulder.

The air in the front room was cooler, but smoke was already curling across the ceiling like black snakes. The front entrance was deadbolted from the outside; through the plate glass, I could see the heavy chain Marcus had wrapped around the handles before they entered.

We were trapped.

"Over here!" a voice screamed from the side window.

I whipped around.

Grace was standing outside the drive-thru window, swinging a heavy iron tire iron against the safety glass. The reinforced glass cracked in a spiderweb pattern. She swung again, screaming with raw, hysterical rage, until the pane gave way in an explosion of tempered glass shards.

"Benny! Pass him through!" Grace yelled, tears streaming through the soot on her face.

I didn't hesitate. I hoisted Myron up and shoved him through the narrow window frame. Grace caught him by the shoulders, her expensive coat ripping on the jagged glass as she hauled her father out onto the snowy gravel of the alley.

I turned back to grab the deed canister from my jacket.

"Give it to me," Eleanor’s voice snarled from the smoke.

She stood between me and the window, her face blackened with soot, her hair singed. In her right hand, she held a small, nickel-plated .38 revolver. Her hand wasn't shaking.

"Thirty years of work," she hissed, cocking the hammer with a sharp, metallic click. "Thirty years of consolidating grandfather's empire. I will not lose it to a shipyard bastard and a line cook."

"It's over, Eleanor," I said, holding her gaze through the swirling smoke. "The entire town knows you're here. The fire trucks are already coming. Listen."

In the distance, the wailing sirens of the Port Haven Volunteer Fire Department rose above the sound of the wind, racing down the shoreline highway.

"They'll find three bodies," Eleanor whispered, raising the gun to my forehead. "And the deed will be gone."

*CRASH.*

A heavy stone crashed through the shattered drive-thru window, striking Eleanor squarely between the shoulder blades.

She gasped, her shot firing wildly into the ceiling plaster as she stumbled forward onto the burning floorboards.

Behind her, climbing through the broken window frame with bloodied hands and a wild look in her eyes, was Grace.

Grace didn't look like the spoiled princess who had mocked me three months ago. Her designer clothes were shredded, her face bruised, her fingers bleeding from broken glass. In her hand, she held a heavy cast-iron skillet she had retrieved from the alley scrap bin—the very skillet I had taught her to season when she was twelve years old.

"Stay away from my brother, you bitch," Grace snarled, swinging the skillet with both hands.

The heavy iron caught Eleanor across the temple with a dull, hollow *CLANG*.

Eleanor dropped like a stone, the revolver sliding across the floorboards directly into the pool of burning gasoline.

"Benny! Jump!" Grace screamed, grabbing my flannel shirt.

I grabbed Eleanor by the collar of her tactical jacket with one hand, hooked my arm through the window frame, and hauled both of us through the opening just as the kitchen roof collapsed inward in an apocalyptic roar of sparks, burning timber, and boiling iron.