MY GRANDMOTHER GAVE ME $500 FOR CHRISTMAS. THEN SHE LOOKED AT MY MOTHER AND SAID FIVE WORDS THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING.

"Step any closer, and your precious lost sister feeds the sharks," Blackwood yelled over the roar of the gale.

Maeve stood frozen, her eyes wide with sudden, terrifying comprehension. Her sleek composure was completely gone. She had realized, far too late, that Julian's words were true. The man she had called a mentor, the man she had called father, was using her as a human shield the second the walls closed in.

"Victor... what are you doing?" Maeve stammered, her voice whipped away by the freezing ocean spray. "We have the plane coming. We take the key from Ruth and leave together—"

"You served your purpose, Maeve," Blackwood sneered, his face illuminated by the distant flash of lightning across the bay. "You managed the accounts. You kept the regulators blind. But a co-conspirator is a liability when federal warrants hit Interpol. You die here with your family. A tragic murder-suicide of the disgraced Vance lineage."

Clara stepped onto the platform, the empty shotgun hanging uselessly at her side, her face completely calm in the midst of the tempest.

"Let her go, Blackwood," Clara said, her voice cutting clearly through the storm. "You want the key? You want the offshore ledger? Ruth is right behind me. Take the key and let the girl live."

Ruth stepped onto the catwalk, leaning heavily on my arm. The freezing wind whipped her white hair wildly across her face. She looked at Maeve—really looked at her—for the first time in forty years.

"Maeve," Ruth whispered, her voice breaking with an ocean of regret. "Forgive me. I was weak. I was a coward. I gave you away because I thought Victor’s wealth would shield you from the gutter. I thought... I thought money could buy safety."

A single tear spilled over Maeve’s cheek, freezing on her skin. "You left me in hell, Mother."

"I know," Ruth wept. "And I have burned in that same hell every single day of my life."

Ruth reached into the pocket of her coat. She didn't pull out a key, or a code sheet.

She pulled out the small, rusted green tackle box.

Blackwood’s eyes locked onto it, a flare of insatiable greed lighting up his scarred face. "The bypass cipher. Give it to me!"

"Come and take it, Victor," Ruth said softly, stepping toward the iron railing that overlooked the black, churning sea below.

Blackwood shoved Maeve violently to the iron decking, lunging forward with his revolver aimed straight at Ruth’s chest. "Give it to me, you old witch!"

At that exact fraction of a second, Julian moved.

He lunged low, sweeping Blackwood’s legs out from under him. Blackwood hit the wet iron grate with a bone-jarring slam, his revolver skittering across the platform and falling through a gap in the railing, plunging into the dark ocean below.

Blackwood roared in fury, scrambling to bring up the detonator in his left hand. "If I don't leave this rock, nobody leaves!"

Maeve, bleeding from her cheek where she had hit the iron deck, scrambled forward and drove her heel down directly onto Blackwood's wrist with all her strength. Bone snapped with an audible crunch. The detonator slipped from his ruined fingers, tumbling toward the edge.

I dove across the slick platform, my fingers scraping the rusted iron, catching the plastic detonator just as it teetered over the precipice.

Blackwood lay pinned beneath Julian’s knee, his breathing ragged, his bespoke coat soaked in saltwater and blood.