The wind whipped Nola’s jumpsuit as Enzo dragged her back toward the helicopter skids. Two dozen armed retainers flanked him, assault rifles leveled at the steel doorframe where Lazaro stood as rigid as an unexploded shell. "Shut up, you idiot girl!" Enzo spat, pressing the muzzle harder into Nola’s ear. Blood from the head wound Kida had inflicted days ago still crusted his hairline beneath the harsh magenta glare of the rooftop's neon spire. "Lazaro! Throw down the piece or her brains paint the landing pad!" Beside Lazaro, Juri choked on a hiccup, frantically clutching an antique drum-fed submachine gun that looked heavier than his entire torso. "Kida, do the thing from the movie where you offer him a suitcase of untraceable bonds—" Kida stepped past the reinforced threshold. Her sneakers made a dry squeak on the painted asphalt. "Drop the pistol, Enzo," she said, adjusting her glasses. "Your grip ratio is completely inefficient. The recoil angle against her zygomatic arch will cause the slide to jam on ejection, meaning you will kill her, but you won't survive the 0.4 seconds it takes Lazaro to rip your lungs out through your clavicle." Enzo blinked, his sneer faltering under the bizarre technical lecture. "Who the hell are you to talk to me, draft-girl?" "Article Forty-Two of the Lex Sanguinis," Kida said clearly, projecting her voice against the coastal gale. She lifted her left hand, letting the heavy obsidian-and-gold signet ring catch the spinning safety lights. "Old Dialect, codicil seven. 'The seated master of the Great Vine may demand an immediate parley on unhallowed stone before lead flies.' You agreed to the ancient pact when you swallowed the salt wine at the winter caucus. If you fire that weapon during an invoked parley, every cartel from here to the southern trench owes your bloodline a harvest of salt." Enzo stared at the signet ring. The color dropped out of his lips. "You? You're the—" "She is the absolute master of the house of Cante," Lazaro purred. The sound was low, vibrating with a feral, terrifying warmth. He hadn't drawn his piece yet. His stance stayed motionless, coiled and waiting for her command. "And whatever she calculates... I execute." "She’s bluffing!" Enzo screamed, his composure unraveling. "She’s a nobody! A desk clerk whose mother owed my collectors millions!" "The bylaws are notarized by your own family's archived seal, third drawer of your maritime office," Kida countered smoothly, stepping two inches to the left. She brought her right hand up, thumb tapping against her middle digit—the exact gesture she had outlined on the blueprint schematic in the grease-stained elevator. Lazaro saw it. He didn't aim at Enzo. In a draw so instantaneous the muzzle flash seemed to erupt directly from his leather jacket, Lazaro fired three heavy-caliber rounds upward. High above them, a high-tensile steel cable snapped with a sound like an artillery shell. The central neon spire—an eighty-foot monolith humming with two hundred thousand volts of hot magenta gas—shuddered. As Kida had mapped out, Enzo’s contractors had cut corners during the roof's retrofitting; the lateral load-bearing bolts had rusted through three seasons ago. Without the anchor cable, gravity solved the equation. The steel trellis tilted. "Move!" Enzo’s men shrieked, scattering as the massive metal framework sheared off its concrete footings. It collapsed sideways with a thunderous roar, grinding twenty feet of industrial ductwork into sparks and flatiron. Tons of glass, twisted iron, and electrified wiring flattened the line of Vanni henchmen in an instant avalanche of industrial debris. In the smoke and blinding white flashes of severed power lines, Lazaro crossed the pad. He was across the distance before Enzo could even register the deafening crash. A sickening crunch echoed above the whine of dying generators as Lazaro grabbed Enzo’s gun hand, twisting it outward until the wrist snapped. The silver pistol dropped to the deck. Enzo wailed, a high, pathetic squeal of agony. Lazaro caught the rival mobster by the throat, lifted him clean off the tarmac, and slammed him down so violently that Enzo’s knees buckled against the asphalt. With a brutal kick to the ribs, Lazaro dragged the weeping syndicate head across the deck and threw him face-first at Kida’s sneakers. "Your judgment, my Don," Lazaro whispered, kneeling beside her, his breath warm against the hem of her trench coat, completely uncaring that his own palms were dripping with someone else's blood. He gazed up at her, entirely transfixed. Nola stood nearby, entirely untouched by the falling tower. She coughed, wafting plaster dust away from her face, and smoothed down her creased jumpsuit. "Well!" Nola marched over, waving an accusatory finger at the broken man groaning on the floor. "I hope you're proud of yourself, Enzo! Demolishing your own company signage just to intimidate rival distributors? The market board is going to hear about this! You couldn't run a cold-pressed boutique if your life depended on it!" Juri slowly emerged from behind an air conditioning unit, dragging his Tommy gun. "Kida... did we just win? Did you just mob-boss him with building codes?" Kida looked down at Enzo, who was spitting blood onto the toe of her shoe. She calculated the remaining debts, the destroyed infrastructure, and the complete elimination of their financial liabilities. Everything was balanced. The spreadsheet had reached zero. "You will sign over the maritime permits," Kida began coldly. "And then you will—" A wailing siren cut her off. Blinding, blue-and-white searchlights slammed down from the sky, bathing the entire ruined helipad in blistering daylight. The thrum of four heavy police helicopters rattled the gravel around them, while the stairwell doors burst open in a storm of tactical shields, flashbangs, and assault carbines. "Hands where I can see them!" boomed a voice over a megaphone from the cordon line. Chief Veridian stepped through the phalanx of armored officers, a satisfied, corrupt sneer plastered across his face, his weapon leveled directly at Kida's chest. "Don Cante. Drop to your knees, or my snipers punch a hole through your pretty head."

Demolition Day