Seven bullets were still inside my body when Dominic Rossi married me, and I didn’t even know it was happening. While surgeons questioned whether my heart could survive another operation, New York’s most feared crime boss slipped a gold ring onto my swollen finger and told my unconscious body, “Anybody who comes for you comes through me.”

The wine cellar was cold, damp, and smelled of aged oak and gunpowder.

Enzo moved with lethal precision, his rifle raised as he led me down the winding stone corridor beneath the manor. Emergency red lights bathed the stone arches in an eerie, bloody glow. Overhead, the sound of the assault was deafening—grenades detonating against the upper terraces, the shatter of reinforced glass, and the continuous roar of automatic weapons.

"Keep your head down, Mrs. Rossi," Enzo muttered, his eyes darting toward every shadow. "The bunker is fifty yards through the tasting vault."

"Where is my mother?" I gasped, clutching the skirt of my emerald gown to keep from tripping. The ache near my spine was screaming, the violent shockwave from the library explosion having aggravated the encapsulated bullet.

"She was moved to the medical bunker fifteen minutes before the first breach," Enzo replied. "She’s secure. The Boss anticipated Costa might try something desperate after the gala."

Suddenly, the red lights flickered and died, plunging the corridor into pitch-black darkness.

Enzo froze. "Stay behind me."

A second later, a blinding beam of tactical light cut through the gloom from the far end of the hallway, followed immediately by the deafening crack of a shotgun blast.

Enzo shoved me violently into an arched alcove stacked with wine racks just as buckshot tore through the masonry where he had been standing. He fired three controlled bursts from his rifle, the muzzle flashes illuminating the chaos. A man screamed and fell, but more footsteps echoed down the stone stairs behind us.

We were pinched.

"They had inside codes," Enzo growled, ducking as bullets chipped away the stone beside his head. "Someone in the outer perimeter sold the cellar layout."

Before I could reply, a concussion grenade bounced across the stone floor, rolling to a stop ten feet from our position.

"FIRE IN THE HOLE!" Enzo threw his massive body over me, pinning me against the floor.

The blast was catastrophic.

My ears popped, filled with a high-pitched, deafening squeal. The world tilted violently. Dust, stone fragments, and broken glass rained down upon us. When the smoke began to clear, I pushed myself up, coughing violently.

Enzo was motionless beside me, blood pooling rapidly from a massive shrapnel wound in his neck.

"Enzo!" I choked out, shaking his shoulder. He groaned, his eyes rolling back, unconscious and bleeding out.

Footsteps crunched over the shattered glass.

Tactical lights pinned me to the wall like an insect on a board. Through the blinding glare, three men in dark tactical gear emerged, their assault rifles pointed directly at my chest.

Behind them walked Lucian Costa, his neck heavily bruised from Dominic’s grip earlier that night, a cruel, triumphant sneer twisting his lips.

"Well, well," Lucian purred, stepping over Enzo’s prone body. "Look at the little bride. All dressed up in emerald silk, hiding in the dark."

Panic spiked through my blood, but along with it came something else—a cold, reckless fury. I remembered what Dominic had told me: *I expect you to survive. Whatever it takes.*

My left hand drifted slowly down toward the hem of my dress, reaching for the small derringer strapped to my calf.

"Don't move, sweetheart," one of the mercenaries barked, leveling his barrel at my face.

"Stand down," Lucian commanded his man, waving a hand dismissively. "My father wants her alive. He wants Dominic to watch her bleed out slowly once we have the ledger."

Lucian stepped closer, leaning down, his breath rancid against my cheek. He reached out to grab my hair. "You made me look like a fool at the Met, you little cunt. Let's see how arrogant your husband is when I send him your fingers one by... *ARGH!*"

I didn't wait for him to finish.

I didn't go for the gun on my leg. Instead, I drove the sharp, jagged heel of the shoe I had carried from the library directly into Lucian Costa’s left eye socket.

He shrieked in agony, stumbling backward, clutching his face as blood sprayed through his fingers.

In that split second of total chaos, I dropped to the floor, reached under my dress, and pulled the brushed-steel derringer from its holster.

*Point-blank range. Aim for the throat.*

I fired.

The small gun kicked violently in my hand. The bullet tore straight through the throat of the mercenary on the left. He collapsed instantly, choking on his own blood.

The second guard swung his rifle toward me, but before he could squeeze the trigger, a thunderous roar echoed from the darkness behind them.

A barrage of heavy-caliber rounds tore through the second guard’s chest, throwing him violently against the wine racks, bottles shattering in a cascade of red wine and blood.

Out of the smoke walked Dominic.

He was bleeding from a cut across his forehead, his white shirt torn and stained with soot and gore, looking like a demon emerging from the depths of hell. In his hands, he held a combat shotgun, smoke curling lazily from the barrel.

Lucian Costa was on his knees, blind in one eye, sobbing and groaning in the dirt.

Dominic didn't even look at Lucian. His eyes locked onto me, sitting on the floor among the broken glass, the tiny, smoking derringer still clutched in my trembling hands.

He crossed the distance in two strides, dropping the shotgun, falling to his knees before me, and pulling me fiercely into his chest.

"Clara," he breathed, his voice breaking with an emotion I had never heard in him before. "Clara, are you hit? Did they shoot you?"

"No," I gasped, burying my face into his neck, the smell of cordite and his familiar cedar scent grounding me in the madness. "No, I’m okay. Enzo... Dominic, Enzo is bleeding out!"

Dominic immediately turned to Enzo, pressing two fingers against his neck. "He has a pulse. The medical team is coming behind me." He looked down at Lucian Costa, who was crawling toward the stairs, leaving a smear of blood on the stone floor.

Dominic rose to his feet.

The tenderness he had shown me evaporated instantly, replaced by the cold, merciless finality of a mob boss. He stepped on Lucian’s hand, crushing the bones beneath his heavy boot. Lucian screamed.

"Where is your father, Lucian?" Dominic asked, his voice dead and terrifyingly calm.

"Go to hell, Rossi!" Lucian choked out through his ruined face. "He’s... he’s already at the helipad! He has the backup team! You’re dead! The Commission will destroy you for this!"

Dominic pulled his black pistol from his waistband, pressed the barrel against the center of Lucian’s forehead, and pulled the trigger without blinking.

The gunshot was deafening in the enclosed space. Lucian went limp.

I flinched, closing my eyes against the violence, but Dominic was already back at my side. He lifted me effortlessly into his arms, carrying me out of the ruined cellar and up toward the courtyard.

Above us, the night sky was illuminated by the burning wreckage of two armored trucks on the front lawn. Dozens of Rossi soldiers stood guard, their weapons drawn, securing the perimeter. The battle was over. The lawn was littered with Costa’s dead.

"Boss!" a soldier yelled, running toward us. "Costa’s helicopter is taking off from the southern cliff edge! He’s trying to escape across the Sound!"

Dominic carried me to the hood of a bullet-riddled SUV, setting me down gently. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the gold key to the safe room, and pressed it into my hand.

"Stay with my soldiers, Clara," he said, turning toward the fleet of tactical vehicles. "I have to finish this."

"Dominic, wait!" I cried out, grabbing his arm.

He paused, looking back at me. In the flickering light of the burning trucks, with blood on his brow and a gun in his hand, he should have terrified me. But all I saw was the man who had torn through an army to reach me in the dark.

"He wants the ledger," I said, my breath hitching as a sudden, long-buried memory surfaced through the trauma. "My father... when he left ten years ago, he gave me a silver music box for my sixteenth birthday. He told me never to sell it, no matter how poor we got. He said our future was inside it."

Dominic froze. His slate eyes widened.

"It’s in my mother’s jewelry case," I whispered. "In the guest room. The false bottom of the music box. That’s where it is, Dominic. That’s what Costa has been hunting for ten years."

Dominic stared at me, then a slow, lethal smile spread across his face—a smile of absolute, total victory.

"Then Victor Costa just signed his own death warrant," Dominic said.

He leaned down, cupped my face with his blood-stained hands, and kissed my forehead with reverence.