At 3:00 a.m., Mafia boss Luca Moretti found his maid Elena washing the same plate over and over.

"Take cover!" Marco roared, opening fire on Franco’s two personal guards.

The parlor turned into a storm of smoke, muzzle flashes, and deafening thunder. Luca lunged across the low coffee table, tackling Franco to the ground just as a spray of bullets pulverized the leather chair where the Don had been sitting seconds earlier.

Franco was surprisingly fast for an old man. He drew a snub-nosed revolver from his inner pocket, aiming it point-blank at Luca’s chest.

Luca didn't hesitate. He grabbed Franco’s wrist, slamming it savagely against the marble floor until bone cracked and the weapon skittered away. He drove a brutal elbow into Franco’s jaw, knocking the older man senseless.

"Marco! Secure the exits!" Luca bellowed over the deafening cacophony of gunfire.

"The foyer is compromised!" Marco yelled back, reloading his sidearm behind an overturned mahogany table. "They’re breaching the east terrace! There are at least twenty shooters on the lawn!"

Luca’s heart didn't race for his own life. It raced for the third floor.

*Elena.*

He had told Marco to take her to the armory, but the gunfire had started before Marco could complete the transfer. She was down in the basement access corridor—alone and completely unprotected.

Luca drew his Beretta, racking the slide. "Hold this room! Kill anyone who doesn't wear our colors!"

Luca broke into a dead sprint, abandoning the safety of the fortified parlor and diving into the smoke-filled corridor. Bullets chewed through the priceless oil paintings on the walls, sending plaster and splintered wood raining down like snow.

He moved like a phantom through his own home, eliminating two of Franco’s mercenaries with double-taps to the head before they could even pivot their rifles toward him.

He reached the heavy metal door leading to the basement stairs. It was ajar.

Luca took the stairs three at a time, his boots hitting the concrete steps in rapid succession.

At the bottom of the corridor, he saw her.

Elena was cornered against a row of utility lockers. One of Franco’s men—a hulking brute in tactical gear—had pinned her by the throat, a combat knife raised in his right hand.

"Where’s the chip, you little bitch?" the mercenary snarled.

Elena didn't scream. She didn't beg. With a feral, desperate fury, she grabbed a steel pipe lying near the water heater and swung it with all her strength, smashing it across the man's knee.

The mercenary roared in agony, stumbling backward.

Before he could recover, Luca arrived.

Luca grabbed the back of the man's tactical vest, hauled him backward, and drove him face-first into the concrete wall with sickening force. The man crumpled to the floor, motionless.

Luca stood over the fallen soldier, his chest heaving, his dark shirt splattered with drywall dust and blood. His eyes locked onto Elena.

She was trembling, gasping for air, her knuckles bloody from gripping the pipe. When she saw him, the weapon slipped from her fingers, clattering to the floor.

"Luca..." she sobbed.

Luca closed the distance between them in two strides. He didn't care about the gunfire echoing upstairs. He didn't care about the empire burning around them. He grabbed her by the back of her neck, pulling her roughly against his chest, burying his face in her hair.

"You're alive," he rasped, his voice thick with an emotion he had never allowed himself to feel in ten years of bloodshed. "You're safe."

Elena wrapped her arms around his waist, clinging to him like a lifeline in a storm. She could feel the wild, erratic thumping of his heart against her cheek.

"He's going to destroy everything," she whispered against his chest. "My father's memory... you... your home..."

Luca pulled back slightly, his hands framing her face, his thumbs wiping away the streaks of soot and tears from her cheeks.

"Nobody destroys what is mine, Giuliana," Luca said, his eyes burning with an ancient, terrifying darkness. "And you are mine. Do you understand me? You belong to this house now."

Elena looked into the eyes of the mafia boss, the man she had been taught to fear since childhood. But looking at him now, she didn't see a monster.

She saw her protector.

She nodded, her voice steady and resolute. "Then give me a gun."