I Spilled Coffee on a Paralyzed Mafia Boss—Then My Clumsiness Exposed the Man Trying to Kill Him...

Everything happened in a fraction of a second.

Carmine pulled the trigger.

BANG!

The gunshot roared through the high-ceilinged ballroom, shattering one of the crystal chandeliers into a rain of sparkling glass.

Before the bullet could hit me, Vincent threw his heavy body across my front, knocking me down onto the marble floor. The round grazed Vincent’s shoulder, tearing through his suit jacket.

"Gabriel!" I screamed from the floor.

Carmine turned his gun toward Gabriel, his finger tightening on the trigger for a second shot.

Then, the impossible happened.

Gabriel didn't reach for a gun.

Driven by pure, explosive protective fury, Gabriel’s hands gripped the armrests of his wheelchair. His leg muscles—fueled by months of physical therapy and freed from Carmine’s debilitating sedatives—spasmed with sudden, violent power.

Gabriel stood up.

He didn't walk gracefully, but he stood on his own two feet, his towering six-foot-two frame rising like a titan above the wheelchair.

He launched himself forward across the two feet separating them, his broad hands locking around Carmine’s throat with the force of an hydraulic press.

Both men crashed through the glass French doors at the side of the ballroom, tumbling out onto the stone terrace and down the steps into the muddy soil of the rose garden.

"Gabriel!" I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the glass cutting into my knees, and sprinted through the shattered terrace doors into the pouring rain.

Down in the garden, amid the dark green bushes and thorny stems, Gabriel held Carmine pinned to the muddy earth.

Carmine was gasping for air, his face turning blue, his gun lost somewhere in the wet dirt.

"You tried to kill her," Gabriel roared, his hands tightening around his uncle's throat. "You tried to take everything I loved!"

"Gabriel... stop!" I cried, throwing myself down into the mud beside him, wrapping my arms around his shoulder. "Don't do it! Don't ruin your life for him! The feds are outside!"

Gabriel froze.

He looked down at Carmine’s gasping, pathetic face, then turned his head to look at me. Rain poured down his face, soaking his dark hair, mixing with the dark mud on his cheeks.

"He tried to kill you, Chloe," Gabriel whispered, his voice shaking with raw emotion.

"I'm okay," I sobbed, pressing my face against his rain-soaked cheek. "I'm right here. Look at me. I'm okay."

Slowly, painfully, Gabriel opened his fists.

Carmine collapsed onto the wet soil, coughing violently, clutching his bruised neck.

Behind us, the sirens of twenty FBI and state police vehicles began to wail through the trees, their red and blue lights flashing across the estate’s stone walls. Don Saleri and the other bosses had already called in the federal task force to take Carmine and Vance away on treason and attempted murder charges.

Gabriel reached out, his long, mud-stained fingers cupping my face. He looked into my eyes with a love so fierce, so profound, that it wiped away every memory of fear I had ever known.

He tried to stand, but his legs gave out from the intense physical shock.

I caught him, wrapping my arms around his waist, pulling his chest against mine as we both sank down into the soft earth surrounded by the autumn roses.