In front of seventy employees, my mafia boss's jealous fiancée grabbed my hair and cut off the braid I'd grown for years to honor my dead grandmother.

As the heavy footsteps of the council delegation faded down the stairwell, the adrenaline that had kept my muscles coiled like springs slowly began to ebb, leaving a dull, throbbing ache in my shoulders.

I lowered the Beretta, letting the slide lock back on an empty chamber before ejecting the magazine to check my rounds. Twenty-two left. More than enough.

"You handled Vance well," Adrian said softly, walking over to me and reaching out to take the pistol from my hand, gently setting it down on the table. "Though you didn't have to cover the guard quite so aggressively. I had him."

"Confidence is good, Adrian. Complacency gets you killed," I replied, offering a tired, ghost of a smile as I leaned my forehead against his chest.

His arms came around me instantly, strong, warm, and grounding. He buried his face in my hair, inhaling deeply.

"I still can't believe what she did," he murmured, his voice thick with sudden, quiet rage. "Victoria. Every time I look at your hair—at what she tried to take from you—I want to tear this entire compound down to the foundations."

"It's just hair, Adrian," I whispered, though my hand instinctively reached up to touch the short, uneven ends where my sacred braid used to be. "It'll grow back."

"It was a part of your heritage. A part of you," he growled gently, kissing the top of my head. "And she paid for it. She’s locked in the deepest cell we have, and no one is ever letting her out."

"Speaking of cells," I pulled back slightly, looking up into his dark eyes. "We still haven't interrogated her about who inside our own inner circle gave her the security codes to bypass the eastern gate."

Adrian’s expression darkened instantly. The victory against Vance and the European council felt hollow for a moment as the reality of domestic treason reared its ugly head. Someone close to us—someone we trusted—had let Victoria into the security terminal on the night she attacked me.

"We’re going down there right now," Adrian said, his voice dropping to an absolute, lethal pitch. "No more games. No more patience."

We descended the endless spiral staircases deep into the bowels of the compound, far beneath the waterline where the air grew damp, cold, and smelled of wet stone and old iron. The holding cells were reinforced concrete bunkers, lit only by flickering overhead fluorescent bulbs that buzzed with a low, annoying frequency.

As we reached cell block four, the guard standing outside snapped to attention, unlocking the heavy iron-barred door with a loud, metallic clank.

"Has she spoken?" Adrian demanded.