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“You...” Lorenzo stammered, the color draining from his face until he looked like a corpse. “You were in Wisconsin! You were dying in a clinic!”

“I am old, Lorenzo,” Salvatore said, taking a slow, measured step forward. The twenty elite Sicilian operators moved with him in terrifying synchronization, raising their automatic weapons. “But I will never be too old to crush a traitor beneath my heel.”

Lorenzo’s hand began to shake violently against my temple. Desperation, wild and rabid, flared in his eyes.

“I’ll do it!” Lorenzo screamed, tightening his finger on the trigger. “I swear to God, I’ll pull it!”

In that fraction of a second, I didn't think about fear. I thought about the grandmother who raised me with quiet dignity. I thought about the six years of survival that had made me strong. And I thought about Mateo, whose life I refused to let this monster destroy.

I slammed my head backward with all the force in my body, striking Lorenzo directly on the bridge of his nose.

Cartilage crunched sickeningly.

Lorenzo shrieked in pain, stumbling backward, his grip slipping from my collar.

“Now!” Mateo roared.

Mateo drew his sidearm in a blur of motion.

*Crack. Crack.*

Two rounds struck Lorenzo’s right shoulder and wrist, sending the silver revolver skittering across the concrete into the freezing water of the lake below.

The remaining mercenaries dropped their weapons instantly, raising their hands above their heads as Salvatore’s Sicilian soldiers surrounded them like wolves.

Mateo crossed the distance between us in three strides. He caught me as my knees buckled, lifting me into his arms and pulling me fiercely against his chest. His heart was hammering like a trapped bird, his hands tangling in my hair, pressing frantic kisses against my temple, my forehead, my eyelids.

“You’re insane,” he choked out, his voice cracking with raw emotion. “You are completely, utterly insane.”

“I saved your life,” I whispered against the crook of his neck, burying my face in his damp wool coat, breathing in the scent of cedar and rain.

“You almost got yourself killed,” he countered, though his arms wrapped around me so tightly I could barely breathe. “Don't you ever do that again. Do you hear me? Never.”

“No promises, Mr. Vitiello.”

Mateo pulled back just enough to look into my eyes. The ice in his gray gaze was completely gone, melted away by a fierce, consuming devotion that took my breath away. He cupped my face with his rough, calloused hands, leaning down to press a deep, bruising kiss to my lips right there in the middle of the warehouse, surrounded by thirty armed men and the falling snow.

A soft cough interrupted us.

We broke apart, looking toward the loading docks.

Salvatore stood there, leaning on his cane, watching us with a proud, tear-filled smile. Bianca was wrapped in a thick wool blanket, resting against the old man’s side, safe and unharmed.

At Salvatore’s feet, Lorenzo was groveling in the slush, clutching his shattered shoulder, sobbing for mercy.

“Please, Salvatore...” Lorenzo wept. “We share the same mother! We share the same blood!”

Salvatore looked down at his brother with cold, detached pity.

“Blood is not an excuse for betrayal, Lorenzo,” the old Don said, his voice ringing through the silent warehouse like a funeral toll. “You hunted an innocent girl because of a hatred you nurtured for fifty years. You broke every vow of the family. You are no longer my brother.”

Salvatore turned his back.

“Gianni,” the Don commanded quietly.

“Yes, Don Salvatore?”

“Put him on a cargo freighter bound for our compound in Calabria. Strip him of his name, his money, and his titles. He will spend the rest of his miserable life scrubbing floors in a cell beneath the mountains.”

Salvatore looked at me, his eyes softening into warmth.