The first thing Elena Castillo remembered was the smell of lemon polish on her hands.

"Pupils are unequal and sluggish. Heart rate is one-hundred-sixty and thready," Dr. Reynolds rattled off, his hands tearing through the sterile packets in his leather bag with mechanical speed. "Elena, don't move that girl! If you jerk her away, the dog might snap out of this trance and rip her apart!"

Elena didn't need to be told twice. She had already rushed forward, falling to her knees behind Sophia, wrapping her arms around her daughter's torso. She could feel the enormous weight of Titan’s skull resting against Sophia’s shins. The dog didn't growl at Elena’s approach; he simply kept his dark eyes locked on Sophia’s face, letting out small, broken whines of exhaustion.

"Mommy, his nose is cold," Sophia whispered, her fingers buried in the coarse, short fur behind the dog's left ear.

"I know, baby. Just keep petting him. Keep singing to him, sweetheart," Elena choked out, her face buried in Sophia’s curls, trembling so violently she thought her teeth would crack.

Across the room, Dante had his phone pressed to his ear while his free hand helped Reynolds rip Adrian’s tailored shirt open. Buttons pinged across the hardwood floor. Adrian's chest was pale, slick with cold sweat, his breathing reduced to shallow, hitching gasps.

"Lock the front gates!" Dante bellowed into the phone. "Nobody leaves the estate. I don't care if it's the head chef or the groundskeeper. Anyone touches the outer perimeter, put two in their engine block and drag them to the cellar. We have a Code Zero in the primary residence. Move!"

He hung up and slammed his fists onto the floor beside Adrian. "What is it, Ethan? Stroke? An aneurysm?"

"Neither," Reynolds snapped. He grabbed a pre-filled syringe from his kit and jammed the needle directly into the muscle of Adrian’s thigh, depressing the plunger with a savage thrust. "His saliva is foaming at the edges, his skin is clammy, and his core temperature is dropping while his heart is running a marathon. This isn't a natural coronary event. It's a synthetic cholinergic agent. A neurotoxin."

Elena gasped.

Dante’s face darkened, veins bulging along his neck. "Poison? In this house?"

"Mixed with an alcohol base, most likely," Reynolds said, working furiously to attach portable monitoring leads to Adrian’s chest. "It suppresses the nervous system until the lungs simply forget to draw air. If I hadn't been in the guest house treating Vincent’s shoulder, Adrian would have suffered complete respiratory failure five minutes ago. That little girl just saved his life. If that dog had kept me out for another three minutes, Adrian’s brain would have starved to death."

The high-pitched wail of the portable monitor filled the grand study, beeping erratically. Adrian’s body suddenly arched off the floor. His head thrashed back, a guttural groan ripping from his throat, his eyes rolling back beneath fluttering lids.

Titan leaped to his feet with an explosive snarl.

Sophia gasped, but she didn't scream. Titan didn't attack; instead, he placed his broad body squarely between the thrashing boss and the little girl, shielding Sophia with his flank while growling at the doctor.

"Titan, sit down!" Sophia ordered in her sharpest, playground-tested voice.

The hundred-and-thirty-pound killer paused. His head whipped toward Sophia. Slowly, impossibly, the dog tucked his hindquarters beneath him and sat down, though his eyes never left the syringe in Reynolds' hand.

"Unbelievable," Dante whispered under his breath, staring at the five-year-old child in awe. "I’ve seen that dog take a chunk out of a federal agent’s arm. He won't let his own trainer within three feet when he's agitated."

Heavy footsteps thundered down the hall outside.

Two men entered the doorway. The first was Vincent Moretti—Adrian’s younger cousin and the supervisor of the family’s lucrative harbor shipping routes. His arm was in a sling from a recent "hunting accident," his dark hair slicked back, a look of frantic concern plastered across his sharp, aristocratic features. Behind him was Marcus, his personal bodyguard.

"Dante! What the hell happened?" Vincent demanded, his eyes darting from Adrian’s convulsing form to the syringe in Dr. Reynolds’ hand, and finally settling on Elena and Sophia huddled in the corner with the beast. "We heard the alarm. Is he... is my cousin dead?"

"Not yet," Dante said coldly, standing up to block Vincent’s view. "Step back, Vincent. The room is contaminated. Ethan says it's poison."

Vincent’s jaw tightened imperceptibly. A flicker of something cold and calculating vanished behind his eyes before anyone could name it. "Poison? Inside the private study? That’s impossible. Only family and personal staff have access to this floor."

His gaze snapped toward Elena.

Elena shrank back, pulling Sophia closer into her chest. Vincent Moretti had always looked at the domestic staff as though they were pieces of discarded furniture.

"Who let the maid in here?" Vincent’s voice dropped into an icy register. "And why is her brat in the Boss’s inner sanctuary? Dante, did you search her? Who knows what she brought in with her cleaning cart this morning?"

"Don't start pointing fingers, Vincent," Dante warned, his tone dangerously flat. "Elena was upstairs in the linen closet when the crash happened. And if it weren't for her girl, Titan would have kept Ethan in the hallway until Adrian’s heart burst."

"A maid’s bastard taming a trained attack hound? Sounds like a setup to me," Vincent sneered, taking an aggressive step forward. "Marcus, take the woman and the kid down to the holding room. We’ll question them properly once the Boss is stable."

The bodyguard reached for his jacket.

Titan didn't wait.

The Cane Corso lunged forward, not at the doctor, not at Dante, but straight at Marcus and Vincent. The dog slammed his front paws against Marcus’s chest with the force of a battering ram, pinning the two-hundred-pound guard against the doorframe, fangs hovering millimeters from his jugular.

"Call him off! Call him off!" Marcus screamed, his face draining of all color.

"Titan, no! Come back!" Sophia yelled, jumping to her feet.

Titan hesitated, his jaws snapping inches from Marcus’s nose, then grudgingly backed up, his eyes burning with murderous intent as he planted himself squarely in front of Elena and Sophia once more.

Vincent backed out of the doorway, his skin pale, his injured arm trembling in its sling. "Control your animals, Dante. Both of them. When Adrian wakes up—if he wakes up—he’s going to want heads on spikes for this."