The first time the Mafia boss’s baby reached for me, I thought he wanted the silver necklace around my throat. The second time, I realized he wanted me—and by the third, his father had stopped looking irritated and started looking genuinely afraid.

They didn't put me in a dungeon.

They locked me in an isolated guest suite on the third floor of the east wing. The windows were reinforced with security bars, the door was heavy oak bolted from the outside, and two armed guards stood outside in the corridor.

For twelve hours, I paced the Persian rug until the soles of my feet burned.

I didn't care about the false accusations. I didn't care about the money. All I could hear, echoing through the hollow chambers of my mind, was Leo’s desperate, choked cry: *“Ma-ma!”* He had called for me. In his tiny, developing mind, I wasn't the nanny who changed his clothes; I was the safe harbor in a terrifying, violent world. And now, he was adrift again.

Outside, the sun set, bleeding into an ominous, pitch-black night. A violent autumn storm rolled over the Philadelphia suburbs, whipping rain against the reinforced glass, rattling the stone masonry of the manor.

11:45 p.m.

The power failed.

It didn't flicker. It died completely, plunging the entire estate into absolute, suffocating darkness.

A split second later, the manor’s emergency sirens screamed to life—a deafening, wailing klaxon that signaled a catastrophic perimeter breach.

Gunfire erupted.

Not the distant pop of handguns, but the rhythmic, terrifying chatter of automatic rifles echoing from the front courtyard. Explosions rocked the foundation of the house, rattling the crystal chandelier above my head.

“Breach at the western gate!” a guard shouted outside my door, his voice laced with panic. “They’re inside the perimeter! Fall back to the central—”

A sharp, suppressed burst of gunfire cut him off.

A heavy body slammed against my door, sliding down the wood with a wet, sickening thud.

The lock clicked.

The heavy oak door swung open, and lightning illuminated the man standing in the doorway. It wasn't Luca. It wasn't Dante.

It was Maria.

The older housekeeper was holding a smoking Glock 19 in her trembling hands, her face illuminated by the flashes of muzzle fire outside. Blood was splattered across the front of her black uniform.

“Maria?” I gasped, backing away against the bed.

“The Romano boy paid me three million dollars,” Maria whispered, her voice shaking with a terrifying cocktail of greed and terror. “To plant the phone in your bag. To upload the script. To ensure the Moretti bloodline ends tonight.”

My blood ran cold. “You framed me.”

“Sofia was a fool, and Luca is a monster,” Maria spat, raising the weapon directly at my chest. “Julian promised me a villa in Tuscany. He promised me safety. All I have to do is bring him the child.”

“Over my dead body,” I snarled.

Maria pulled the trigger.

Instinct took over. I dropped to the floor, rolling hard to the right as the gunshot deafened me in the enclosed room, the bullet splintering the mahogany headboard where my chest had been a fraction of a second earlier.

Before she could adjust her aim, I lunged from the floor like an animal.

I slammed my shoulder into Maria’s knees, taking her down onto the hardwood floor with a bone-jarring crash. The gun skittered across the polished wood, sliding under the dresser. Maria clawed at my eyes with manicured nails, screeching curses in Italian, but the adrenaline coursing through my veins made me unstoppable.

I pinned her wrists, brought my knee hard into her ribs, and when she gasped for air, I slammed my forehead into the bridge of her nose.

Bone cracked. Maria’s eyes rolled back, and she went limp against the floor, unconscious.

I didn't waste a second. I didn't look for the gun.

*Leo.*

I tore out of the room into the smoke-filled corridor. The manor was a war zone. The smell of cordite and burning drywall filled the air. Below, on the main floor, the sound of combat was deafening—screams, glass shattering, the brutal, unyielding roar of a syndicate tearing itself apart.

I sprinted down the east wing, barefoot, dodging through the shadows, ignoring the screams, driven by a single, burning instinct.

I reached the master wing. The door to the nursery was hanging off its hinges, kicked in from the outside.

Inside, Julian Romano was standing over the crib.

He was wearing tactical gear, an assault rifle slung over his shoulder, reaching down into the crib where Leo was screaming, trapped in terror, flailing his little arms against the velvet bumpers.

“Such a pathetic little legacy,” Julian laughed, his hand closing around the collar of Leo’s sleeper. “Luca thought he could humiliate me? I’m going to throw his brat off the Walt Whitman Bridge.”

“Get your filthy hands off my son!” I screamed.

Julian spun around, startled.

I didn't hesitate. On the console table beside the nursery door sat a heavy, solid bronze sculpture of a falcon—weighing easily fifteen pounds. I grabbed it with both hands, channeled every ounce of fury, love, and desperation inside my body, and hurled myself forward.

Julian brought his arm up to block, but the bronze crushed through his forearm and struck the side of his skull with a brutal, sickening crunch.

Julian screamed in agony, stumbling backward, crashing into the rocking chair, blood pouring from his ear. “You crazy bitch!” he roared, reaching for the sidearm at his hip with his good hand.

I didn't let him draw.

I jumped onto his chest, driving my thumbs toward his eyes, biting, scratching, fighting like a mother wolf defending her den. He struck me across the jaw with his heavy fist—a blow that made my vision flash white, exploding stars across my eyes—but I didn't let go. I locked my hands around his throat, using all my body weight to pin him, choking the life out of him just as Luca had done at the Bellevue.

Julian bucked beneath me, choking, his boot kicking uselessly against the floorboards.

Then, from the doorway, a shadow detached itself from the smoke.

Luca.

He looked like the Devil risen from the ashes of Hell. His tuxedo shirt was shredded, soaked in blood that wasn't his own, an automatic shotgun gripped in his left hand. The moment his gray-blue eyes locked onto the scene—onto me bleeding, pinning Julian Romano to the floor above the crying baby—the world stopped.

Luca dropped the shotgun.

He crossed the room in two strides, grabbed Julian by the collar of his tactical vest, and ripped him off the floor like a rag doll.

“Luca, no!” I gasped, scrambling to the crib, scooping Leo into my arms, pressing the hysterical, sobbing baby hard against my chest, shielding his eyes.

Luca didn't shoot Julian. That would have been mercy.

He drove his fist into Julian’s face once, twice, three times, the sound of breaking bone echoing through the nursery until the Romano heir was nothing more than a ruined, unconscious heap on the floor.

Dante appeared in the doorway, blood dripping from a cut above his eye, taking in the scene.

“Dante,” Luca’s voice was a low, terrifying rasp, shaking with an emotion so deep it threatened to tear him apart. “Remove this garbage. Clean the grounds. The Romano family ceases to exist by sunrise. Wipe their name from this city.”

“Understood, Boss,” Dante said softly, dragging Julian’s limp body out into the smoke-filled hallway.

The door clicked shut.