Three bullets tore into my body because I threw myself between a gunman and the six-year-old heir to New York’s most feared billionaire mafia family

Caleb was crying, his small legs dangling over the terrifying abyss of the Manhattan skyline, rain plastering his hair to his forehead.

"Dad! Mara!" he sobbed, his voice shredded by the freezing wind.

"Caleb, don't look down!" I screamed, stepping forward onto the slick concrete of the helipad, ignoring the rain soaking through my silk dress. "Look at me, buddy! Look right at me!"

Dominic lowered his weapon slightly, his face completely pale beneath the driving rain. The most terrifying man in New York looked entirely broken, staring at his son suspended over death.

"Let him go, Lucian," Dominic said, his voice raw, stripped of all arrogance. "Take me. Kill me. You want New York? Take the docks. Take the territory. Just put the boy down."

Lucian threw his head back and laughed—a wild, unhinged sound that echoed across the storm.

"Look at you, Dominic Mercer!" Lucian mocked, his eyes manic. "The legendary king of the five boroughs, begging on his knees for a bastard child!"

"He's not a bastard," I said, stepping between Dominic and Lucian, drawing Lucian’s toxic gaze directly to me. "He's an innocent boy, Lucian. You want the Vance cipher? I'll give it to you. Right now."

Lucian sneered, his fingers tightening on Caleb's collar. "Sing, Elena. Recite it. If you miss a single digit, the boy flies."

I took a deep, steadying breath, stepping slowly across the rain-slick helipad, closing the distance inch by inch.

"Seven-four-alpha," I began, my voice clear and steady over the roar of the wind. "Nine-two-bravo. Delta-echo-six..."

Lucian leaned forward, his focus narrowing onto my lips, his greed consuming every shred of his tactical awareness. "Keep going! What's the terminal sequence?"

"The terminal sequence," I said, taking another quiet step, "is that you were always too arrogant to check who was holding the dead-man switch."

Lucian blinked. "What?"

"Seven-four-alpha was never a bank cipher, Lucian," I whispered, my eyes burning with eight years of suppressed hatred. "It was the authorization code for the port scuttling charges. The ones I used to blow your ship out of the water in Boston."

Before Lucian could process the lie, Caleb acted.

The six-year-old boy, remembering what I had told him in the music room three months earlier, bit down with all his might into Lucian's wrist.

Lucian roared in pain, his grip slipping.

"Caleb!" Dominic bellowed, lunging forward with inhuman speed.

Lucian raised the revolver to fire directly into Caleb's chest—

I threw myself across the wet concrete, driving my shoulder straight into Lucian's midsection, tackling him away from the edge just as the gunshot exploded into the night sky.

The impact tore my healing wound wide open. Agony blinded me for a split second as Lucian and I crashed onto the helipad floor.

Dominic swept Caleb into his arms, rolling backward away from the ledge, shielding the boy with his entire body. "I've got you! I've got you, son!"

Across the slick deck, Lucian scrambled to his feet, blood dripping from his nose, his revolver leveled straight at my heart.

"You miserable bitch!" Lucian screamed, his finger tightening on the trigger. "You should have burned with the rest of your family!"

*Crack!*

A single gunshot tore through the rain.

Lucian stiffened.

He looked down at his own chest, where a blooming red stain spread rapidly across his crisp white shirt.

Behind him stood Dominic Mercer, rising from the concrete with his weapon drawn, his eyes glowing with cold, merciless judgment.

*Crack! Crack!*

Dominic fired two more rounds into Lucian's chest.

Lucian stumbled backward, his pale eyes wide with shock and disbelief. He reached out blindly, grasping at the rain, before his heels caught the edge of the helipad.

Without a sound, Lucian Vance tumbled backward into the darkness, swallowed by the four-hundred-foot drop into the city streets below.

Silence descended upon the rooftop, broken only by the howling wind and Caleb's ragged sobs against his father's chest.

Dominic lowered his weapon. He turned to me, his dark eyes sweeping over my trembling, blood-soaked form on the wet concrete.

"Elena," he whispered.