"I Divorced My Wife Because Doctors Said She Was Broken. Five Years Later, I Found Her in a Sealed Restaurant With a Little Girl Who Had My Eyes."

I vaulted over the overturned back of a velvet sofa, my Sig Sauer barking twice in rapid succession. The muzzle flash illuminated the dark dining room like summer lightning. The lead tactical operative rushing toward table nine dropped instantly, a clean round through his tactical vest, collapsing hard against the white tablecloths.

“Flank left, you idiots!” Vincent screamed, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings as he retreated behind the marble bar where Judge Whitmore was currently curled into a trembling fetal position.

“Please—don't shoot! I’m a federal judge! I’ll give you anything!” Whitmore shrieked, his voice pathetic and cracked.

“Shut up, you old fool!” Vincent snarled, grabbing the judge by his silk tie and using him as a human shield while he swept his submachine gun toward my pillar.

Bullets chewed chunks out of the marble inches from my face, showering my shoulders with grey dust. I pressed my back against the cold stone, counting rounds in my head. Seven. Eight. My magazine was running dry.

Across the room, near table nine, Elena peered around the heavy mahogany base. Despite the gunfire tearing through the restaurant, her face wasn't paralyzed by terror; it was masked in cold, calculated focus—the exact expression she used to wear when she managed the charitable foundations I used to launder my political influence.

She caught my eye through the haze of smoke. She didn't scream. Instead, she pointed downward toward the floor near Judge Whitmore’s dropped briefcase, where a heavy silver service tray from the bar had slid across the polished marble.

Beside the tray lay Whitmore’s forgotten judicial phone—still connected to an open emergency dispatch line to the Manhattan precinct.

Smart woman.

If I could keep Vincent’s attention pinned, Marco could loop around through the kitchen service corridor and flank their rear. But I needed a distraction. A violent, terrifying distraction that would make Vincent forget about table nine entirely.

I pulled a heavy flash-bang grenade from my tactical belt—a remnant of my private security detail that always traveled in my vehicle trunk—and pulled the pin with my teeth.

“Vincent!” I shouted over the din of the rain and wind outside.

“Give up, Valenti!” Vincent yelled back, firing another wild burst into the pillar. “You’re out of ammo! Your little princess is going to watch you bleed out on the floor!”

“You talk too much, Moretti,” I muttered.

I tossed the flash-bang grenade high into the air, banking it off the high mirrored wall so it bounced directly over the mahogany bar where Vincent and the judge were hiding.

“What the—” Vincent cursed.

BOOM.

A blinding flash of magnesium light and a concussive shockwave ripped through Serafina, instantly deafening everyone in the room. Judge Whitmore screamed, clutching his ears as he rolled off the bar stool. Vincent staggered backward, dropping his weapon as white-hot spots burned into his retinas, temporarily blinded and disoriented.

Before the smoke could even begin to clear, I launched myself from behind the pillar, sprinting across the shattered marble floor.

I hit the bar with my shoulder, driving Vincent backward over the mahogany counter and crashing him into the shelves of vintage liquor bottles. Crystal glassware shattered into a million glittering pieces, soaking his designer suit in expensive scotch and vintage wine.

I jammed the cold barrel of my Sig Sauer directly beneath his chin, pressing hard enough to break the skin.