"I dragged a mafia boss from his falling car after hearing his wife cut his brakes—unaware his men would surround me at gunpoint."

Above us, the high-beam headlights of six armored SUVs pierced the fog, casting blinding, clinical white beams down the incline. Eighteen men in dark tactical gear lined the crest of the road, their automatic rifles leveled cleanly at my chest.

Dante Moretti sat in the mud beside me, leaning his heavy frame against the mossy trunk of a boulder. His sharp jawline was smeared with black grease and rain, a jagged cut above his left eyebrow spilling dark blood down his cheek. Yet his slate-gray eyes were completely clear, razor-sharp, and unblinking.

His broad, calloused hand remained locked around my wrist like a band of forged iron. His grip wasn't meant to hurt me; it was an anchor, keeping me from bolting into the dark brush.

"I asked you a question, Cara," Dante repeated. His baritone was low, smooth, and dropped into an absolute, deadly register that cut through the thunder rolling across the valley. "How did a twenty-seven-year-old waitress from Bellini's know my car was going to lose its brakes on a mountain pass forty miles outside the city?"

My chest heaved. I was shivering violently in my soaked server’s uniform—a black button-down shirt and apron that clung to my skin like ice. My hands were shredded, fingernails torn to the quick from dragging two hundred pounds of solid muscle through the shattered glass of his driver's side door seconds before his vehicle plunged into the abyss.

"I... I heard her," I choked out, my teeth chattering uncontrollably as rain streamed down my face. "Booth four. Behind the velvet curtain."

Dante didn't flinch. His eyes narrowed by a fraction of a millimeter. "Vanessa?"

"Yes!" I gasped, wiping blood and mud from my forehead with my free sleeve. "She was sitting with a man. A tall man with a gold watch and a scar through his lip. She asked him if it was done. He said the hydraulic lines were severed near the rear axle... that they'd fail after three hard turns on the descent."

A heavy, suffocating silence settled over the slope.

Above us, a broad-shouldered man with a scar running from his ear to his jaw—Dante's chief of security, Leo—scrambled down the slippery incline, his sidearm drawn, his tactical boots digging deep into the red mud.

"Boss!" Leo barked, his voice laced with frantic adrenaline. "We have a secondary team sweeping the upper ridge! The main road is locked down! We need to move you to the armored unit now!"

Dante didn't look up at Leo. His gray eyes remained glued to my face, analyzing every twitch of my mouth, every micro-expression of terror in my eyes.

"She saved my life, Leo," Dante said quietly.

Leo froze three feet away, his gun lowering slightly as he stared at me in total, speech-bound shock. "Boss... she was at the scene before us. She could be a scout—"

"A scout doesn't tear her palms open pulling a man out of a falling vehicle, Leo," Dante interrupted, his voice flat as iron. "Look at her hands."

Leo looked down at my bleeding fingers, then looked back at Dante.

"Vanessa," Dante murmured softly, the name dropping from his lips like a piece of ice. "Who was the man sitting with her, Cara?"

"I... I don't know his name," I whimpered, the cold seeping so deep into my bones that my vision began to tilt. "Vanessa called him Julian."

A dark, terrifying shift occurred in Dante’s expression. The subtle tension in his jaw turned to stone. Julian Vane—his primary lieutenant and the man in charge of the syndicate's distribution terminals in North Jersey.

"Julian," Dante repeated softly.

Dante slowly stood up, dragging me effortlessly to my feet beside him. He pulled off his heavy, custom wool overcoat—still dry on the inside—and wrapped it around my trembling shoulders. The heavy fabric smelled of expensive cedarwood, rain, and raw power.

"Leo," Dante commanded, wrapping his broad arm around my waist to keep my shaking knees from collapsing. "Take her to the secondary vehicle. Have Dr. Vance meet us at the estate."

"And Vanessa, Boss?" Leo asked, his eyes turning cold.