"I pulled a mob boss from a burning wreck—seconds before he called me by a name I never told him."

Around us, the glare of halogen headlights from the three black SUVs painted the dark pines in stark, terrifying shadows. Six armed men in dark tactical gear stood at attention along the ridge, their weapons lowered, their eyes fixed on the man holding my wrist.

His grip was like an iron band. His storm-gray eyes locked onto mine, searching my pale face with an unyielding, razor-sharp intensity that made my heart hammer wildly against my ribs.

"How did you know my wife was planning to kill me, Cara?" Dante repeated.

His deep baritone was quiet, calm, and laced with a freezing, absolute authority that cut through the sound of the wind.

"I... I never mentioned your wife!" I choked out, my voice trembling as my breath came in short, panicked gasps. "I never said anything about Vanessa!"

Dante slowly stood up, pulling me effortlessly to my feet beside him. Despite the bleeding head wound and the torn fabric of his charcoal suit, he towered over me, six feet three inches of dark, sovereign power that dominated the rain-slicked hillside.

"You didn't have to say her name, Cara," Dante revealed, his voice dropping into a quiet, intimate register as he reached out with his free hand, his long, calloused fingers gently wiping a streak of dark mud from my cheek. "Because six months ago, when you applied for the evening shift at Bellini's, I placed your file on my private desk."

My blood ran cold. The rain on my skin felt like ice.

"My... my file...?" I whispered, staring up at him in complete shock.

"A twenty-seven-year-old waitress with a clean record, living in a small apartment in Queens, whose father was the late Captain Thomas Fields of the NYPD," Dante stated flatly, every word dropped like a block of heavy granite into the night air. "I hired you at Bellini's to keep an eye on Vanessa’s secondary meetings."

I stared at him, my jaw slack, my mind reeling in total, speech-bound disbelief.

I hadn't stumbled into a random murder plot. I hadn't accidentally overheard a secret.

I was sitting in the middle of a war that Dante Moretti had been calculating for six months—and he had used me as an unwitting scout in his own restaurant.

Before I could process the terrifying revelation, a loud report echoed from the road above.

THWIP!

A suppressed round punched cleanly through the shoulder of the guard standing nearest to the ridge. The man let out a sharp grunt, collapsing onto the muddy slope.

"AMBUSH!" Leo, Dante’s chief security officer, roared, drawing his sidearm and firing up toward the tree line. "MORETTI SYNICATE MERCS ON THE RIDGE! GET THE DON TO THE CAR!"

Dante didn't panic. He swept his broad arm around my waist, pulling my body flush against his solid chest, shielding me from the incoming fire as his men opened a wall of defensive counter-fire.

"Hold on to me, Cara," Dante commanded softly into my ear.

"You lied to me!" I screamed over the deafening pops of gunfire.