"My friends sent me on a blind date with Boston's most feared mafia boss as a joke. When I told him, he didn't laugh—and within seconds, my friends stopped laughing too."

I didn't call the number on the card. I tried to throw myself back into my routine—alphabetizing inventory, cleaning coffee mugs, listening to the rain tap against the bookstore windows. But every time the bell above the door chimed, my heart leaped into my throat, only to sink with disappointment when a regular customer walked in holding a shopping bag instead of a tall man in a tweed blazer.

On Thursday evening, closing time arrived with a thick, suffocating fog rolling in off Boston Harbor.

I locked the front door of Maple Street Books, flipped the sign to CLOSED, and pulled my wool coat tightly around my neck as I stepped out onto the deserted sidewalk. The streetlamps cast a hazy, yellow halo through the mist.

I had only walked half a block toward the subway station when I heard them.

Footsteps. Heavy, measured, and echoing too close behind mine.

I quickened my pace. The footsteps quickened too.

Panic seized my chest. I turned down a narrow brick-paved alleyway that offered a shortcut to the transit hub, my heels clicking frantically against the damp stones.

"Running away so soon, sweetheart?" a gravelly voice called out from the mouth of the alley.

I froze, whipping around.

Two men stepped out from the fog, blocking the exit. They weren't Daniel’s men. They wore cheap leather jackets, their faces half-hidden in shadow, and one of them was casually flipping a heavy switchblade knife in his palm.

"What do you want?" I demanded, my voice trembling despite my best efforts to sound brave. "I don't have any money—just take my purse!"

"We don't want your purse, lady," the second man snarled, stepping closer. "We want a little message delivered to your rich new boyfriend. Tell Daniel Brooks that his little stunt down at the docks on Monday cost my boss two million dollars in cargo. And since we can't touch him directly... we figured we’d start with his new favorite pet."

My blood ran cold.

They were targeting me to get to Daniel.

I backed up until my shoulders hit the cold brick wall of the alley. The man with the knife smiled cruelly, stepping into the dim amber light of a wall sconce.

"Let’s see how pretty you look with a reminder carved into your cheek," he whispered, raising the blade.

I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the impact, screaming Daniel's name in my head like a prayer.

Crack.

The sound of shattering bone echoed down the alley, followed instantly by a heavy, wet thud against the pavement.

I opened my eyes.

The man with the knife was lying face down in a puddle of muddy water, completely unconscious. Standing over him, holding a heavy iron lead pipe he must've snatched from a nearby construction site, was a massive man in a dark overcoat—one of the bodyguards who had been guarding the door at the bookstore.

The second thug turned to run, but before he could take two steps, a large black SUV blocked the exit of the alley, its headlights blindingly bright in the fog.

The passenger door flew open, and Daniel stepped out.

He wasn't wearing his tweed blazer now. He wore a dark, heavy overcoat, his collar turned up against the damp air, his face carved from absolute, merciless stone. He looked like an angel of death walking through the mist.

He didn't look at the unconscious man on the ground. He walked straight toward me, his eyes locked entirely on my face.

When he reached me, his hands grabbed my shoulders, pulling me instantly against his chest. His fingers were shaking—just slightly—as he buried his face in my hair.

"Are you hurt?" he demanded, his voice rough and ragged, stripped of all its usual cool composure. "Did they touch you?"

"No," I sobbed, the adrenaline finally breaking, tears streaming down my cheeks as I clung to his coat like a lifeline. "No, I'm okay. You... you came."

"I told you, Emily," he murmured, his lips pressing fiercely against my temple. "Nobody touches what's mine."

He pulled back just enough to look at me, wiping a tear from my cheek with his thumb. Then he turned his head toward the second thug, who was currently pinned against the brick wall by Daniel’s bodyguard.

Daniel walked over to the cowering man, his movements terrifyingly slow and deliberate.

"Tell Viktor," Daniel said softly, his voice carrying the weight of a death sentence across the damp alley, "that if he ever sends his street trash into my city again, I won't just burn his docks. I'll burn his house down around his ears while he's sleeping. Do you understand me?"

"Y-yes! Yes, Mr. Brooks, I swear—"

"Get out of my sight."

The bodyguard released the man, who scrambled over his unconscious partner and fled down the alley like a terrified dog.