"She Served a Dangerous Stranger in a High-End Manhattan Restaurant. Then the Men with Guns Walked Through the Door."

I threw myself over Helena’s bed, shielding her small, sleeping form with my own body, burying my face against her shoulder while plaster dust and wood splinters rained down from the ceiling.

Then, silence returned—a heavy, suffocating silence broken only by the hiss of the radiator and the sound of someone gasping for breath in the hallway.

Slowly, shakily, I lifted my head.

The bedroom door creaked open. The brass handle hung crookedly, half-detached from its mortise.

Standing in the doorway was Dante Rocco.

He had discarded his overcoat. His black dress shirt was rolled up to the elbows, revealing lean, muscular forearms corded with dark veins. In his right hand, he held a heavy Sig Sauer pistol fitted with a suppressor, wisps of thin gray smoke curling lazily from the barrel.

He didn't have a scratch on him.

Behind him in the hallway, two masked men lay motionless against the baseboards, their weapons scattered near the splintered front door.

Dante lowered his gun, his dark gray eyes scanning the bedroom before fixing entirely on me. Seeing that Helena was still safely asleep beneath my arms, a fraction of the lethal tension left his shoulders.

“You take entirely too long to pack, Isidora,” Dante said quietly, stepping over the threshold into the room.

I scrambled off the bed, my legs shaking so badly I nearly collapsed. I stood between him and Helena, my fists clenched at my sides, glaring at him with a mixture of terror and white-hot rage.

“You brought them here!” I hissed, keeping my voice low so I wouldn't wake my sister. “Your war—your mafia garbage—it followed us straight to our front door! If anything had happened to her—”

“Nothing happened to her,” Dante interrupted, his voice dropping into a register that brook no argument. He stepped closer, closing the distance between us until I could feel the heat radiating from his chest. “And they weren't looking for me, Isidora. They were looking for the witness who ruined Miller’s execution. You were a target the moment you kissed him.”

The brutal truth of his words hit me like a physical blow. My anger evaporated, leaving behind a hollow, shivering void. He was right. Even if Dante had never walked into the Victoria, Miller’s bosses would have hunted down the waitress who blew their cover.

“What do we do?” I whispered, the fight finally draining out of me. “We can’t stay here. The police will be here in minutes.”

“The police won't be here for twenty minutes,” Dante said calmly, holstering his weapon beneath his arm. “My men disabled the local precinct's dispatch lines temporarily. We have just enough time to disappear.”