"Three Years as His Ghost Wife. Then Another Man Said, 'I Want Your Wife.'" hoặc "He Slept in a Chair for Three Years. The Moment Another Man Looked at Her, He Panicked."

The reinforced steel doors of the east wing shook as a concussive blast echoed from the main foyer. Smoke began to curl beneath the doorway of the safe room, smelling of cordite and burning timber.

I stood in the center of the reinforced vault, holding a heavy, suppressed automatic pistol Victor had left in my hands before sealing the heavy steel bulkhead from the outside. My hands were steady. Three years of living in the shadow of a mafia king had taught me one thing above all else: survival wasn't about waiting to be rescued. It was about fighting until your last breath.

A muffled thud echoed against the steel door. Then, the keypad on the wall sparked and went dark.

A mechanical whirring sound buzzed through the walls—override codes being inputted by a professional slicer.

Click.

The heavy steel door slowly swung inward.

Standing in the doorway, wreathed in smoke and holding a heavy caliber pistol, was Dante Russo. His midnight-blue velvet tuxedo was torn at the shoulder, soot streaking across his cheek, but his amber eyes burned with manic, triumphant glee.

"Well, well, well," Dante purred, stepping over the threshold into the vault. "Looks like your husband’s fortress wasn't quite as impenetrable as he thought."

I raised the pistol, locking the sights dead center on his chest. My finger rested firmly on the trigger. "Take one more step, Dante, and I will put a bullet through your heart."

Dante stopped, but he didn't look afraid. He actually laughed, lowering his own weapon slightly.

"You have your husband's fire," Dante smiled, taking another slow step forward despite the gun barrel aimed at him. "Too bad he's not here to watch you use it. His convoy was ambushed on the Kennedy Expressway twenty minutes ago. By now, Enzo is either bleeding out on the asphalt or burning in his own car."

A cold spike of terror pierced my chest, but I forced my hands to stay steady. "You're lying."

"Am I?" Dante took another step, closing the distance between us with terrifying speed. Before I could pull the trigger, his hand shot out, striking the barrel of my gun upward.

The bullet shattered the concrete ceiling in a shower of white dust.

Before I could recover, Dante slammed me back against the reinforced wall, his arm pressing hard against my throat, cutting off my air.

"Drop the gun, Arya," Dante hissed, his manic smile vanishing, replaced by a dark, ugly desperation. "You're coming with me. Enzo is finished. The Russo family owns Chicago now—"

Bang.

The sound was deafening inside the small concrete vault.

Dante froze.

A red bloom suddenly blossomed across the white silk of his shirt, right over his left lung. His eyes widened in absolute shock.

The pressure on my throat vanished.

Dante staggered backward, clutching his chest, his knees buckling beneath him as he hit the cold concrete floor with a heavy, wet thud.

I gasped for air, sliding down the wall until I was sitting on my heels, raising my eyes toward the doorway.

Standing in the smoke-filled corridor was Enzo.

His suit was ruined, his face smeared with soot and blood, a deep gash bleeding freely down his temple. But in his hands, he held a smoking Sig Sauer, his dark eyes locked onto the dying man at his feet.

"You..." Dante coughed, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth as he looked up at Enzo. "...you missed the ambush."

"Did you really think," Enzo’s voice was a lethal, quiet whisper as he walked over and kicked Dante’s gun away across the floor, "that a man who spent ten years building an empire in the dirt would fall for a rookie trap on the expressway?"

Dante let out a wet, rattling laugh, his head dropping back against the concrete. His amber eyes glazed over as the life drained from him, leaving the ruthless prince of the Russo family as nothing more than a corpse on a cold floor.

Enzo didn't look down at him.

His dark eyes snapped to me. The moment he saw I was standing, breathing, alive, the terrible, iron-clad control he had maintained broke completely.