I was just a waitress when I overheard a mafia boss’s wife whispering to her lover that they had sabotaged her husband’s brakes. I ran to warn him, but I was seconds too late. By the time I reached the mountain road, his car was already disappearing over the cliff, and I became the only person close enough to pull him back from death.

"You," I whispered, the rain blinding my eyes as I looked up at the barrel of the gun. "It was you."

"Of course it was me," Julian said, his voice entirely unhurried, as if we were discussing the weather over coffee. "Vanessa was an idiot. She thought she was calling the shots. But it was my contact who provided the mechanic. It was my money that paid the Serbians."

He adjusted his grip on the heavy pistol.

"Dante was getting weak," Julian continued. "He spent ten years building an empire, and then he started talking about moving assets to legal trusts. He wanted to legitimize. He wanted out. And now... he brought a waitress into the inner circle."

"He trusted you!" I yelled, my voice cutting through the sound of the rain.

"And that was his final mistake," Julian said, taking a step closer, his finger tightening on the trigger. "Goodbye, Miss Fields."

BANG.

The sound was not the soft poof of Julian’s suppressor.

It was a sharp, thunderous roar that echoed off the brick walls of the alley like a cannon blast.

Julian’s eyes widened in sudden, shock-filled surprise.

A dark red hole blossomed in the center of his chest. He took one unsteady step backward, his pistol slipping from his fingers, before he collapsed onto his side in the muddy puddle, his eyes staring blankly up at the dark sky.

Behind him, standing at the entrance of the alley, was Dante Moretti.

He held a heavy, smoking .45 caliber pistol in his right hand, his wool coat torn at the shoulder, his grey eyes burning through the rain with a fury that made the cold night feel like an furnace.

He dropped the empty magazine onto the pavement, slapped a fresh one into the grip with a sharp CLACK, and walked slowly down the alley toward me.

He didn't look at Julian’s body.

He dropped to one knee in the mud, reaching out his large, warm hands, grabbing my shoulders and pulling me up against his chest.

"Are you hurt?" Dante demanded, his voice shaking—not with fear, not with exhaustion, but with a raw, fierce emotion that I had never heard in him before. "Cara. Look at me. Are you hurt?"

"I'm... I'm okay," I sobbed, my hands clutching his torn coat, burying my face into the crook of his neck, smelling the scent of rain, gunpowder, and his dark sandalwood cologne. "He... he was going to kill you..."

"He’s dead," Dante whispered into my hair, his arms tightening around me until I couldn't breathe. "Every single one of them is dead."

He lifted my face, his cold fingers cupping my jaw, forcing me to look into his gray eyes.

The storm was fading. The white beams of the approaching police cruisers were flashing along the main street, their sirens wailing through the night air, but Dante didn't move.

"I built an empire of wolves, Cara," Dante murmured, his thumb gently wiping a mixture of rain and blood from my cheek. "I thought strength was fear. I thought loyalty was something you bought with debt and iron."

He looked down at my cut, bleeding hands—the same hands that had held his weight over a three-hundred-foot drop on Blackwood Mountain.

"You showed me what strength actually looks like," Dante said, his voice dropping into a deep, solemn vow. "You pulled me out of the dark. And I am never letting you go back."

He stood up, holding his hand down to me.

I looked at his open palm—scarred, cold, stained with the blood of his enemies, but offering me a protection that no law, no bank account, and no safehouse in the world could ever provide.