"The glass was meant for the child, but it tore into me instead—then his father arrived, and one sentence changed my life forever.

Brand didn't have time to turn.

A single shot cracked through the vaulted stone cellar—not from an assault rifle, but from the massive, heavy-caliber hunting rifle Damian kept in the gun room.

The man to Brand’s left ceased to exist as a threat. The impact of the heavy slug lifted him off his feet and threw him five yards across the limestone floor, dead before he touched the stones.

The second gunman spun, raising his weapon, but Damian was already inside his guard.

He came out of the shadows like a force of nature. He didn't use a gun; he used a sixteen-inch combat blade that caught the second man beneath the jaw, driving upward with terrifying, mechanical violence. The man dropped without a sound.

Brand lunged for me, swinging the silver revolver toward my chest to use me as a shield, but I was already moving.

With the last reserve of strength in my battered body, I swung the heavy submachine gun like a club. The steel receiver slammed into Brand’s wrist with a sickening *crack*. The silver revolver spun out of his grip, clattering across the stones toward the wine racks.

Brand hissed in pain, stumbling back—and straight into the iron grip of Damian Vescari.

Damian caught Brand by the throat with one hand, lifting the older man until his expensive Italian loafers dangled six inches above the cellar floor. He slammed Brand backward against the limestone wall with enough force to dislodge mortar from the ceiling.

"Victor," Damian whispered.

His face was terrifying.

He was covered in black soot from the docks. A jagged gash wept down his left cheek, and his coat was torn open to reveal the ink of Saint Michael on his throat, slick with sweat and rain. But it was his eyes that froze the blood in my veins. They were completely devoid of humanity—two pools of black, bottomless slaughter.

Brand gagged, his hands clawing at Damian’s iron fingers. "Damian... wait... we can... we can settle—"

Damian drew the combat blade back. The point was leveled directly at Brand’s eye socket.

"You brought war into my house," Damian said, his voice entirely flat, entirely dead. "You touched the things that belong to me. You made her bleed a second time."

"Damian!" I screamed.

The sound tore my throat raw. I fell to my knees on the cold stones, unable to hold myself upright any longer. The gun fell from my numb fingers.

Damian’s blade stopped an inch from Brand’s eye.

Slowly, like a man waking from a deep, hypnotic trance, Damian turned his head to look at me.

He saw me on the floor. He saw the red stain spreading across my nightshirt, the blood dripping from my fingers, the exhaustion dragging my head down toward the limestone.

"Damian, please," I sobbed, the tears cutting tracks through the dust on my cheeks. "Luca is behind the door. He’s listening. Don't... don't make him listen to this."

Damian stared at me.

The rage in his eyes flickered. For three long seconds, the beast and the man tore at each other behind his pale hazel gaze. He looked at the blade in his hand. He looked at Brand, who was turning blue in his grip.

Then he looked at me again.

"Emma," he breathed.

With a grunt of disgust, Damian drove his left fist into Brand’s jaw. The sound of breaking bone echoed off the vaulted ceiling. Brand went limp, his eyes rolling back as Damian dropped his unconscious body onto the stones like a sack of dirty linen.

Damian didn't look at Brand again. He dropped the knife.

He crossed the cellar on his knees, sliding across the wet stone until he caught me before my forehead could hit the floor.

"Emma. Emma, look at me."

His hands were all over me—checking my neck, my shoulder, my flank. His palms were shaking. The most feared man in Chicago was trembling so violently he could barely hold my face.

"I’m okay," I wheezed, leaning my head against his broad, soot-covered shoulder. "Luca is safe. In the vault. I locked him in."

"I know," Damian whispered, his voice cracking, the iron completely shattered. He pulled me into his chest, burying his face in my hair, his arms locking around me with a desperate, suffocating tightness. "I know. You saved him again. God help me, you saved him again."

The heavy vault door behind us gave a low electronic whine and clicked open.

Luca stood in the doorway, his triceratops clutched to his chest, his eyes wide as he looked at the bodies on the floor, then at his father, and finally at me.

"Papa?" the boy whispered.

Damian turned his head, keeping one arm wrapped around me like a vise. He held out his other hand toward his son.

"Come here, Luca," Damian said, his voice thick with tears he had never allowed himself to shed. "Come here. It’s over."

Luca ran. He threw himself into the space between us, his small arms wrapping around both of our necks, his tears soaking into Damian’s coat and my bloody shirt.

Above us, the distant wail of sirens began to echo through the shattered windows of the estate—the city finally arriving after the wolves had already been slain.

Damian didn't look up. He held both of us against his heart in the dark, cold cellar, his forehead pressed against mine, his breath mingling with my own.

"You're not leaving," Damian whispered into my skin, an order that sounded entirely like a prayer. "Never again, Emma. You stay with me."