90 "**“STOP WAVING YOUR HANDS! YOU'RE EMBARRASSING ME!”

"Brace!" Marco screamed.

He didn't brake. To stop was death. Instead, Marco aimed the heavy Suburban directly for the narrow gap between the tow truck's cab and the concrete toll booth barrier.

On the flatbed, Vance leveled the launcher.

*THUMP.*

A tear-gas canister slammed directly through the cracked rear windshield of our vehicle, releasing a hissing cloud of choking, blinding chemical smoke into the cabin.

"Cough... hold your breath!" Marco yelled, reaching for his sidearm.

Isabella began coughing violently, tears streaming from her eyes. Panic set in. The smoke was suffocating, burning my throat and blinding my eyes. I ripped the wool scarf from my neck, wrapping it tightly over Isabella’s mouth and nose, pulling her down to the floorboards.

The Suburban slammed into the toll barrier with bone-crushing force.

The airbags deployed with a deafening bang. Metal crumpled. The vehicle shuddered to a violent halt, wedged inextricably between the concrete barrier and the tow truck.

Through the chemical haze, the front passenger door was ripped open from the outside.

Marco raised his gun, but a heavy steel pipe struck him across the temple before he could pull the trigger. He collapsed over the steering wheel, unconscious, blood pooling over the white airbag.

"Grab the brat!" Vanessa’s shrill voice screamed through the smoke. "Grab her! I want Luca to watch her bleed before he dies!"

A massive hand reached into the shattered rear cabin, grabbing Isabella’s winter coat, violently yanking her toward the broken door.

Isabella screamed—a raw, high-pitched wail of pure terror that shattered my heart into a million pieces.

"NO!" I shrieked.

Every maternal instinct, every ounce of protective fury I possessed ignited into a roaring fire. I didn't care about guns. I didn't care about syndicate wars.

I lunged forward through the smoke.

I grabbed the heavy metal thermos from the emergency kit and swung it with all my might into the face of the mercenary pulling Isabella.

A satisfying crunch echoed through the cabin as the thermos shattered the man’s nose. He roared in agony, dropping Isabella back onto the floor.

I kicked the rear door open, tumbling out into the freezing winter air, pulling Isabella with me.

We hit the snow-covered asphalt hard. Isabella scrambled into my arms, trembling so violently she could barely stand.

"Look at you," a venomous voice hissed.

I looked up.

Vanessa Bellini stood ten feet away, flanked by Victor Vance. Vance held a heavy tactical pistol, his dead gray eyes scanning the highway behind us, where Luca’s smoking chase vehicle was speeding toward the toll plaza.

Vanessa looked completely unhinged. Her designer makeup was smeared with tears and soot, her dark hair wild around her face. In her gloved right hand, she held the silver dressmaking shears she had promised to use.

"The little deaf mute and the pathetic little maid," Vanessa laughed, a hysterical, broken sound. "You ruined everything, Claire. You were a servant! You were supposed to pour tea and clean the toilets! And you stole my life!"

"You ruined yourself, Vanessa," I said, rising to my feet, placing myself directly between her and Isabella. Isabella was clutching the back of my coat, peeking out, her hands signing frantically against my spine: *Daddy... Daddy...*

"You abused a nine-year-old child because her disability didn't fit into your vanity," I spat, my voice ringing clear across the frozen highway. "You're not a mafia queen. You're a pathetic, miserable coward who picks on little girls."

Vanessa’s face twisted in demonic fury. "Kill the maid, Victor! Cut her throat right now!"

Vance raised the heavy pistol, pointing it directly at my forehead. "Waste of time, Vanessa. Moretti is thirty seconds out. We take the kid and leave."

"I said kill her!" Vanessa screamed, lunging forward herself, raising the silver shears, aiming the sharp blades straight for my eyes.

She was blindingly fast, driven by sheer psychotic rage.

I had no weapon. No training.

I raised my left forearm to block the strike.

The cold steel shears drove deep into the meat of my forearm. A blinding, white-hot agony flared through my arm, stealing the breath from my lungs. Warm blood instantly soaked through my sleeve, dripping onto the pristine white snow.

Isabella wailed in horror, trying to pull me back.

Vanessa grinned, twisting the blades. "Hands that speak can bleed, didn't I tell you—"

A deafening roar ripped through the winter morning.

A black vehicle didn't just arrive—it launched.

Luca’s ruined Suburban plowed directly into the flatbed of the tow truck at eighty miles an hour, obliterating the roadblock in a terrifying explosion of twisted metal, screaming tires, and shattering glass.

Before the debris even finished falling, the driver's door was kicked off its hinges.

Luca Moretti emerged from the wreckage.

He looked like the god of death himself. Blood covered the entire left side of his face, his shoulder bandage was soaked through with crimson, and his hazel eyes burned with a primal, annihilating fury that made Victor Vance—a hardened killer—take an involuntary step backward.

Luca held a heavy chrome .45 in his hand.

He didn't issue a warning. He didn't demand surrender.

He fired two shots.

The first struck Victor Vance directly in the center of his chest, lifting the mercenary off his feet and throwing him against the concrete barrier, dead before he hit the ground.

Vanessa froze. The shears slipped from her bloody fingers, clattering onto the asphalt.

She slowly turned to face the man she was supposed to marry.

"L-Luca..." she stammered, dropping to her knees in the blood-stained snow. "Luca, please... my father is dead... I had nowhere to go... she provoked me! The maid provoked me!"

Luca walked toward her. His stride was slow, heavy, and absolute.

He didn't even look down at her. He didn't acknowledge her existence any more than a man acknowledges an insect beneath his boot.

He walked straight past her, kneeling down in the snow in front of Isabella and me.

He saw the blood pouring from my arm. He saw Isabella, unharmed, weeping against my shoulder.

"Claire," he choked out, his voice cracking with a terrifying mix of agony and relief. His large, trembling hands reached for my wounded arm, pressing a clean cloth against the puncture wound with desperate care. "Claire, look at me."

"Isabella is safe," I gasped through the blinding pain. "She's safe, Luca. She didn't touch her."

Luca pulled both of us into his chest. Right there in the middle of a frozen, ruined highway, surrounded by burning wreckage and dead men, the most feared mob boss in Chicago buried his face into my neck and wept silent tears of gratitude.

"You saved her," he whispered, his voice vibrating against my skin. "You bled for my child."

Behind us, Vanessa scrambled to her feet, desperate to run into the treeline.

Without looking, Luca raised his pistol with his right hand, keeping his left arm wrapped securely around Isabella and me.

A single gunshot cracked across the winter morning.

Vanessa Bellini collapsed face-first into the snow.

The silence returned to the highway.

Luca lowered the weapon. He looked down at Isabella, who was watching him with wide, tear-filled eyes.

Slowly, carefully, Luca lifted his bloody, trembling right hand and signed to his daughter:

*It is over, Peanut. The nightmare is dead. You are safe forever.*

Isabella looked at her father, then at me, then at the blood on my sleeve.

With tiny, shaking fingers, she signed to both of us: