THE MAFIA BOSS SAW THE MAID’S HIDDEN SCARS—THEN THE MAN WHO HURT HER WALKED IN

"Take him," Elena whispered, her voice trembling with a ferocious restraint that cost her every ounce of her soul.

She lowered the Beretta, uncurling her fingers and letting the heavy gun drop to the floor. She kicked it away, watching it slide into the darkness.

Luciano’s lips curled in satisfaction. "A sensible mother. Marcus, get up! Move, you useless dog!"

Marcus groveled on the bloody stones, dragging his shattered knee with pathetic whimpers, pulling his heavy frame across the floor toward the iron escape door. As he passed Elena, his bloodshot eyes flashed with a promise of sickening vengeance, but he lacked the strength to do anything more than hiss through his ruined teeth.

Luciano grabbed the collar of Marcus’s coat, hauling him through the iron hatch into the echoing dampness of the storm tunnels.

"The book, Luciano!" Elena screamed, stepping forward, her hands outstretched, tears finally spilling over her eyelids. "You gave your word! The formula!"

Luciano looked at her with eyes as dead as marble tombs. "A Donati’s enemy does not keep promises to a Donati’s whore."

He raised a silver lighter, flicked the flame to life, and touched it to the corner of the leather book.

"NO!" Elena lunged forward.

Luciano hurled the burning ledger straight at her face.

Elena didn't dodge. She threw herself onto the flaming pages as they struck the stone floor, smothering the fire with her bare hands, ignoring the blistering heat searing her palms and wrists. She slapped at the flames, crushing them against the cold earth with her coat, sobbing hysterically as ash and embers scorched her skin.

*CLANG!*

The iron tunnel door slammed shut and the heavy external deadbolts slid into place.

At that exact second, the massive limestone wall behind her exploded into a thousand jagged pieces.

Concrete dust and smoke blasted into the chamber. Through the debris, Vincent surged forward like an avenging titan, his rifle sweeping the room, his eyes scanning wildly through the haze until they locked onto Elena kneeling in the dirt, surrounded by smoke and burnt paper.

"Elena!"

In three strides, Vincent was on his knees beside her, throwing his assault rifle aside. His large, trembling hands caught her shoulders, pulling her against his chest with a desperate, crushing intensity. "Are you hit? Did he touch you? Elena, look at me!"

Elena didn't look at his face. Her blistered, soot-blackened hands frantically gathered the scorched remnants of the notebook from the dirt, clutching them to her chest as if they were fragile pieces of Lily’s heart.

"The vial... it broke, Vincent," she gasped, her voice splintering into jagged sobs against his throat. "And Luciano... he burned the formula. I saved some pages... but the fire... the fire ate half of it! Lily... our baby is going to die!"

Vincent pulled back, his jaw tightening into iron as he looked at her blistered, red-raw hands. A vein in his temple throbbed with terrifying ferocity. He reached down, gently enclosing her burned palms in his own warm, calloused fingers, lifting them to his lips, kissing the scorched skin with a reverence that shattered the cold air of the tomb.

"Look at me, Elena," he commanded softly, his voice trembling with a profound, terrifying tenderness. "Look into my eyes."

Elena lifted her tear-drenched gaze to meet his.

"Lily is not going to die," Vincent declared, every word an unbreakable oath etched in steel. "I brought Dr. Morales with the entire surgical unit to the manor. He managed to extract a microscopic sample of the venom from Lily’s bloodstream before it bonded with her marrow. If even three lines of that chemical formula survived on those ashes, Morales will reverse-engineer it."

Elena’s lips trembled. "And Marcus... Vincent, Marcus is alive. He was here. He touched me. He—"

"I know," Vincent whispered, his thumb tenderly wiping a smudge of black soot from her cheekbone. "I saw him. And I swear on my mother’s grave, on my father’s soul, and on the breath in my lungs: Marcus Vance will not die in the dark this time. I will drag him into the sunlight, and he will beg for the cold waters of Lake Michigan before I am through with him."

Dante appeared beside them, coughing in the smoke, his weapon lowered. "Boss! The tunnel leads to the old Chicago canal network. We have perimeter teams sealing off every storm drain within a three-mile radius. They won't get far."

"Double the teams," Vincent ordered without looking up, his arms wrapping tightly around Elena as he lifted her completely off her feet, cradling her against his chest as if she weighed nothing. "Call the manor. Tell Morales we are coming in with the remnants of the formula. If my daughter's heart rate drops by even one beat before we arrive, I will burn the hospital to the ground."