Vanessa claimed Sophie injured herself on a garage door, until Luca noticed the blood, the wheelchair, and one terrified look that told him his mother was missing.

The air tasted like scorched copper and vaporized drywall. The red emergency strobes pulsed against the heavy veil of black smoke, casting bloody ribbons of light across the cracked Italian marble. Seventy floors above the city, the Sovereign Citadel was groaning, its structural steel skeleton warping beneath the infernal bite of the planted thermite charges.

"Seventy-four seconds," the synthetic automated voice chimed from the overhead comms, cold and detached. "Structural integrity failing. Evacuate immediately."

"Sophie!" Luca’s voice cracked with a panic I had never heard in him before. He slid across the blood-slicked stone on his knees, his hands instantly pressing down on my left shoulder. Agony flared through my nerves—a white-hot, blinding fire that made my vision swim. His fingers were slick with my blood, but his grip was iron, staunching the hemorrhage. "Look at me, Sophie. Stay with me. Eyes on me!"

Across the ruined penthouse study, Vanessa let out a wet, rattling laugh. She was slumped against the shattered mahogany desk, clutching the smoking revolver in one broken hand, blood dripping from her split lip and the ragged burns along her collarbone. Her mascara ran like poisoned tar down her cheeks. "You're not leaving, Luca," she hissed, coughing up scarlet foam. "You chose a little stray over me. Over the family. Over the empire. Now you get to rot with her."

Behind her, emerging like a phantom from the shadows of the breached vault, was Antonio Moretti. His tailored suit was torn and powdered with gray plaster dust, but his gaze was razor-sharp, lethal, and entirely devoid of human mercy. He raised a custom matte-black Sig Sauer, aiming directly at the back of Luca's head.

"You were always too sentimental, boy," Antonio whispered, his voice cutting through the wail of the sirens. "A true Don cuts away the weak. You let them drag you into the grave."

"Luca, behind you!" I choked out, tasting bile and blood.

Luca didn’t hesitate. He didn’t rise to duel with honor; he moved with the brutal instincts of a predator cornered in a burning cage. Pivoting on his heel while keeping his body shielding mine, he drew the combat blade sheathed along his combat vest and hurled it in one fluid, terrifying motion.

The six-inch steel blade spun through the smoke, striking Antonio squarely in the throat.

The patriarch's eyes bulged. A strangled gasp escaped his lips as he dropped the pistol, clutching at the silver hilt buried in his windpipe. He stumbled backward into the flaming wreckage of the vault, crashing against the servers as electric arcs danced across his dying frame.

Vanessa shrieked, raising the revolver again, but Luca was already across the room. He didn’t give her the chance to pull the trigger. He seized her wrist, twisting it until bone snapped with a sickening crack, disarming her before driving her head down hard against the marble. The gun clattered harmlessly into the embers. Vanessa went limp, unconscious or dead, swallowed by the creeping fires.

"Fifty-five seconds," the speaker drone echoed.

Luca sprinted back to me, scooping me into his arms with savage desperation. "Hold onto me, Sophie. Wrap your right arm around my neck. Do not let go!"

"The blast door... it’s sealed," I gasped, my head spinning as the blood soaked through the front of his Kevlar vest. "There’s no way down."

"Then we don't go down," Luca growled, kicking through the shattered debris toward the panoramic exterior glass wall. The impact of Antonio's earlier explosive breaches had spider-webbed the thick reinforced panes. Luca pulled a tactical breaching charge from his belt, slapped it against the center seam, and shielded my head with his body.

*BOOM.*

The glass blew outward into the howling night sky. The icy gale rushed in, instantly whipping the smoke away to reveal the sprawling expanse of the city below—a glittering carpet of lights thousands of feet beneath our boots. Attached to the maintenance gantry outside hung the window-washer cradle, severed on one side, dangling by two high-tension steel emergency cables.

"Hold your breath," Luca whispered into my ear, his lips brushing my temple. "Trust me, Sophie."