“Stay down,” he growls without looking at me, and then he moves.
Precise. Controlled. Deadly.
Each shot finds its target. Each pivot, each glance, each breath is calculated. He fires with the confidence of someone who does not miss.
A bullet cracks against the column inches from my face. I gasp. Dimitri’s head snaps toward me, eyes blazing.
“Not a single step forward,” he warns—feral, protective, furious.
Then he turns back to the fight, shattering someone’s wrist with a shot that sends their weapon skidding across the marble floor.
I watch him, frozen.
The room is falling apart—glass raining from chandeliers, bodies rushing for exits, smoke curling into the air—but none of it compares to the destruction happening inside me.
He’s fighting for me.
For my mother.
For us.
Something hot and dark coils in my chest, refusing to be ignored.
I scan the room—panic, smoke, fallen bodies—searching for any opening, any path, any chance to help. And then I see him.
Deveraux.
Fleeing toward the elevators, cutting through the chaos with the confidence of a man who already planned every exit.
My pulse spikes.
No. Not again. Not this time.
Before I’ve fully decided to move, my body is already doing it—bolting after him, my heels pounding the marble, Dimitri’s voice slicing through the gunfire behind me.
“VIVIAN! STOP!”
I don’t stop.
I can’t.
If I lose Deveraux now, I lose my mother. I lose everything.
He dives into the elevator. It closes before I reach there. I wait impatiently for a few seconds before it returns and I enter, still ignoring Dimitri shouting my name.
When the elevator opens again, it’s into the basement vault—cold, cement-lined, humming with the low thrum of generators. The air tastes metallic.
And that’s when I see her.
My mother.
Chained to a chair in the center of the room, wrists raw, eyes half-open but—alive.
Alive.
My knees almost buckle. I stumble toward her—a click stops me.
Deveraux has moved behind her, pressing a gun to her temple.
