I'd known they were looking for her—Marcos had warned me about the Castellanos weeks ago. What I hadn’t expected was them actually making a move. But anticipating an attack and stopping it were different things.
Castellano's crew had positioned themselves in three locations. We'd anticipated two. The third team came through the kitchen, guns drawn, intent clear.
Julietta went down as Marcos threw himself across her body. My men engaged. The ballroom became a war zone—screams, gunfire, the sharp crack of silencers, bodies hitting marble.
It was over in ninety seconds.
Four of Castellano's crew were dead. Two were captured, bleeding, dragged toward the kitchen by my men. The society guests were evacuated by exits my team had secured.
And Julietta was on the ground, covered in another man's blood, her hand gripping Marcos's shoulder.
The world stopped.
Not metaphorically. Not dramatically. Actually stopped—sound cutting out, my vision tunneling to nothing but her body on that marble floor, red spreading across ivory silk.
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Every carefully constructed wall I'd built over twenty years shattered in the space between one heartbeat and the next.
This was the thing I'd feared since the moment I'd taken her. Not death, betrayal, or losing the empire I'd built. This—her blood on marble, her body still, the possibility that I'd failed to protect the only thing that mattered.
My mother's face flashed through my mind. That basement apartment. The way she'd looked at me in those final moments, apologizing because she couldn't afford to stay alive. I'd been eight years old and powerless to save her.
I was thirty-four now. I owned half this city. I had an army at my command.
And I still couldn't keep the people I loved from bleeding.
The thought paralyzed me for exactly three seconds—three seconds where my body refused to move, refused to accept what my eyes were seeing, refused to process the reality that I might have just watched her die.
Then training overrode terror.
I didn't remember moving. One moment I was watching screens, the next I was there, pulling her against me, my hands running over her body checking for injuries.
"I'm fine," she gasped. "I'm fine, I'm okay—"
"Shut up," I breathed into her hair. "Don't talk. Just stay still."
My rage was a living thing, something with teeth and claws. It had been contained, purposeful, strategic. Now it was a wildfire.
I looked at Marcos. "Bring the survivors to the interrogation room. And call cleanup."
Marcos nodded once, already on his phone, coordinating the extraction with clinical precision. No questions. He'd learned years ago that after I made a decision, analysis time was over.
The first one broke in seven minutes.
His name was Paolo Deluca, and he'd been recruited by the Castellano crew three months ago. He knew their operation, their supply lines, their safe houses. More importantly, he knew who'd authorized the hit.
My fist had moved three times before he said a word.
"Who sent you?"
"Castellano. Bruno Castellano. He—"
I broke his arm.
I already knew Lorenzo had hired the Castellanos. What I needed to know was how they'd found us. Who'd given them the exact location, the timing, the security layout.
"Who gave you the intel?"
"I don't know, I don't know—"
