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The void rushes up to claim me, a black tide of unconsciousness that drags me under and pulls me down, down, down into the depths of oblivion. I try to cling to something, to anything that might tether me to the waking world. But there’s no anchor. No lifeline.

Just the fading echoes of my own thoughts, the whispered fragments of the names that mean everything to me.

Seraphina. Nico.

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I failed you. I failed us all.

Then even that is gone, swallowed up by the endless, aching dark.

And I know no more.

18

LUCA

I’m in my office, my phone pressed to my ear, listening to Luca’s voicemail for the third fucking time this morning. The man’s been dodging my calls all day, always with some excuse about meetings or shipments or whatever other bullshit he thinks will placate me.

It won’t. Not today. Not with Russo closing in. I need Luca on his A-game. He needs to be ready to move at a moment’s notice.

But apparently, that’s too much to fucking ask.

I’m just about to hang up and hurl my phone across the room when the alarms start blaring through the compound. For a split second, I’m frozen, my mind refusing to process what my ears are telling me. This can’t be happening. It has to be a malfunction, a fucking glitch in the system.

But reality crashes over me like a tidal wave. This is real. This is happening.

We’re under attack.

I’m on my feet and running before I’ve fully formed the thought, my heart slamming against my ribs and blood roaring in my ears. The worst-case scenarios flood my mind as I sprint through the halls, each one more horrific than the last.

Intruders on the grounds. Armed and ruthless, cutting through my defenses like they’re made of fucking tissue paper. And if they’re here, if they’ve breached the perimeter...

Katerina. Oh god, Katerina.

A white-hot blade of panic sears through me and steals the breath from my lungs. If they find her, if they get to her before I do…

I can’t even finish the thought. I can’t let myself imagine the unimaginable.

I’m shouting orders as I run, my voice raw and hoarse with an emotion I can barely recognize as my own. “Lock down the estate! I want every available man on the grounds, now! And someone find Katerina Sokolov, goddammit!”

But even as the words leave my lips, I know. I can feel it, a cold, leaden weight in the pit of my stomach.

Something’s wrong. Something’s very, very wrong.

For the alarms to be blaring like this, it means the unthinkable has happened. There’s a real threat, a genuine breach of our defenses.

And if that’s the case, if there are intruders on the grounds…

I need to find Katerina and make sure she’s safe.

She has to be here somewhere. In the house, in her room, maybe already hunkered down in the safe room with Seraphina. She’s smart, she’s resourceful.

But even as I cling to that fragile reassurance, I can feel the icy fingers of dread clawing at my spine. Because if she is here, if she is safe…

I burst into the foyer just as Seraphina’s nanny, Marta, comes stumbling in from the opposite direction, the little girl wailing in her arms. Her face is ashen, her eyes wide and wild with terror, and for a moment, I can’t breathe because Katerina isn’t there with them. And Katerina wouldn’t leave Seraphina for anything.

No. No, no, no.

“Where is she?” I demand, my hands clenching into fists at my sides even though I want to shake Marta. “Where’s Katerina?”