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A heavy black zip-tie.

He threads it through the brass door handles and yanks it tight with a series of sharp clicks.

My stomach drops.

What is he thinking?

There are ten men in this room, at least two or three of them armed.

My pulse slams harder in my chest as he turns away from the doors and calmly walks across the room to the table covered in tools near the plastic sheeting over the construction. He pauses for a moment, his hand hovering over a drill, a box of nails, a heavy pipe wrench…

Then his gaze slowly settles on the huge demolition sledgehammer sitting on the floor, its long handle leaning against the side of the table.

Holy shit…

Damiano doesn’t even acknowledge two guys locked in conversation, barging between them and making them step apart as he passes.

He hefts the sledgehammer meditatively, flexing his hands on the handle as if testing its weight.

More conversations in the room trail off as people turn to frown in confusion at Damiano, casually slicing right through the crowd like a knife through butter.

…His eyes locked on Caleb Nyack, who’s still speaking with Varga.

Suddenly, Caleb notices the silence of the room. Or maybe he just suddenly realizes there’s a six-and-a-half foot beast of a man prowling toward him holding a dusty sledgehammer, black fury rolling off his shoulders like a storm.

His brows pinch.

“What the fuck are you⁠—”

Without slowing, without a word, Damiano swings the sledgehammer back with both hands and then rips it upward in a vicious underhand arc, burying the steel head between Caleb’s legs with a sickeningly wet crunch.

Caleb’s scream rips through the penthouse, his body literally lifting off the ground before he sails back through the air and lands in a crumpled heap on the ground.

The room erupts.

Men are shouting. Screaming. Running. A glass shatters. The two guards reach into their jackets for their guns.

Fear wraps its claws around my throat. But suddenly, right before my eyes, the man I married transforms from the measured, controlled, smooth killer I know…

…Into a savage.

One second, he’s standing over Caleb. The next, he whirls with pure violence twisting his face into a lethal snarl as he brings the sledgehammer up again.

I’m not watching a man at all.

I’m watching a demon.

The hammer smashes into the first armed guard’s face, completely shattering it into a mess of blood and bone. The second guard gets the hammer directly to the stomach, doubling him over before Damiano raises it in the air with a roar before he slams it down on the man’s skull, shattering it.

A tsunami of blood splatters across him as he whirls and smashes Joel Edlemen’s legs out from under him at a sickening angle.

The hammer swings again. Blood splashes and drenches. Desperate screams fill the room as my husband cuts through the guests like a beast from Hell itself. Red drips from his face, soaking his clothes and running freely down his arms as he roars, crushing heads, shattering legs, pulverizing chests.

Varga is screaming and yanking helplessly at the zip-tied doors as Damiano strides over to him and arcs the hammer like he’s in Yankee stadium swinging for the fucking fences. A horrible SNAP sound fills the room as the sledgehammer crushes Varga’s spine. A horrific scream erupts from the man’s throat as he slams into the door before Damiano’s hammer smashes his head to a bloody pulp.

He turns slowly, his dark, violent gaze cutting across the room, and it’s only then that I realize it’s all over.

Bodies and parts of bodies litter the room. Blood is fucking everywhere: dripping from the ceiling, spilled across the floor, oozing down the windows and the walls, choking the very air with the heavy scent of copper and death.