My boss’s fiancé chopped off my hair to humiliate me, but he called off their syndicate wedding on the spot to pick me up off the floor.

The gun battle in the great hall had turned the Moretti mansion into a war zone.

Chintz armchairs were shredded; priceless antique vases lay in shards of porcelain across the blood-slicked marble; the crystal chandelier hung at a precarious angle, half its bulbs shattered by stray ricochets.

Marcus and four surviving Moretti loyalists had pinned the remaining mercenaries near the grand entryway. But Corrado Bellini, clutching a submachine gun in his uninjured left hand, and Isabelle, holding an automatic pistol with hysterical, trembling hands, had pushed their way into the center of the hall, desperate to secure an exit before police sirens—or syndicate reinforcements—arrived.

“Damian!” Corrado screamed, his voice cracking with madness. “Come out and face me, you coward! Bring the girl and the cipher, or I’ll burn this entire estate to the foundation!”

From the shadow of the grand staircase, Damian stepped into the light.

He was alone. His rifle hung loosely in his right hand, pointed toward the floor, but the predatory arrogance in his posture made Corrado’s surviving mercenaries visibly hesitate.

“You’re out of ammunition, Corrado,” Damian said calmly, his voice echoing through the ruined hall. “Your Detroit mercenaries are dead at the south gate. The Chicago Police Department has already been redirected by my contacts to blockade every bridge out of the city. You have nowhere left to run.”

Isabelle stepped out from behind her father, her eyes wild, her face smeared with soot and blood.

“Give us the locket, Damian!” she shrieked, aiming her pistol directly at his chest. “Give us the Vasquez codes! We’ll leave the country! You can have your precious city, just let us leave!”

“She’s not giving you anything, Isabelle.”

A soft, lethal voice came from the upper mezzanine above the staircase.

Isabelle and Corrado snapped their heads upward.

Elena stood at the top of the marble stairs. The emerald robe she wore fluttered in the draft from the shattered front doors. In her hands, she held the semi-automatic pistol Damian had given her, the barrel aimed squarely at Corrado Bellini’s chest.

Corrado sneered, his lips curling in grotesque contempt. “Look at you. Salvatore’s little brat. You think because you hold a gun, you’re one of us? You don’t have the stomach to pull that trigger! Your father was weak, and you are nothing!”

“My father died saving an honorable man,” Elena said, her voice dropping into a register of icy, absolute certainty that silenced the entire room. “You died the moment you betrayed him.”

Corrado raised his submachine gun toward Elena, his finger tightening on the trigger.

*BANG.*

Elena fired first.

The 9mm round tore through Corrado Bellini’s left shoulder, knocking the submachine gun from his grip. He screamed, spinning around and collapsing hard onto the bloodstained marble floor.

Isabelle shrieked, swinging her pistol toward Elena in blind, panicked rage.

*BANG.*

Damian didn't give her the chance.

His rifle barked once. The bullet struck Isabelle’s pistol with pinpoint accuracy, shattering the steel slide and sending the mangled weapon flying across the room, tearing the skin of Isabelle’s fingers.

Isabelle collapsed to her knees, clutching her bleeding hands, weeping hysterically in the wreckage of her vanity and cruelty.

Damian stepped forward, kicking the remaining weapons out of reach. Marcus and the Moretti guards swarmed the hall, subduing the last two mercenaries and pinning Corrado face-down on the marble floor.

Elena descended the sweeping staircase slowly, her steps steady, the pistol lowered at her side.

She walked over to where Corrado lay groaning in his own blood. The old mobster looked up at her through swollen, defeated eyes, his chest rattling with ragged breaths.

Elena reached into the pocket of her robe. She drew out the tarnished silver filigree cross, holding it before his face.

“This was what you murdered my father for,” Elena said softly, her hazel eyes colder than midwinter ice. “Twenty years of poverty. Twenty years of watching my mother die by inches. All for numbers in a foreign bank.”

She unclasped the cross, popped the secret seam, and let the platinum micro-drive fall into Damian’s open hand.

“My father’s honor didn't belong to the Swiss banks, Corrado,” Elena said. “It belonged to the family he died protecting. And now, his debts are paid in full.”

Damian looked down at Marcus.

“Call the federal task force,” Damian commanded coldly. “Hand Corrado and Isabelle over along with the encrypted offshore evidence files. The Commission will not protect them, and the federal courts will ensure they spend the rest of their miserable lives rotting in separate maximum-security cells in Florence, Colorado.”

Isabelle looked up at Elena, tears carving clean lines through the soot on her cheeks. “Elena... please... we were friends once... you served me...”

Elena looked at the woman who had cut her hair, who had sought to strip her of her humanity and her birthright.