Part 2: I never told my Mafia ex-husband about my triplets. Then one of my sons pointed at him across a Manhattan ballroom and asked, “Is that our dad?”

“Gabriel is down?” I repeated, my voice steady, freezing cold.

“Yes! They ambushed him on the west terrace!” Victor cried, taking a step toward me. “Claire, give me the boys! We only have seconds!”

“You’re lying,” I said flatly.

Victor stopped. His frantic expression froze. “What?”

“If Gabriel were dead, his men would have detonated the charges on the perimeter gates to bury this entire estate,” I said, remembering the protocol Gabriel had once explained to me years ago. “And Marco would have been the one to come down these stairs. Not you.”

Victor’s face slowly twisted from panic into a cruel, sneering mask. The cowardly facade fell away.

“You always were too smart for your own good, Claire,” Victor hissed, slowly raising his gun toward my head. “Vincente offered me forty million dollars and full control of the ports for those three bastards. Step aside, or I’ll blow your head off and carry them out in bags.”

“Don't touch my mommy!” a small voice shrieked.

Noah leaped out from behind the crates, hurling a heavy glass wine bottle with all his five-year-old might. The bottle smashed against Victor’s shin, splashing red wine across his trousers.

Victor cursed, his aim momentarily drifting toward the boy.

That was all the opening I needed.

I didn't hesitate. I pulled the trigger.

*BANG!*

The recoil kicked my arms back, but the bullet found its mark, tearing into Victor’s right shoulder. He screamed, dropping his weapon and collapsing against the stone archway.

Before he could reach for his fallen gun with his left hand, a heavy combat boot crushed his wrist against the floor.

Gabriel stood in the doorway.

He looked like an avenging demon from hell. His face was streaked with soot and blood, his shirt torn, but his eyes were blazing with unholy fury. Behind him, Marco stood with a smoking assault rifle.

Gabriel looked at Victor, then down at the bleeding shoulder, then up at me holding the smoking revolver.

A slow, wicked smile touched the corners of Gabriel’s mouth.

“That’s my girl,” he murmured.

Gabriel grabbed Victor by the scruff of his neck, hauling him up like a sack of trash, and hurled him down the cellar steps toward Marco. “Tie him to a chair in the barn. Vincente’s men have all been slaughtered on the lawn. Victor is going to give us Vincente’s coordinates before the sun rises.”

Marco dragged the screaming traitor away into the dark.

Gabriel walked slowly into the vault. He knelt down before Noah, whose little chest was still heaving with anger.

“You protected your mother,” Gabriel said with fierce pride, placing his massive hand on Noah’s head. “Good throw, soldier.”

Noah grinned through his tears. “I got him, Daddy.”

Gabriel swallowed hard, emotion threatening to break his iron composure. He pulled all three boys into his arms, crushing them against his chest. Then he reached out his arm, pulling me down onto the floor with them, wrapping us in an unbreakable circle of steel and devotion.