“THROW THAT FILTHY BOOK IN THE TRASH! NOBODY WANTS HER PEASANT RECIPES AT MY WEDDING!”

Marco’s demeanor changed in a microsecond.

The tenderness vanished, replaced instantly by the icy tactical focus of a syndicate commander. He stood up, shielding Lily behind him with one arm while drawing his automatic pistol with the other.

“Lily, stay down behind this drum,” Marco commanded, his voice dead calm. “Do not stand up until I come back for you.”

“Marco, wait!” Lily grabbed his sleeve. “Richard Hale had a GPS tracker inside the recipe book’s leather spine! Serena told him to put it there when she took it from your mother’s house!”

Marco froze. “What?”

“The red book,” Lily whispered urgently. “When Serena took it two weeks ago, she took it to Hale’s security team. They placed a micro-transponder inside the binding. That’s how Dominic knew Mrs. DeLuca went to the Fifth Avenue restaurant last week! And that’s how they found us here tonight!”

Above them, the muffled sound of a heavy door being kicked off its hinges echoed through the floorboards.

“Frank!” Marco roared, vaulting up the stone steps two at a time.

Lily didn't stay down. She couldn't. Maria was up there.

Lily scrambled up the stone steps behind Marco, bursting back into the old prep kitchen just as the front dining room doors shattered inward.

Three men in tactical vests, their faces hidden by black balaclavas, swept through the swinging kitchen doors, weapons raised.

Behind them stood Dominic DeLuca.

Dominic’s face was bruised from his earlier fall, his eyes manic and wild. In his hand, he held a chrome revolver. He wasn't in the estate cellar anymore—he had escaped, or Hale’s private security had breached the Long Island perimeter.

“Dominic!” Maria screamed from behind the prep counter where Frank was already returning fire.

Gunfire ripped through the old kitchen. The deafening cracks of semi-automatic pistols shattered the night. Copper pots exploded off their ceiling hooks, clattering violently against the tiled floor. Ceramic tiles splintered into white dust.

Frank put two rounds into the chest of the lead tactical operator, dropping him instantly, but a stray bullet caught Frank in the left shoulder. Frank grunted, stumbling back against the pantry door, blood instantly blooming across his shirt.

“Dominic! Stop this!” Marco’s voice cut through the gunfire like thunder.

Marco stepped out from behind the brick archway, his weapon leveled dead center at Dominic’s chest.

Dominic flinched, his hand shaking so violently the revolver wobbled. Behind Dominic, two more of Hale’s private mercenaries took cover behind the dining room bar.

“You don't understand, Marco!” Dominic shrieked, saliva flying from his lips. “Hale didn't just have my markers! He has the cartel contracts! If Hale doesn't get that iron drum tonight, the Mexican syndicate is going to butcher my family! They’re going to butcher all of us!”

“Hale lied to you, you idiot!” Marco yelled back, not lowering his gun by a millimeter. “Hale is using you to clean his grandfather’s blood money so he can take over the ports! He’s going to kill you the second you hand him that drum!”

“Shut up! Shut up!” Dominic raised his revolver toward Marco.

From the pantry shadows, Maria stepped out.

“Dominic,” Maria said.

The gunfire ceased. The two surviving mercenaries hesitated, looking at Dominic.

Maria walked directly into the open line of fire. Her face was pale, but her eyes were filled with the devastating authority of a mother who had brought life into the world and watched it rot.

“Put down the gun, Dominic,” Maria said softly.

“Ma... get back...” Dominic sobbed, his finger twitching on the trigger. “Get back, Ma! Marco won't listen to reason! He’s going to kill me!”

“Your brother is trying to save you from your own filth,” Maria said, taking another step forward. She held the red recipe book against her chest. “You sold your soul to a woman who wouldn't even let your mother taste her husband’s sauce at your brother’s table. Look at me, Dominic. Look at the woman who bled for you.”

Dominic’s eyes darted between Maria and Marco. The madness in his eyes clashed violently with forty years of childhood memories.

At that exact moment, the mercenary behind Dominic raised his carbine, aiming directly at Maria’s chest.

“Take the old woman out!” the mercenary shouted.

Lily didn't think.

She didn't calculate her father’s rent. She didn't calculate the bullets flying through the air.

Lily lunged from behind the counter, slamming her entire body into Maria DeLuca, knocking the seventy-seven-year-old woman flat onto the flour-covered floor just as a burst of automatic fire tore through the air where Maria had been standing.

A searing, white-hot line of agony ripped across Lily’s right shoulder.

Lily cried out, tumbling to the floor, her vision flashing white with shock.

The sound that left Marco DeLuca’s throat was not human.

It was the roar of an apex predator watching the only things he loved attacked before his eyes.

Marco moved like a phantom. Three deafening shots echoed in rapid succession. The mercenary who had aimed at Maria collapsed with a hole through his forehead. Marco stepped forward, firing two more rounds through the kitchen partition, dropping the second gunman before the man could even clear his holster.

Dominic dropped his revolver. It clattered against the tiles.

Dominic fell to his knees, his hands covering his head, weeping uncontrollably. “Don't kill me! Marco, don't kill me!”

Marco didn't even look at his brother.

He dropped to his knees beside Lily.

“Lily!” Marco’s voice cracked with panic. He threw his gun aside, his large hands immediately grasping her jacket, tearing open the fabric to expose her shoulder.

Blood was pumping over her collarbone, staining her white skin and the floor beneath her.

“Lily... look at me. Stay with me,” Marco pleaded, his face pale with a terror none of his enemies had ever seen. He pressed his hand hard against the wound to stem the bleeding.

Lily looked up into his dark eyes, her breath coming in shallow, shuddering gasps. “Mrs... Mrs. DeLuca... is she...”

“She’s safe. You saved her,” Marco whispered, his voice shaking. He pulled her against his chest, holding her tight while shouting over his shoulder: “Frank! Call our private surgical team to the penthouse! Now! Move!”

Maria scrambled over on her hands and knees, tears pouring down her aged cheeks, pressing her trembling hands over Lily’s cold fingers. “Lily... sweet girl... oh God, Antonio, watch over her...”

Lily’s vision began to blur at the edges. The last thing she felt before the darkness swallowed her was Marco’s lips pressing fiercely against her forehead, and his voice promising with lethal conviction: