"Gunfire exploded through the hall, and in seconds everyone was running for their lives—tables overturned, glasses shattered, screams swallowed by panic. In the middle of the chaos stood a woman no one expected to move toward danger, the one person who should have fled first. — THEN, without hesitation, she stepped into the line of fire and took the bullet meant for the mafia boss’s twin children, revealing a truth that froze the entire underworld: she was not a bystander, but someone they had been searching for years.

Friday afternoon arrived with a suffocating, leaden heat. Black town cars bearing tinted windows lined the Barrington Hills driveway one by one, discharging aging mob bosses in expensive suits and heavily armed personal enforcers.

Inside the grand foyer, Rourke stood at the head of the double staircases like a king receiving tribute, his face carved from granite. Rafe stood at the door, frisking every single arrival for concealed firearms, though the syndicate rules barred weapons inside the formal parlor.

Ivy watched from the upper balcony, keeping Ezra and Mabel safely tucked away in the east wing nursery with Odette.

"Stay here with Odette," Ivy instructed the twins, kneeling down to look them in the eye. "I have to check on something downstairs. Do not open this door for anyone except me or your father. Understand?"

"Are the bad men here, Ivy?" Mabel asked, her small lip trembling.

"No bad men are getting past your father," Ivy said with a reassuring smile, though her stomach was tied in knots.

She slipped down the back service stairs, avoiding the crowded parlor where Sal Marcone and Marcus Vance were already sharing drinks with Rourke. Instead, she headed straight for the estate’s basement security control room—the nerve center where every camera feed, audio tap, and firewall backup was monitored.

She needed the physical flash drive containing the raw system overrides that Vance had used two nights ago.

The heavy steel door to the control room was unlocked. That was her first warning.

Ivy slipped inside, her soft-soled shoes making no sound on the concrete floor. The rows of monitors flickered with green and blue digital readouts.

Suddenly, a heavy arm wrapped around her throat from behind, cutting off her breath, lifting her feet off the floor in one brutal, calculated motion.

"Curiosity, Ms. Hensley," a smooth, venomous voice whispered directly into her ear, "is a terminal illness."

It was Vance.

He shoved her violently against the steel control console. Ivy gasped for air, her hands flying to her bruised windpipe as she stumbled back against the blinking monitors.

Vance stood before her, his immaculate suit jacket removed, his sleeves rolled up to reveal expensive gold cufflinks and a forearm covered in a faded, jagged tattoo—a tattoo of a coiled serpent wrapped around a dagger.

The exact same sigil that had been on the black envelope at the west gate.

"You're working with the East Coast syndicate," Ivy wheezed, glaring at him with pure defiance. "You killed Rourke's wife. You sabotaged the shipping lanes."

Vance chuckled softly, stepping closer, pulling a sleek, silenced Walther PPK from his shoulder holster. "Smart girl. Too bad nobody is ever going to hear your deductions. You see, today is the day Rourke Faust loses everything—starting with his loyal little nanny, and ending with his children."

Before Vance could raise the weapon, Ivy drove her heel down onto his expensive Italian leather shoe with all her weight.

Vance hissed in pain, his grip loosening for a split second. It was all the opening she needed.

She drove her elbow backward into his ribs, spun around, and grabbed a heavy steel wrench off the maintenance table, swinging it in a wide arc toward his head. Vance ducked just in time, the wrench glancing off his shoulder, but the commotion triggered the automated security alert upstairs.