“Stay in the car, Clara!” Through the cracked window, Clara saw a sniper on the tunnel catwalk, aiming at Damian’s exposed back. “Damian, behind you!” She didn’t think. She threw the car door open and launched herself forward just as the sniper fired.
The bullet tore through Clara’s shoulder. “Clara!” Damian emptied his magazine into the catwalk until the sniper fell. He dropped to his knees beside her, pressing his coat against the wound. “Don’t close your eyes, Clara. Stay with me!” She touched his cheek with a blood-stained hand. “The boys… are they…” “They’re safe. You took a bullet for me. Why?” “Because I love them,” she whispered as her vision faded. “And I think… I love you.”
“Medic! Get a medic now!”
She woke three days later to a heart monitor’s beep and Damian asleep beside her bed — wrinkled suit, disheveled hair, hands clasped in prayer. “The bullet missed your artery by a fraction of an inch.” His expression mixed awe with possessive fury. “You jumped in front of a bullet for me, Clara. After I locked you away.”
Damian leaned down, hovering inches from her lips. “I am a monster, Clara. I kill. I destroy. I am not a good man. But I will spend the rest of my life worshipping the ground you walk on.” She kissed him back, surrendering at last to the dark, dangerous world she had been dragged into.
THE SUMMIT
A month later, a black envelope arrived: the Commission had called a summit. Victoria’s father had rallied the other families, demanding Damian step down as Don. “Because of me,” Clara realized. “Because they are greedy old men looking for an excuse to take my territory,” Damian corrected, tossing the letter into the fireplace. “Gear the men up. If they want a war, I’ll drown them in it.”
The night of the summit, the estate was eerily quiet. Ninety percent of the guards went with Damian. Clara sat in the fortified panic room beneath the mansion, watching the monitors — until the encrypted phone buzzed. “Damian?”
“Clara,” a voice purred. It wasn’t Damian. It was Victoria.
“Did you really think my father would face Damian in a fair fight? The summit was a distraction, darling. Damian is currently surrounded in a warehouse in Queens. And my men just bypassed your gate codes.”
On the monitor, three black vans rolled into the courtyard. Men in tactical gear swarmed the front doors. “I’m coming for my children, Clara. And when I find you, I’m going to finish what the fire started.”
The line went dead. Clara looked at the two sleeping infants, then at the panic room’s steel door. She grabbed Damian’s spare gun from the desk and cocked it with a shaking hand.
Heavy boots echoed from the stairs above.