Three exits exist in this ballroom. The closest sits exactly seventeen steps behind my left shoulder. It leads through a narrow service corridor to the underground loading dock. I counted the steps the exact second my heels touched the marble floor. Counting grounds the panic. Counting is a survival mechanism.
Tyra is at home with Rosa. Asleep by now. Eight-thirty on a Saturday night. Pink unicorn pajamas. The ragged stuffed grey wolf tucked under her chin. Rosa sent a text message an hour ago confirming a clean plate of pasta.
My daughter is four years old. She is the only clean, beautiful thing in my entire life.
That fact sits in the center of my chest like a heavy, jagged stone every single time I walk into a room full of cartel monsters.
My gaze shifts across the perimeter of the ballroom.
The exits are not clear.
Nick stands by the main double doors, his presence a dark, immovable monolith. Beneath his custom suit, the Kevlar plates of his tactical vest press against his massive chest. I don’t know the names of the men lurking in the shadows, but I feel the shift in the room. The three bodyguards Dominic hired are moving.
I can see the subtle signals—the way the valets outside hold themselves with a soldier’s posture, the way the kitchen staff seems suddenly, lethally efficient. They are a phalanx of wolves who are already colonizing the house’s defenses from the inside.
The air leaves my lungs.
The memories from the morning assault my nervous system.
The intense, desperate heat of Jude’s mouth consumes my thoughts. The taste of mint. The punishing crush of his body trapping me against the pastel yellow wall of the nursery. The absolute, terrifying safety in his dark eyes.
The scorching burn of Rafe’s rough palms dragging up my bare thighs flashes next. The feral hunger in his stare. The urge to let him tear the emerald silk to shreds right on the closet floor.
The dark, territorial promise Nick whispered against my neck overrides the string quartet.
I tip my chin down. Making eye contact with any of them in this public, high-stakes space is a fatal error. The tension connectingthe four of us is a live wire. It threatens to burn the entire ballroom down.
They guard the doors. They watch the shadows. They are executing their contracted duties.
A sharp, double-click of static erupts in the small earpiece Nick forced me to wear under my hair.
“The team is on the kill-switches,” Nick’s low, cold baritone vibrates against my skull. “We have the eyes. Eyes on you, Principessa. Give me a signal if you’re compromised.”
I don’t answer. I can’t. But the realization that there are more of them—more monsters in the shadows waiting for a signal—makes the air in the ballroom slightly less suffocating.
They have no idea about the bomb resting against my ribcage.
The hard metal edge of the stolen master USB drive bites into my skin. It sits tucked inside the thick lace of my bra. The punishing tightness of the blood-red silk dress presses the metal into my sternum. Every shallow breath grinds the evidence of my treason into my flesh.
Dominic stands at the front of the ballroom.
Forty-four years old. Tailored charcoal suit. He has our father’s sharp jawline without a single ounce of the old man’s softness.
He leans into the shoulder of a city councilman. The sterile, calculated Costa smile flashes across his face. The smile he keeps for useful assets. My brother runs the criminal family the way a sociopathic surgeon runs an operating room. Cold. Precise. Certain the body bleeding out on the metal table has no vote in the procedure.
I am the body on the table.
The knowledge has been building for weeks. The subtle shifts in his behavior gave it away. The way his cold eyes tracked my movements across a room. Phone calls dying the second my heels clicked into his study. His sudden interest in my daily schedule.
The question he lobbed last Tuesday with rehearsed, terrifying casualness.How is the little one? Growing fast?Dominic never asks about Tyra. Not once in four years. When the established pattern shifts, danger follows.
He steps up to the microphone.
The string quartet stops. A sharp squeal of feedback echoes through the speakers. Two hundred faces turn toward the front of the room. They offer the trained attentiveness of people whose bank accounts and lives belong to a single man.
“Thank you all for being here tonight.”
Dominic’s voice fills the cavernous room. Low. Smooth. Unhurried. The cadence of a man who has never once been interrupted.