88She Vanished Before Their Engagement Dinner, and the Three Words Under His Glass Made the Mafia Boss Forget How to Breathe

The explosive charge went off with a dull, concussive THUMP that shook the entire underground structure.

The heavy steel entry door was blown inward off its hinges, crashing onto the concrete floor in a cloud of grey dust, sparks, and concrete shrapnel.

Before the dust could settle, three flashbang grenades bounced across the floor.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Blinding white light and ten thousand decibels of disorienting shockwaves flooded the underground room.

Caleb shrieked, dropping his knife and clapping both hands over his ears as he was thrown backward against the rusted oil drum, his vision obliterated by the white flash.

Through the cloud of smoke stepped Damian Vale.

He didn't wear a tactical mask. He didn't wear infrared goggles.

His face was bare, illuminated by the dying orange sparks of the breach charge. His SIG Sauer was held in a double-handed grip, extended perfectly before him.

THWACK! THWACK!

Damian fired two rounds into the chest of a guard who was attempting to raise a shotgun from behind a wooden crate. The guard collapsed backward into the dark water, dead before he hit the ground.

Caleb scrambled across the floor on his hands and knees, grabbing Nora by her hair and pulling her up as a human shield, pressing the barrel of a small snub-nosed revolver into her temple.

“STAND BACK!” Caleb screamed, his voice cracking into a manic, high-pitched shriek. “STAND BACK OR I’LL BLOW HER BRAINS ALL OVER THIS CONCRETE!”

Damian stopped ten feet away.

Leo and Miles stepped into the room behind him, their weapons raised, covering the side angles.

The silence that fell over the underground bunker was thick, suffocating, broken only by the drip of water from the ceiling and Caleb’s ragged, terrified gasps for air.

Damian lowered his weapon by half an inch.

His eyes swept over Nora. He saw the cut on her lip. He saw the red handprint on her cheek. He saw the torn green dress.

His heart tore in half, but his face remained an unreadable mask of iron.

“Nora,” Damian said softly. His voice was steady, carrying an incredible, grounding warmth into the freezing room. “Are you alright?”

Nora looked at him through the smoke. The sight of him—soaked in rain, covered in dust, standing there like a statue carved from judgment—made the fear in her chest instantly dissolve.

“I’m fine, Damian,” she said, her voice steady. “He hits like a child.”

Caleb pressed the gun barrel harder into her skin, pulling her head back until her neck was exposed.

“Shut up!” Caleb screamed at her. He glared at Damian, his single good eye twitching violently. “You think you won, Vale? You think you can just track me down and take what’s mine? I owned her first! I made her!”

Damian took one slow step forward.

“Put the gun down, Caleb,” Damian said quietly.

“I’ll kill her!” Caleb yelled. “I swear to God, I’ll take her with me!”

“You won't kill her,” Damian said smoothly. He took another step forward, his eyes locking onto Caleb’s trembling hands. “Because if you kill her, your obsession ends. You have spent five years hiding in dark holes, eating garbage, waiting for the moment where you could feel like a man again in front of her. If she dies, you’re just a burnt piece of trash in a swamp.”

Caleb’s hand shook harder. “I’m not afraid of you!”

“You’ve been afraid of me since the second you saw me on Tenth Street five years ago,” Damian said. He took another step. He was six feet away now. “You waited until I was surrounded by sixty people at a restaurant to take her, because you knew you couldn't take her from me face-to-face.”

“Stop moving!” Caleb shrieked, his thumb pulling back the hammer of the revolver.

CLICK.

The sound of the hammer locking back echoed through the room.

Nora didn't flinch. She looked directly at Damian.

She gave him a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.

She knew what he was doing. She knew how he moved.

In one sudden, violent movement, Nora slammed her heel down onto the top of Caleb’s foot with all the weight left in her body, while simultaneously throwing her head backward into his nose.

CRACK!