The first crash from downstairs was the sound of our fragile peace shattering. Dante was out of bed in an instant, gun in hand, his body a tense coil of lethal energy. "Stay here!" he commanded, but his words were lost in the cacophony of shouting and automatic gunfire that erupted from outside. I ignored his order, my heart seizing with a single, terrifying thought: *Mia*.
I ran out into the hallway right behind him. It was chaos. Guards were running, shouting into radios, taking up defensive positions. "Boss! Eight hostiles have breached the south perimeter!" Marco yelled, appearing from the stairwell. "Two more trucks approaching the main gate!"
"Lockdown protocol! Now!" Dante roared. Alarms blared, and I heard the heavy thud of reinforced metal shutters descending over the windows, encasing us in a steel tomb.
My only priority was my niece. "Mia! Sarah!" I screamed, sprinting toward their wing.
"Ella, wait!" Dante cursed and followed me, his long strides easily catching up. We burst into Mia's room together. Sarah was crouched in a corner, holding a terrified, sobbing Mia in her arms. The sound of gunfire was closer now, a terrifying staccato against the walls of the house.
"Follow me!" Dante ordered, his voice a calm, authoritative anchor in the storm. He shoved a section of bookcase, revealing a hidden, reinforced door. A secret passage. He led us down a narrow staircase into an underground panic room—a concrete bunker equipped with its own air supply, communications, and provisions. Isabella was already there, her face pale, ushered in by another guard.
"What is this place?!" Sarah gasped, looking around the stark, functional room.
"It's where you'll be safe," Dante said, just as Marco appeared at the door with two more guards.
"Secure the family," Dante commanded them. He turned to me. "Stay here. With them."
"No," I said, my voice firm. "I'm coming with you."
"Ella, don't be ridiculous—"
"They need you out there," I insisted, grabbing his arm. "And you need every person you can get. I can shoot. You taught me how."
He was torn; I could see the war in his eyes between his need to keep me safe and the cold, practical reality of the assault. "Stay behind me," he finally gritted out. "Always." He turned to the guards. "Lock this door. No one gets in or out until I give the all-clear."
"Ella, no, don't!" Sarah cried, but my decision was made.
I knelt in front of Mia. "I'll be right back, baby," I said, my heart breaking as she reached for me, her small face streaked with tears. "You be brave for mommy, okay?"
Dante pulled me into a small, hidden armory near the panic room. He handed me a pistol, his movements quick and efficient. "Safety's off. Aim for center mass. Do not hesitate."
I took the gun, my hand surprisingly steady. I checked the magazine, the motions he had drilled into me weeks ago coming back instinctively. "I won't."
He grabbed my face, his kiss hard and desperate. "Stay alive."
"You too," I whispered against his lips. And then we went to war.
The main floor was a battlefield. The grand foyer was a wreck of shattered marble and splintered wood. Dante's men were using overturned furniture for cover, exchanging fire with Victor's men, who were trying to push deeper into the house. Dante assessed the situation in a heartbeat. "They're weakest on the east wing! Marco, reinforce the east! Move!"
He took a position behind a massive marble pillar, raised his weapon, and fired three precise shots. Two of Victor's men dropped. I crouched beside him, my stomach churning as I saw the blood spread across the pristine floor. A hostile burst through a side door, his weapon raised, heading straight for us. There was no time to think. I reacted on pure instinct. I raised my pistol, aimed, and fired. The kick of the gun surprised me, but the bullet hit its mark. The man crumpled to the ground. I stared, shocked at what I had just done.
"Don't freeze!" Dante yelled, pulling me toward our next point of cover. "Keep moving!"
Something small and metal rolled across the floor. "Grenade!" Dante roared. He tackled me, throwing us both behind a heavy velvet couch an instant before the world exploded in a deafening blast of sound and fury. Debris rained down on us. My ears were ringing, the air thick with dust and cordite. Dante was on top of me, his body a solid shield. "Are you okay?" he yelled over the ringing. I nodded, unable to speak. He pulled me to my feet. The couch was gone, splintered into a thousand pieces.
"They're trying to breach the library!" one of his men shouted. The library. The hidden passage. *Mia*.
"Over my dead body," Dante snarled. He moved with a brutal efficiency, me right behind him. Three of Victor's men were in the library, trying to find the hidden door to the panic room. Dante didn't hesitate. He opened fire, a merciless, controlled burst that dropped all three of them in seconds. He moved from body to body, ensuring they were dead. This was the real Dante. The killer. No mercy, no hesitation, no remorse.
A voice, mocking and distorted, crackled over a radio frequency Dante monitored. "Dante! I know you can hear me, you coward! I'm outside! Come out and face me, or I'll burn this whole pretty house down with your family inside!" Victor.
"It's a trap, boss," Marco said, appearing at Dante's side.
"I know," Dante replied, his jaw tight. "But I'm taking it."
"Don't," I pleaded. "That's what he wants."
"He threatened our family," Dante said, his eyes locking on mine. "This ends tonight."
He strode toward the blown-open front entrance. I followed, ignoring his protests. The lawn was bathed in the harsh glare of floodlights from Victor's trucks. Victor himself stood thirty yards away, using a car for cover, flanked by five of his men.
"There you are!" Victor shouted, a triumphant sneer on his face. "And you brought your pretty little pet with you!"
"Let's end this, Victor," Dante called out. "Just you and me."
Victor laughed. "Honorable? You? I don't think so. I think I'll just kill everyone you love, starting with her."
I heard a voice in my earpiece—Dante had given me one in the armory. It was Marco, positioned in a second-story window with a sniper rifle. "I have the shot, boss."
"Take it," Dante ordered.
The rifle cracked. Victor, clearly expecting it, ducked, but the bullet found one of his men instead. The firefight erupted again. In the chaos, one of Victor's men began to circle around, coming up behind Dante, who was focused on Victor. I saw him. I didn't think. I raised my pistol, fired twice, and the man dropped. Dante spun around, saw the body, and then looked at me. He gave me a sharp, single nod—a look of respect, of gratitude. I had just saved his life.
Marco, having repositioned, fired again. This time, the bullet clipped Victor in the shoulder. He cried out and fell, and his men scrambled, dragging him toward one of the trucks. The retreat had begun.
"Don't let him escape!" Dante roared, charging forward, but Victor's remaining men laid down a hail of covering fire. The truck sped away into the night. Victor was gone.
The gunfire died down, replaced by an eerie, ringing silence. The battle was over. Six of Victor's men lay dead on our lawn. Two of Dante's were injured, one critically. I stood in the wreckage of our home, the gun still heavy in my hand, my body beginning to shake as the adrenaline faded.
Dante came to me. "Give me the gun, Ella." I did, my trembling hands barely able to release it. He set it on a nearby table and pulled me into his arms. I collapsed against him, the strength leaving my body all at once.
"I killed someone," I sobbed into his chest. "I actually killed someone."
"You saved my life," he said, his voice a low rumble. "And you saved your own."
"There's so much blood," I whispered, looking at my hands, which felt impossibly dirty. My knees gave out, and he lifted me into his arms as if I weighed nothing, carrying me back inside.
He took me straight to the panic room. When the heavy door swung open, Mia saw me in Dante's arms and cried out. He set me down, and she ran to me, her small arms wrapping around my legs. "I was so scared, Auntie Ella!"
"I know, baby. Me too," I said, holding her tight. "But we're all safe now."
Sarah's eyes were on me, taking in my pale face, my trembling hands. "What happened up there?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
I couldn't lie anymore. "War happened."
"Did you… did you have to…?"
"Yes," I said, my voice flat. "I did." I saw the horror in her eyes, but also a flicker of understanding. She pulled me into a hug.
"Thank you," she whispered. It was the first time she had truly accepted this world, and the price of our safety.
The doctor was busy with the wounded men. Dante had Marco take Sarah and Mia back to their rooms, with Isabella staying with them for comfort. He and I were finally alone, standing in the ruins of our home.
"It's not over," he said, his voice heavy. "We wounded him, but he escaped. He'll hide, heal, and then he'll come back for us."
"So we go to him first," I said, my voice hard.
He looked at me, really looked at me. "You killed a man tonight, Ella. Most people would run from more violence, not toward it."
"I'm not most people anymore," I said, and I knew it was true. The kindergarten teacher was gone, and in her place was someone else, someone harder, someone forged in fear and gunfire.
In the early hours of the morning, we were in the war room. Marco had tracked Victor's truck to a three-block radius in the warehouse district before losing the signal.
"We hit every building," Dante said, his voice cold as steel. "Systematically. No mercy. No survivors."
"When?" I asked.
"Tomorrow night," he said. "He'll expect us to need time to recover. We'll strike while he's wounded and off-balance." He looked at me. "You stay here. With Mia."
"After tonight, you think I'm just going to wait meekly in my room?" I challenged. "I'll never be safe, Mia will never be safe, until he's dead."
He saw the fierce determination in my eyes, the woman I had become. A woman like him.
Later, we lay in our bed, surrounded by the wreckage of our room. "You were brave tonight," he said into the darkness.
"I was terrified," I confessed.
"Bravery isn't the absence of fear," he murmured, pulling me closer. "It's acting in spite of it. You saved my life."
"You've saved mine a dozen times."
"Then we're even."
I could still see the face of the man I had shot. "How do you live with it?" I whispered. "The killing."
"By remembering why I did it," he said, his voice a low, rough comfort. "You shot him to protect me. To protect Mia. That's not murder, Ella. That's survival. The weight of it never goes away, but you learn to carry it." He held me tighter. "And you don't have to carry it alone."
I finally fell into an exhausted sleep, but I knew Dante stayed awake, watching over me. He had seen me kill tonight, had seen me cross a line I could never uncross. He should have felt guilty for bringing me into this life. But I knew, somehow, that what he felt was a fierce, possessive pride. Tomorrow, we would hunt Victor. And this time, there would be no escape. Because Victor had made one fatal mistake: he had come for what was ours.