THE MOMENT THE MAFIA BOSS’S FIANCÉE CALLED ME “A WORTHLESS LITTLE MAID,” I PLACED A HAND-SEWN BLACK TIE BESIDE HIS CHAMPAGNE GLASS DURING HIS ENGAGEMENT DINNER—BECAUSE THE GRANDFATHER WHO RAISED HIM HAD BEEN TOLD HIS OLD SUIT WAS TOO EMBARRASSING TO BE SEEN AT THE TABLE.

I gripped the steering wheel of Leo’s armored car, my knuckles white, my heart hammering against my ribs.

Dominic sat in the passenger seat, silently loading spare magazines into his tactical vest. The black cotton tie his grandfather had made was still around his neck, now a dark symbol of vengeance.

“Drive,” Dominic commanded.

I threw the car into gear and sped out of the underground garage, bursting into the cold, rainy streets of Manhattan. The tires screeched as I took a hard right toward the Upper East Side.

My mind was racing. My mother was tied to a chair in Dominic’s mansion. Victoria was orchestrating a hostile takeover of the entire New York syndicate. And Frank lay dead on the concrete floor of a parking garage.

“Dominic,” I said, my voice shaking over the roar of the engine. “There are going to be fifty heavily armed men at that meeting. The heads of the Five Families don’t travel light. We can’t just walk in.”

“We aren’t walking in,” Dominic said coldly. “We’re driving in.”

He reached into the backseat and pulled out a heavy, matte-black assault rifle.

“The mansion’s front gates are reinforced steel,” Dominic explained, checking the optics on the rifle. “But Leo’s car is a customized battering ram. It has a reinforced steel chassis and bulletproof glass. You’re going to hit the front gates at eighty miles an hour.”

My eyes went wide. “I’m going to what?”

“You’re going to smash through the gates, drive straight up the steps, and crash this car through the front doors of my own house,” Dominic said, looking at me with absolute, unwavering intensity. “Can you do it, Rachel?”

I thought of my mother, terrified and alone, surrounded by murderers. I thought of Frank, sewing that tie with his trembling hands.

I swallowed hard. “Yes.”

“Good,” Dominic said. “When we breach the foyer, I will draw their fire. You stay low and get to the basement. Take the service tunnels to the security room. Cut the power to the entire house.”

“But you’ll be fighting in the dark!”

“I know my house in the dark,” Dominic smiled grimly. “They don’t.”

We turned onto 5th Avenue. In the distance, I could see the towering wrought-iron gates of the Moretti estate. The street was lined with black luxury sedans. The Commission had arrived.

“Punch it,” Dominic ordered.

I slammed my foot on the gas pedal.

The heavy muscle car roared, the supercharged engine screaming as the speedometer climbed. Sixty. Seventy. Eighty miles an hour.

The guards standing outside the gates turned, their flashlights sweeping the rain. Their eyes went wide as they realized the black car wasn’t slowing down.

They dove out of the way, raising their weapons.

“Brace!” Dominic shouted.

I gripped the wheel, tucked my head down, and squeezed my eyes shut.

CRASH.

The impact was deafening. The massive iron gates sheared off their hinges, flying into the courtyard in a shower of sparks and twisted metal.

The car vaulted over the crushed iron, flying up the marble steps of the grand entrance.

Gunfire erupted from every direction, bullets pinging harmlessly against our bulletproof glass.

I didn’t hit the brakes.

We smashed through the heavy mahogany double doors of the mansion, glass and wood exploding into the grand foyer.

The car screeched to a halt right in the middle of the marble floor, smoke billowing from the crushed radiator.

Inside the mansion, absolute chaos erupted. Men in expensive suits were shouting, drawing weapons, diving behind marble pillars.

“Go!” Dominic yelled, kicking his door open.

He stepped out of the car, raising his assault rifle, and unleashed a deafening barrage of suppressive fire into the ceiling, raining plaster and crystal down on the Commission guards.

I scrambled out of the driver’s side, keeping my head down, and sprinted toward the service hallway.

“Stop her!” a voice screamed.

I looked back. Victoria’s father, Don Bellini, was pointing at me from the top of the grand staircase.

Two men broke away from the firefight and chased me down the hall.

I ran faster than I ever had in my life, bursting through the kitchen doors. I grabbed a heavy cast-iron skillet from the stove and hurled it at the first guard as he came through the door. It hit him square in the face, dropping him instantly.

I didn’t wait for the second man. I dove down the basement stairs, locking the heavy steel door behind me.

The second guard pounded on the door, firing his gun into the lock, but the steel held.

I ran through the dark, damp service tunnels until I reached the main breaker room. I found the massive red lever labeled MAIN MAINS.

With both hands, I pulled it down.

The entire mansion plunged into pitch-black darkness.

Upstairs, the shouting turned into panicked confusion.

I grabbed a flashlight from the emergency kit on the wall and crept back up the stairs, using a hidden servant’s passage that led directly to the dining room.

I pushed the secret panel open just a crack.

The dining room was illuminated only by the faint moonlight filtering through the rain-streaked windows.

The heads of the Five Families were backed against the walls, their bodyguards aiming flashlights blindly into the dark.

Victoria was standing at the head of the massive dining table, clutching the back of the chair in sheer terror.

And standing at the opposite end of the table, bathed in shadows, was Dominic.

He had dropped the rifle. He was holding his handgun, aimed directly at Victoria’s chest.

“You’re sitting in my chair, Victoria,” Dominic said, his voice echoing in the silent, dark room.

Don Bellini stepped forward, flanked by three guards. “You’re a dead man, Dominic! You broke the peace! You attacked the Commission!”

“I didn’t break the peace,” Dominic said coldly. He reached into his coat and pulled out the heavy, wax-sealed parchment. He tossed it onto the long mahogany table. It slid perfectly down the center, stopping right in front of the Don of the Genovese family, the highest-ranking boss in the room.

“That is the deed to the Brooklyn Ports,” Dominic announced. “Victoria tried to steal it to finalize her hostile takeover. She kidnapped an innocent woman. And she orchestrated the murder of my grandfather tonight.”

The other bosses murmured, shining their flashlights on the document.

“Lies!” Victoria shrieked. “He’s lying! He’s crazy!”

Dominic didn’t look at her. He pulled a second item from his coat.

It was the heavy silver pocket watch.

He tossed it onto the table as well.

“Open it,” Dominic told the Genovese Don. “Read the contract inside. It proves Don Bellini ordered the hit on my parents twenty years ago, and blackmailed my grandfather into signing it.”

The Genovese Don opened the watch. He read the bloodstained paper.

Slowly, the Don looked up at Bellini.

“Is this true, Carlo?” the Don asked, his voice dripping with menace.

Don Bellini went pale. “It’s a forgery! It’s a trick!”

The atmosphere in the room shifted instantly. The other families’ guards turned their weapons away from Dominic and aimed them squarely at the Bellinis.

Victoria realized it was over. The power she had craved had just crumbled to dust.

But Victoria wasn’t going down without a fight.

She reached under the table, pulled a small silver derringer from her garter, and aimed it directly at Dominic’s head.