His fiancée ordered me to lick poisoned wine off the Persian rug after whipping me twice, but she never expected the mafia boss to discover why I destroyed that decanter...

Valmont didn't panic; instead, a cruel, bloodless grin pulled at the corners of his mouth.

"Dante Moretti... you think you are hunting a traitor," Valmont whispered, ignoring the steel barrel pressed against the bridge of his nose. "You think Vincente went to ground. But while you brought your legion here to posturing in an empty theater... who did you leave guarding your western flank?"

Dante's expression turned to pure ice. "The glasshouse."

"The historic botanical conservatory on your estate," Valmont sneered, blood suddenly weeping from his nose—he had swallowed his own suicide pill the moment we breached the box. "Where the original plants of your mother's lineage grow. If we cannot possess the cure... no one will."

Before Valmont’s head slumped sideways onto his chest, Dante fired a single round through the Arbiter's temple, not wasting another breath on the dying man.

"To the cars!" Dante roared, turning on his heel and grabbing my hand with frantic strength. "Marco, call the perimeter garrison! Tell them to seal the Winter Garden! If Vincente torches those greenhouses, the legacy dies with them!"

We sprinted through the gilded halls as automatic gunfire suddenly erupted below us. The Syndicate’s remaining infiltrators stormed the grand lobby, bullets tearing through mirrors, shattering crystal chandeliers into raining daggers of glass. Dante shoved me behind a marble pillar, unholstering a second weapon and returning fire with mechanical precision, dropping three hitmen before they could clear the foyer stairs.

"Move!" he barked, his arm wrapped around my waist, lifting me clear of the shattered glass as we broke through the fire exit into the pouring rain.

The drive back to the estate felt like an eternity stretched across a razor blade. The rain had turned into sleet, coating the winding coastal highway in black ice. Far ahead, rising above the dark silhouette of the Moretti mansion, a sickening crimson glow lit up the storm clouds.

Smoke rose in thick, suffocating plumes.

When the convoy skidded through the crushed iron gates of the estate, the sight made my stomach drop. The magnificent Victorian glass conservatory—a palace of wrought iron and thousands of glass panes that had stood for nearly a century—was in flames. Armed men in black tactical gear were throwing incendiary canisters through the shattered panes, incinerating rows of rare nightshades, belladonna, and the ancestral St. Jude roots my mother had smuggled out of Europe decades ago.

Standing in the center of the courtyard, holding a flare in one hand and an assault rifle in the other, was Vincente.

"Dante!" Vincente screamed over the roar of the fire, his tailored suit stained in soot and mud, his eyes wide with manic madness. "You broke the code! You abandoned our brotherhood for a whore from the pantry! Now watch your kingdom burn to ash!"

Dante didn't wait for the Phantom to come to a full stop. He kicked the door open, threw himself into the icy mud, and charged into the hail of gunfire like an enraged god of war.

"Cover him!" Marco shouted, leading our men into a flanking sweep.

Bullets pinged off the stone statues and tore through the burning glass. I scrambled out of the car, coughing against the acrid chemical smoke billowing from the conservatory. In my leather satchel was the concentrated vial I had prepared hours earlier—a compound derived from aconite and white phosphorus.

I saw a sniper positioned on the stone balustrade above Dante, his crosshairs aligning on Dante’s exposed back as my lover traded fire with Vincente’s lieutenants.

"Dante, down!" I screamed.

Without a second thought, I hurled the glass vial against the stone pillar directly beside the sniper. The glass shattered, the chemical mixture igniting upon contact with the open flame of a nearby torch. A blinding burst of white heat exploded across the balustrade. The sniper shrieked, clutching his burning face as he tumbled over the ledge, crashing into the frozen fountain below.

Dante turned, saw the fallen sniper, and locked eyes with me through the smoke. The pride and primal possessiveness in his gaze was blinding.

With a roar that shook the storm, Dante closed the distance to Vincente. He caught Vincente’s rifle barrel, ripped it from his grasp with brute force, and drove his knee violently into the older man's sternum. Bones cracked audibly. Vincente fell backward into the mud, choking on his own blood, the rain washing the soot down his terror-stricken face.

Dante planted his heavy boot on Vincente's chest, pressing down until the traitor's breath came in ragged wheezes.

"Look at her," Dante commanded, his voice cold as the grave, pointing his smoking barrel at Vincente's throat. "Look at the woman you ordered to lick wine off the floor. Look at the woman you called a scullery maid. She is the queen of this city. And you are just dirt under her shoe."

Vincente spat a mouthful of crimson onto Dante's boot, coughing with a wet rattle. "You... you think you won, boy? Valmont was just the dog on the leash. The Chairman of the High Court... he already launched the cleansing protocol. The Geneva vaults... they already ordered the deployment of the black gas to Boston's harbor. In forty-eight hours... everyone who carries her blood... everyone who breathes your air... dies."

Dante didn't hesitate. He pulled the trigger.