His Wife Had Disappeared Four Years Earlier, and He Believed Everything She Owned Was Destroyed—Until His Fiancée Tried Desperately to Hide One Locked Suitcase.

Richard’s finger tightened on the gold trigger.

In that split-second between life and death, Vincent didn't flinch. He whispered a single word into the tactical microphone hidden beneath his collar:

*"Execute."*

Above the chapel, through the shattered stained-glass skylights, the sky itself seemed to ignite.

The deafening, earth-shaking roar of a second Black Hawk helicopter drowned out the storm. Two high-powered searchlights mounted beneath the aircraft bathed the interior of the cathedral in blinding, surgical white light.

Before Richard’s mercenaries could adjust their night vision, the glass dome shattered.

Four elite Moretti snipers repelled down fast-ropes, firing suppressed rounds with lethal, terrifying precision.

*Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.*

Richard’s lead contractors collapsed instantly, dead before their bodies hit the stone floor.

"Move!" Vincent roared, lunging forward with explosive speed.

He closed the distance between himself and Richard in the blink of an eye. Richard fired wildly—the gunshot deafening in the enclosed space—the bullet grazing Vincent’s left shoulder, tearing through his tactical vest.

Vincent didn't even slow down. His right fist smashed into Richard’s jaw with the force of a battering ram. Bone crunched violently. Richard spun, slamming against the communion rail, his gold gun flying out of his hand and skittering across the marble floor.

Vincent pinned the older man by his throat against the altar rail, his fingers closing like hydraulic vices around Richard's windpipe.

"That," Vincent snarled, his voice a demon's rasp, "is for Elena."

He drove his knee into Richard’s ribs, a sickening snap echoing through the chapel.

"That is for Daniel."

"Vincent, stop!" a voice suddenly screamed from the shadows near the vestry.

Through the swirling dust and strobe of gunfire, another figure staggered out from behind the organ pipes.

It was Vanessa.

Blood soaked the front of her torn dress where Vincent had shot her in Chicago—she was pale as a ghost, barely clinging to life, supported by a rogue mercenary who held a detonator switch in his trembling hand.

"Vanessa..." Richard wheezed, blood spilling from his crushed lips.

"If I don't get the fortune..." Vanessa shrieked, her eyes entirely hollow, manic with the insanity of dying vanity, "nobody gets it! The lighthouse—the foundation is wired with C4! If my man lets go of this dead-man switch, the whole bluff drops into Lake Michigan!"

Grace screamed, burying her face into my chest.

At that exact moment, a blinding, tearing agony ripped through my lower abdomen—far more violent, far more absolute than any cramp before.

My water broke, warm fluid soaking through my clothes and onto the flagstones.

"Ahhh!" I screamed, collapsing onto my side, clutching my belly as a massive, uncontrollable contraction seized my body.

"Clara!" Dr. Ramos yelled, diving across the floor toward me. "The trauma—she's in active labor! The baby is coming right now!"

Vincent froze.

His hand was wrapped around Richard’s throat. His daughter was screaming behind the pulpit. The woman carrying his late wife's blood was in active, dangerous labor on the floor of a collapsing sanctuary.

And thirty feet away, a dying Vanessa held the trigger that would plunge us all into the icy abyss of Lake Michigan.

"Shoot him, Vincent!" Vanessa shrieked, blood bubbling on her lips. "Shoot my father, and we all burn together!"

Outside, the storm howled like a pack of wolves. Another thunderous explosion shook the lighthouse tower outside, cracks racing across the stone ceiling of the chapel, dust raining down like ash.

Vincent looked at Richard. Then he looked back at Grace, at me writhing in labor, and at the detonator in the dying woman's hand.