She Was Forced to Marry the Mafia Boss’s Seventh Wife—Then He Asked Who Threatened Her

The rain had returned by the time we cleared the city limits, turning into sleet that hammered against the armored roof of the Maybach with the sound of machine-gun fire.

Inside, the heat was humming through the vents, but my fingers were still ice-cold.

The emerald necklace felt heavy against my collarbones—not like jewelry, but like a steel collar linking me to the man sitting beside me. Cassian had removed his bow tie; it hung loose around his unbuttoned collar, revealing the corded muscle of his throat and the dark shadow of stubble along his jawline.

He had not looked out the window once.

He was watching the small digital screen embedded in the walnut console, which showed three red dots tracking fifty yards behind us.

“Hector is impatient,” Cassian remarked, his voice as calm as if he were discussing the stock market ticker.

“Those are his cars?” I asked, leaning forward slightly to look at the screen.

“His second-string crew,” Cassian said. “Hector wouldn't use his primary hitters on the parkway. Too many state troopers. These are local boys from Yonkers. They get five thousand dollars to cause an accident and ten thousand if they can pull someone out of the wreckage.”

Vance’s voice came through the intercom from the front seat.

“Boss. Bear Mountain bridge is closed for maintenance. Detour points us through the cut at Anthony’s Nose.”

“Of course it does,” Cassian said. “Arthur Aldridge paid the highway commissioner three months ago for that contract. They’ve been holding that detour in reserve for a rainy night.”

He reached down to the floorboard between his feet, clicked open a concealed latch in the carpet, and lifted out a short-barreled automatic shotgun and two black polymer cases.

“Lydia.”

I looked at him. “Yes?”

“Have you ever fired a weapon?”

“My mother’s father had a twelve-gauge for rabbits,” I said, my voice tight. “I was twelve. It kicked so hard it bruised my collarbone black for three weeks.”

“This will kick harder,” he said, sliding a heavy, matte-black Glock 19 out of the case and checking the magazine with a thumb-flick. He racked the slide and handed it to me handle-first. “Keep your thumbs forward. Do not put your finger inside the trigger guard until you are ready to destroy whatever is in front of the muzzle.”

I took the gun.

It was cold, heavy, and smelled of the same sharp solvent I had smelled in the study. My heart was pounding in my throat, a thick, metallic rhythm that threatened to choke me, but my fingers found the grip with surprising ease.

“Cassian,” I said, looking into his eyes. “My mother.”

“Mount Sinai has forty men on the perimeter,” he said, his voice dropping into that absolute, unshakeable certainty that had anchored me since the chapel. “Hector’s people couldn't get through the basement doors with an anti-tank rocket. The only target on this road is me.”

The car swerved violently.

A sickening *crunch* of tearing metal echoed through the floorboards as a black pickup truck sideswiped the Maybach from the left, trying to force us into the concrete divider.

The armored sedan shuddered, the heavy chassis groaning against the impact, but Vance held the line, his foot slamming down on the accelerator. The twelve-cylinder engine roared, throwing me back into the leather cushions as we surged forward into the dark, winding cut of the mountain road.

A second impact hit us from the rear.

The rear window crazed into a thousand white fractures as high-caliber rounds struck the laminate glass, failing to penetrate but turning the view into an opaque spiderweb.

“Tires are holding,” Vance reported, his voice entirely flat. “Run-flats are engaged. But we’ve got a roadblock half a mile ahead at the scenic overlook.”

“Clear it,” Cassian said.

He turned to me.

His hand came up, cupping the side of my neck, his thumb resting against the racing pulse beneath my jaw. His amber eyes were dark, dilated with the sheer, feral focus of a man who had survived six wars and intended to survive a seventh.

“Stay low,” he ordered. “When the car stops, you do not exit until I tell you. If someone opens that door who isn't me or Vance, you empty that magazine into his chest.”

“Cassian—”

Before I could finish the word, the world flipped.

Vance hit the roadblock at sixty miles an hour.

The impact was deafening—a cataclysmic explosion of safety glass, twisting steel, and the gut-wrenching screech of two tons of armored luxury crushing through a barricade of wooden sawhorses and an abandoned utility van.

The Maybach spun twice on the wet asphalt, the tires screaming against the sleet, and slammed broadside into the granite cliff face of the mountain.

The engine died with a hiss of steam.

Silence fell for two heartbeats, broken only by the tick of the cooling exhaust and the drumming of the sleet against the crumpled hood.

“Vance?” Cassian barked.

A groan came from the front. “Concussion. Airbag caught me. Arm’s broken, boss.”

“Stay down.”

Cassian kicked his door open.

The cold mountain air rushed in, smelling of pine needles, wet granite, and burning motor oil. Outside, headlights swept through the sleet—two black SUVs were pulling up thirty yards behind us, doors already swinging open.

Muzzle flashes strobed through the dark.

The crack of automatic fire ripped through the night, rounds spattering against the stone above our heads like stone chips.

Cassian stepped out into the storm.

He didn't crouch. He moved with a terrifying, fluid economy, the shotgun tucked tight against his shoulder. *Boom. Boom.* The heavy concussions shook the air inside the car. Down the road, a man screamed, a radiator hissed, and the headlights of the first SUV shattered into darkness.

I didn't stay on the floor.

I couldn't.

Eight years of poverty teach you that hiding under the bed only works until the landlord kicks the door off the hinges.

I scrambled across the slick leather bench, the Glock gripped tight in both hands, the emerald necklace swinging heavy against my bare skin under the torn silk. I peered through the open door frame into the sleet.

Cassian was advancing down the road, his weapon firing with mechanical precision, driving three men back toward the tree line.

Then I saw him.

A fourth man had scrambled up the embankment above the road, his silhouette black against the gray sky, a rifle cradled in his arms, aiming down at the back of Cassian’s head.

Cassian couldn't see him. The cliff’s overhang blocked his peripheral vision.

“Cassian!” I screamed, but the wind and the gunfire swallowed my voice.

I stepped out into the freezing mud.

The thin soles of my evening shoes slipped on the icy slush. The sleet lashed my bare shoulders like needles of glass. I raised the heavy black gun, my hands shaking so violently the sights bounced across the mountain wall.

*Thumbs forward.*

*Do not pull until you are ready to destroy.*

I didn't think about Evelyn Aldridge. I didn't think about the Council, or the sixty million dollars, or the six wives who had run away barefoot.

I thought about the man who had bought my mother’s medicine before he even knew my last name.

I squeezed the trigger.

The gun kicked upward with an ear-splitting *bang*, the slide biting the skin between my thumb and forefinger, the muzzle flash illuminating the rocky slope for a fraction of a second.

The shot went wide, striking the granite two feet above the shooter's head.

But it was enough.

The man flinched, his rifle discharging into the dirt as he scrambled backward.

Cassian spun on his heel.

In a single, seamless motion, he brought the shotgun up and fired twice into the rocks. The figure on the embankment collapsed, rolling down the scree like a sack of wet laundry, coming to rest five feet from my shoes in the ditch.

The gunfire stopped.

The only sound left was the ragged whistling of the wind through the pines and the steady, rhythmic *drip-drip* of water falling from the shattered windshield of the Maybach.

Cassian stood in the middle of the road.

His coat was torn at the shoulder, dark blood seeping through the velvet, but his eyes were fixed entirely on me.

He walked toward me through the slush, his boots crunching on the broken glass. He tossed the empty shotgun into the ditch, stepped into the mud, and grabbed both of my wrists.

His hands were burning hot against my freezing skin.

“You shot at him,” he said. His voice was ragged, his breath pluming white between us in the freezing air.

“I missed,” I gasped, my teeth chattering so hard my words slurred.

“You didn't miss,” Cassian said. He pulled the Glock from my frozen fingers, clicked the safety on, and slid it into his waistband. Then his arms came around me—heavy, hard, and smelling of cordite and rain—lifting me off the wet asphalt until my feet were off the ground, tucking my head against his chest.

I buried my face into his neck, my fingers clutching the torn velvet of his back.

He was trembling.

Not from the cold.

Cassian Vale, the man who had terrified fifty families for a decade, was shaking as he held me against the stone mountain, his heart hammering against my ear like a war drum.

“You’re out of your mind, Lydia Carter,” he whispered into my hair, his lips brushing against my temple. “You’re completely out of your mind.”

“You told me… you told me you needed an alibi,” I choked out, a wild, hysterical sob catching in my throat.

Cassian pulled back just enough to look down into my face.

His eyes were burning with an intensity that made the cold vanish, his hand reaching up to wipe the sleet and the black mascara from my cheekbone with his thumb.

“I don't give a damn about the alibi,” he said.

And then, right there in the sleet on the side of a mountain road, with dead men in the ditch and our car crushed against the granite, Cassian Vale bent his head and kissed me.

It wasn't the kiss of a businessman sealing a contract.

It was fierce, desperate, and tasted of salt, iron, and fire. His mouth moved against mine with an ancient hunger, claiming everything I had tried to hide behind eight years of silence and pride.

When he finally let me breathe, his forehead rested against mine, his breath hot against my lips.