THE MAFIA BOSS NOTICED BLOOD ON MY COLLAR—UNTIL HIS FIANCÉE EXPLAINED MY INJURY BEFORE HE EVEN ASKED

The red button on Vanessa’s handheld transmitter didn't click. It just sat under her thumb, glowing with a steady, malevolent pulse.

“You’re going to blow up your own fiancé?” I gasped, backing away against a heavy marble planter as the damp smell of wet earth and orchids filled my nose.

Vanessa laughed—a short, brittle sound that had no humor in it at all.

“Do you really think I was going to marry Luca Moretti?” She shook her head, her dark curls swaying against her shoulders. “Luca is a relic. He thinks running a shipping empire means loyalty, honor, and old-school Italian mafia code. The world moved on, Sophie. My father and Matteo realized three years ago that the real money isn't in cargo—it’s in controlling the federal logistics routes through shell companies like Kestrel Holdings.”

“And framing me for a murder fire was part of the plan?” I demanded, keeping my eyes fixed on her thumb.

“You were just a convenient orphan from Joliet with a mother who needed her mortgage paid,” Vanessa said coldly. “When Arthur needed a signature for the insurance waiver after Dock Four burned, your mother was desperate enough to sign your name as a minor proxy. We didn't even have to forge much—just a flick of a pen.”

She tightened her grip on the transmitter.

“And tonight, when you walked into the guest suite and found Marianne photographing the double in Luca’s shirt, you became a loose end. A very annoying, expensive loose end.”

“Luca is going to find you,” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “Even if the safe blows, the security cameras in the courtyard recorded you walking out here ten minutes ago.”

Vanessa smiled—a slow, terrifying grin.

“The cameras were looped an hour ago, sweetie. By the time the fire department digs through the kitchen rubble, Luca Moretti and his precious little estate will be ashes. And my father’s lawyers will file for emergency probate control before sunrise as the grieving, devastated fiancée.”

She raised her thumb slightly off the red button, preparing to press down hard enough to detonate the charge in the pantry.

Time seemed to slow down.

In the kitchen fifty yards away, Luca was still kneeling in front of that ticking clock with two minutes left on the display. If Vanessa pressed that button right now—

I didn't think. I lunged forward, grabbing a heavy ceramic planter filled with dirt and heavy river stones, and hurled it straight at Vanessa’s chest.

She shrieked, stumbling backward into a rack of hanging ferns as the ceramic pot shattered against the stone floor, spraying dark soil across her silk slippers.

The handheld transmitter flew out of her hand, spinning across the glass-house tiles toward the dark corner near the exterior door.

Vanessa scrambled on her hands and knees, clawing at the dirt to reach it first.

I dove across the floor after it, my fingers scraping against the cold stone just an inch behind hers.

Her fingers brushed the plastic casing—

Clack.

A heavy leather shoe stepped down hard on top of the black transmitter, pinning it to the floor.

I looked up.

Luca Moretti stood over us, his chest heaving, his dark suit dusted with gray soot from the pantry doorway, his jaw set like granite.

The countdown timer had been silenced.

Vanessa froze, looking up at the man she had tried to kill, her breath catching in her throat.

“You…” she whispered, color draining entirely from her face. “How did you—the timer was at ninety seconds!”

Luca slowly reached down, picked up the handheld transmitter from beneath his shoe, and slipped it into his jacket pocket. Then he extended a large, strong hand down toward me.

I took it, and he pulled me up effortlessly onto my feet.

“You forgot one detail, Vanessa,” Luca said, his voice dropping into that terrifying, icy calm. “When you hired my lead electronics technician to install the estate’s security grid three years ago, he didn't wire the kitchen safe into the public grid.”

He stepped closer to her, towering over her cowering form on the greenhouse floor.

“He wired it into my private panic room circuit. The moment you bridged the detonator circuit, the circuit breaker in my study automatically tripped and cut the power to the explosive.”

Vanessa’s lips parted, but no sound came out.

“Daniel,” Luca said into his lapel mic.

“Here, boss,” the security chief answered instantly.

“Bring the heavy ties to the conservatory. And call the U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago. Tell them we have an uncooperative witness ready to sign a full confession regarding the Dock Four insurance fraud, the 2022 fentanyl ledgers, and an attempted bombing of a private residence.”

Before Daniel could reach the conservatory, however, the heavy front gates of the estate echoed with the unmistakable sound of crashing metal.

A vehicle had just rammed through the security barrier at the front entrance.

Through the glass panes of the conservatory, we all watched as a black SUV came tearing up the gravel drive, its headlights blindingly bright, crashing across the lawn before slamming to a halt right outside the glass doors.

The driver’s door flew open.

And a man stepped out into the rain holding a shotgun.