THE MAFIA BOSS WATCHED ME STRUGGLE TO CARRY A HEAVY SILVER CENTERPIECE—THEN HIS FIANCÉE MADE A FATAL SLIP OF THE TONGUE

Luca left Daniel at my apartment with strict orders to move my mother and Maya to a secure hotel downtown the second a backup crew arrived.

I didn't stay with them.

"I'm going with you," I told Luca as he ran back up the basement steps toward the Mercedes.

"Your arm is in a sling and your back is torn open, Sophie," he barked, ripping open the driver's door. "Get back inside with your daughter."

"I'm the only one who knows what Andrew Keller looks like without his suit jacket on!" I shouted over the roar of the engine, pulling the passenger door open with my left hand and sliding onto the leather seat. "When he was in the guest room, he had a tattoo of a freight train on his forearm—he used to work the rail yards! And I know where the baggage lockers are at Union Station because I cleaned the commuter lounge there before I worked for you!"

Luca didn't waste another ten seconds arguing. He slammed the gearshift into drive and floored the accelerator.

We reached Canal Street in nine minutes flat, running every red light between Logan Square and the West Loop.

At 11:34 P.M., Luca jumped the curb outside the historic stone facade of Union Station, abandoning the car right in front of the no-parking signs.

"Show me the lockers," Luca said, grabbing my left hand to pull me along beside him as we sprinted down the marble steps into the cavernous Great Hall.

The station was nearly deserted at this hour. Only a few bleary-eyed travelers sat on the long wooden benches beneath the vaulted skylight.

I led him past the Amtrak ticket counters toward a narrow, poorly lit corridor near the old taxi stand.

Rows of antique brass baggage lockers lined the tiled wall.

Before we even turned the corner, a woman stepped out from the shadows near locker 108.

She was wearing a beige cashmere trench coat thrown over a torn red silk evening gown. Clutched against her chest was a heavy steel lockbox from the baggage claim.

Vanessa.

She froze when she saw Luca.

Her hand immediately dove into the deep pocket of her trench coat and came out holding a compact silver 9mm pistol—the exact gun Luca kept in the glovebox of her Mercedes.

"Don't take another step, Luca!" Vanessa hissed, her perfectly styled hair coming undone around her pale, manic face.

Luca stopped ten feet away, pushing me slightly behind his broad shoulders.

"Where is Andrew, Vanessa?" Luca asked calmly.

"Waitng on the lower track," she lied smoothly, though her eyes darted nervously toward the freight elevator at the end of the hall. "And if I don't walk down there in three minutes, he pushes the crate into the river instead of putting it on the train."

"No, he doesn't," I spoke up from behind Luca's shoulder.

Vanessa's cold eyes snapped to me. "Shut up, you stupid little maid! I should have pushed you down the main staircase this afternoon instead of just shoving you into that cabinet!"

"Look at the floor behind the freight elevator, Luca," I said quietly.

Luca glanced past her shoulder.

Underneath the iron grate of the freight elevator door, a pair of expensive brown leather dress shoes were sticking out, completely motionless. A dark pool of crimson was slowly seeping across the white subway tiles.

Andrew Keller wasn't waiting on the lower track.

Vanessa had shot him the second he gave her the key to the locker so she wouldn't have to split the five million dollars Elena had hidden there three years ago.

"You killed Elena," Luca said, taking a slow, terrifying step toward his fiancée. "And you killed Keller."

"Elena was a pathetic junkie who thought she could extort me!" Vanessa snarled, raising the silver pistol until the barrel was pointed directly at the center of Luca's chest. "And you! Do you have any idea what it was like sitting at that table tonight, listening to your men treat me like a trophy my father traded for dock space? I didn't want your name, Luca. I wanted Elena's five million so I could disappear from both of you!"

"Give me the crate number for Leo, and I'll let you walk out those doors with the box," Luca said, his voice completely level.

Vanessa laughed—a sharp, ugly sound that echoed off the tiled walls.

"And have you hunt me down tomorrow? I know how you work, darling."

She shifted her aim slightly to the right—pointing the gun straight at my face.

"If I shoot you, Luca, I know you'll probably still manage to take this gun away from me before you bleed out," Vanessa said coldly. "So I'm going to shoot your little housekeeper in the kneecap so you have to stay here and watch her bleed while I catch the 11:45 out of town."

Her finger tightened on the trigger.

She had forgotten one thing.

My right arm was in a sling because of the bruise she gave me—not because the bone was broken.

As Luca lunged forward to knock the gun upward, I ripped my right arm straight out of the white cloth sling, ignoring the blinding white-hot agony that tore through my shoulder blade, and grabbed the heavy metal fire extinguisher mounted on the tiled wall beside me.

The gunshot echoed like a cannon blast in the narrow corridor, shattering the glass sign above my head.

Before Vanessa could fire a second round as she struggled against Luca's grip, I swung the twenty-pound steel canister with both hands and slammed it directly into the side of her ribs.

Vanessa let out a breathless shriek as she crashed into the brass lockers, dropping both the silver pistol and the steel lockbox.