I thought giving my husband’s mistress his family ring meant I was finally free—until the man waiting outside told me I had just signed my own death warrant.

BANG!

A single gunshot cracked through the warehouse, drowning out the sound of the thunder.

It wasn't Dante who fired.

It was me.

The 9mm hollow-point round shattered Roman’s right shoulder. The detonator dropped from his limp fingers, bouncing off the steel grating of the catwalk and plunging thirty feet down into the dark, churning waters below.

Roman screamed in agony, clutching his bloody shoulder as he collapsed against the railing.

Dante moved with terrifying speed, scaling the industrial ladder in seconds. Before Roman could reach for his fallen submachine gun with his left hand, Dante’s heavy boot slammed into his chest, pinning him flat against the steel floor.

I climbed the catwalk stairs deliberately, step by step, my heels clicking on the metal grating.

Roman lay gasping for air beneath Dante’s boot, blood pooling beneath his ruined shoulder, soaking his expensive shirt. When he saw me standing over him, his sneer returned through the pain—the pathetic, dying gasp of an arrogant predator who couldn't accept his defeat.

"Go on then, Evelyn," Roman spat, coughing up blood. "Shoot me. Show everyone you're just as much of a monster as I am. Your father was weak, and so are you!"

"My father built this city with his bare hands," I said, looking down at him without a single trace of fear, anger, or hesitation. "He gave you a home, he gave you a name, and he gave you his daughter to protect. You repaid him with poison in the dark because you could never stand in his light."

I raised the Sig Sauer, pointing the barrel directly at his forehead.

"You told me at the Drake Hotel that Vanessa understood loyalty without being taught," I whispered, my voice cutting through the storm. "Let me teach you what happens to traitors."

Roman’s eyes widened in sudden, desperate terror. "Evelyn, wait—please! We can make a deal! I have fifty million in an unregistered Swiss vault—"

"Keep your money in hell," I said.

BANG.

The gunshot echoed once and vanished into the roar of the Lake Michigan waves.

Roman Castellano lay still.

Dante stepped back. The storm seemed to quiet around us. He reached out and gently took the smoking weapon from my fingers, engaging the safety and holstering it at his side.

Then, he pulled me into his arms, wrapping his heavy coat around my shoulders, shielding me from the cold rain pouring through the shattered roof.

I buried my face in his chest, taking my first real, unburdened breath in four long years.