My split lip was still bleeding when I poured coffee for the most feared man in the neighborhood, and I prayed he wouldn’t notice. Then Vincent Rossi looked straight at the bruise spreading across my jaw and asked, “Who did this to you?” That one quiet question terrified me more than the man waiting for me at home.

The blast came from the ground floor lobby.

The entire building shook violently, the concrete floor rolling beneath my feet like the deck of a ship in a storm. The floor-to-ceiling glass windows in Vincent’s office shattered inward with a terrifying, high-pitched scream, showering the mahogany desk in millions of tiny, razor-sharp diamonds.

The lights went out instantly, plunging the office into absolute, pitch-black darkness.

"Amelia!" Vincent’s voice roared through the smoke and dust.

"I'm here!" I screamed, dropping to my knees as the sound of automatic gunfire erupted from the street below—heavy, rapid bursts of lead tearing through the brick facade of the building.

In the dark, strong arms grabbed me.

Vincent pulled me up off the floor, shielding my body with his own as he dragged me backward into the hallway behind his office. He smelled of smoke, tea, and gun oil.

"Are you hit?" he demanded, his voice tight, his hands rapidly checking my shoulders, my arms, my face.

"No! I'm okay! What was that?"

"A satchel charge on the front doors," Vincent growled. He pulled a heavy, stainless-steel revolver from a hidden holster inside his waistband. The metal gleamed in the faint light filtering in from the streetlamps outside. "Leo wants a war. He’s going to get one."

Heavy, frantic footsteps were pounding up the fire escape stairs at the end of the hall.

Vincent pushed me behind him, leaning against the doorframe, his revolver raised, his finger on the trigger.

"Boss!" a voice shouted from the stairwell.

It was Thomas—not my ex-boyfriend, but Thomas the dock captain, a hulking man covered in fish scales and soot, holding a short-barreled shotgun. "They came through the front! There’s six of 'em! Marcus is holding the lobby, but we gotta move you out through the roof!"

"Amelia comes first," Vincent commanded, grabbing my hand and pulling me toward the stairs.

We sprinted up two flights of metal stairs, the sound of gunfire echoing through the concrete stairwell behind us like thunder inside a cave. Dust and plaster fell from the ceiling, thick and blinding.

We burst through the heavy steel door onto the roof.

The freezing wind hit us instantly, swirling snow around our faces. The Hudson River lay below us, black and terrifying, framed by the distant lights of New Jersey.

"The fire escape leads down to the alley behind the bakery," Thomas panted, pointing toward the iron ladder mounted on the side of the brick chimney. "My car’s parked at the corner. We get the Boss to Brooklyn."

"Go, Amelia," Vincent said, pushing me toward the ladder. "Down. Quickly."

"Not without you!" I yelled over the roar of the wind.

"I'm right behind you," Vincent promised, his grey eyes fierce in the snowstorm. "Go!"

I grabbed the icy iron rungs of the ladder, my leather boots slipping slightly on the frost as I began my descent into the dark alley below. The wind whipped my coat around my legs, but I didn't care. I kept moving, rung by rung, my eyes fixed on the alley pavement thirty feet down.

Above me, a steel door slammed open on the roof.

Shouts erupted in Italian, followed by the blinding flash of gunshots.

I looked up just in time to see Thomas fall backward against the snow, his shotgun clattering against the gravel. A tall man in a leather coat stepped out onto the roof, aiming an Uzi directly at Vincent.

"Vincent Rossi!" the man screamed above the wind. "Leo Moretti sends his regards!"

Time seemed to slow to a complete standstill.

Vincent was five feet from the ladder, his revolver raised, but the gunman had the jump on him. The submachine gun was already lined up with Vincent’s chest.

I didn't think. I didn't calculate. I didn't weigh the odds.

I squeezed my body between the iron rungs of the fire escape, reached into my coat pocket, and pulled out the heavy brass desk weight I had grabbed off my desk when the explosion hit—a solid, two-pound sphere of polished brass.

I threw it with everything I had.

The brass ball flew through the swirling snow, hitting the gunman directly in the side of his face with a sickening CRACK.

The man shrieked, his head jerking sideways, his finger pulling the trigger in a wild, blind reflex. A stream of bullets chewed into the brick chimney six inches above Vincent’s head, showering him in red dust.

Vincent didn't waste his second chance.

He fired two rapid shots. The gunman collapsed onto the snow, motionless.

Vincent sprinted to the ladder, grabbed the iron rungs, and slid down the ladder in three fluid seconds, landing beside me on the icy iron platform.

He looked at me, his chest heaving, his face covered in soot and brick dust, his eyes wide with a mixture of shock and utter disbelief.

"You hit him with a paperweight," he gasped.

"It was on my desk," I panted, my hands trembling violently as the adrenaline flooded my bloodstream. "You told me to keep my desk organized."

A sudden, breathless laugh escaped Vincent’s chest—a rich, deep, genuine laugh that I had never heard in all the fifteen months I had known him. He grabbed my face in both of his big, soot-stained hands and pulled me against him, pressing a hard, fierce kiss directly onto my forehead.

"You are a terrifying woman, Amelia," he murmured against my skin. "A truly terrifying woman."

He grabbed my hand, locking his fingers firmly through mine. "Now let's go end this war."

We scrambled down the remaining rungs into the dark alley. Thomas’s car—a beat-up green Dodge sedan—was waiting at the curb with the engine running. Vincent pushed me into the back seat, climbed in beside me, and slammed the door.

He reached into his coat, pulled out a small black walkie-talkie, and clicked the switch.

"Marcus," Vincent said, his voice dropping back into the terrifying, absolute register of the king of Manhattan. "Execute Option Four. Call Bernstein. Tell the Police Commissioner that Leo Moretti’s crew just firebombed a federal freight office on Hudson Street."