The screen of Nora’s phone went dark. For two terrifying seconds, the Manhattan skyline outside Dante Moretti’s floor-to-ceiling windows seemed to tilt on its axis.

The air in the penthouse smelled of cordite, shattered glass, and fresh blood.

Dante didn't stay on the floor. Utilizing the strength in his upper body and the sudden, surging power in his right leg, he hoisted himself behind the heavy oak executive desk, pulling Nora down beside him.

“Are you hit?” Dante whispered, his hand gripping her shoulder with fierce intensity.

“No,” Nora breathed, trembling violently as she stared at Kaplan’s motionless body ten feet away. “He... he killed him.”

“Marco was never loyal to me,” Dante muttered, his jaw set as he reached into a hidden magnetic holster beneath the desk and pulled out a sleek, suppressed Sig Sauer P226. “He was Bellamy’s inside man all along.”

“Bellamy?” Nora whispered, recalling the name from underground whispers. “Richard Bellamy? The shipping magnate?”

“The very same,” Dante replied, checking the magazine of his pistol. “Bellamy wants the Pacific shipping contracts. With me paralyzed, he thought he could buy the board. With me dead, he thinks he can take it all.”

Out in the hallway, heavy combat boots stomped across the marble floor. Multiple intruders were entering the penthouse. The private security team had been compromised or neutralized.

“Boss!” Marco called out mockingly from the corridor. “Give it up, Dante! You can't fight an army from a desk! Send the woman out, and maybe we’ll make your exit painless!”

Nora looked at Dante. The man she had met two hours ago—the cold, seemingly helpless patient in a wheelchair—was gone. In his place stood an apex predator, a man forged in the brutal fires of the New York underworld, ready to fight to his last breath.

“Nora,” Dante said quietly, his eyes locking onto hers. “Listen to me. When I give the signal, you crawl toward the private panic room behind the bookcase. The biometric scanner is programmed to your thumbprint.”

“I’m not leaving you here to die!” Nora hissed fiercely.

“You aren't leaving me,” Dante replied with absolute finality. “You’re surviving. Because if I don't walk out of this room, Liam needs someone to protect him.”

Before Nora could argue, Dante surged upward from behind the desk, firing three rapid shots through the shattered doorway.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

A startled cry echoed from the hallway, followed by the heavy thud of a body hitting the floor.

“Now, Nora! Move!” Dante roared.

Nora didn't hesitate. She scrambled across the rug, sliding behind the mahogany bookshelf where Dante had pressed a hidden wall switch. The heavy wood panel slid open, revealing a steel-reinforced panic room illuminated by emergency red lighting.

“Dante!” she cried out, turning back as Marco stepped into the doorway, returning fire with an assault rifle.

Dante fired back, rounds snapping through the air, but a bullet caught him squarely in the left shoulder. He staggered backward, hitting the edge of his desk, blood soaking through his black shirt.

“Get inside!” Dante shouted over the deafening gunfire.

Nora slammed her thumb against the biometric pad just as Marco raised his rifle to finish Dante off.