Three bullets tore into my body because I threw myself between a gunman and the six-year-old heir to New York’s most feared billionaire mafia family. Dominic Mercer watched me collapse while protecting his son—but seconds before I lost consciousness, someone in that ballroom whispered the real name I had spent eight years hiding, and suddenly I knew the shooting wasn’t only about Caleb.

The world was dissolving into sharp edges of white pain and cold shadow.

My lungs felt as though they were filled with crushed glass. Every ragged breath brought the metallic taste of blood to my mouth, spilling over my lips onto the torn satin of my maid's uniform. Dominic Mercer’s hands were on me—huge, powerful hands that could crush a man's throat without hesitation—now trembling as he pressed his dark wool coat against the gaping wounds in my ribs.

"Stay with me, Mara!" Dominic’s voice boomed, stripped of all its cold, aristocratic composure. "Look at me! Keep your eyes open!"

Beside us, little Caleb was sobbing violently, his small fingers locked into the hem of my blood-soaked sweater. "Mara! Don't sleep! Please don't sleep!"

I tried to tell him I was okay. I tried to lift a hand to touch his cheek, but my nervous system was shutting down, cutting the wires one by one.

And then, through the ringing panic of screams, shattered crystal, and guards barking orders, a shadow stepped out from behind a marble pillar twenty feet away.

He wore a tailored tux, a champagne glass still resting lightly between his gloved fingers. His golden hair was neatly combed, his blue eyes bright with a sick, triumphant delight.

He leaned in toward the dying chaos, his lips curling into a smile I had seen in my nightmares for eight long years.

"Sleep tight... Evelyn Vance," he whispered.

The name hit my fading consciousness like a bolt of lightning.

Evelyn Vance.

Not Mara Ellis. Not the broke, quiet maid who scrubbed floors in the east wing.

Evelyn Vance—the rogue federal analyst who had stolen eighty million dollars in encrypted mob assets eight years ago before vanishing into thin air after her entire family was slaughtered in an arson attack.

My eyes snapped wide open. My pupils dilated with a sudden, violent surge of adrenaline that defied the blood pouring onto the marble floor.

It was Julian Sterling.

The former right-hand man to the Syndicate’s supreme council—the man who had ordered the fire that burned my home to ash. The man who was supposed to have perished in a federal raid six years ago.

He was alive. He wasn't here to assassinate six-year-old Caleb Mercer. Caleb had been a distraction.

Julian had come for me.

"Julian..." I rasped, a wave of dark blood bubbling past my lips as my vision finally fractured into blackness.

"Mara! MARA!" Dominic’s desperate roar was the last thing I heard before the void swallowed me whole.

When I awoke, the scent of expensive floor polish and white roses was gone, replaced by the sterile, sharp bite of antiseptic, rubbing alcohol, and ozone.

A steady, rhythmic beep echoing nearby told me my heart was still beating.

I forced my eyelids open. The room was bathed in dim blue light. Steel monitoring equipment hummed softly around me. IV lines snaked into the veins of my left arm, and a thick heavy binding was wrapped so tightly around my chest and shoulder that breathing felt like pulling heavy stones into my lungs.

"Don't try to move."

The voice came from the shadowed corner of the room.

Dominic Mercer sat in a high-backed leather chair beside the bed. His dark suit jacket was gone, his crisp white shirt unbuttoned at the collar and stained with my dried blood at the cuffs. His hair was messy, dark stubble lining his jawline, and his hazel eyes were bloodshot, burning with a dangerous, feral intensity.

"How long?" I rasped, my throat feeling like sandpaper.

"Three days," Dominic said, standing up slowly and stepping into the blue light of the monitors. "You died twice on the operating table. My private surgeons pulled three nine-millimeter rounds out of you. One passed two millimeters from your aorta."

He stood over the bed, a terrifying mountain of a man whose presence filled every inch of the room.

"Caleb..." I whimpered, panic spiking my heart monitor. "Is Caleb—"

"Caleb is safe," Dominic interrupted softly, his voice dropping into a low baritone. "He hasn't left the room next door. He refuses to eat unless Mrs. Bell tells him you're still breathing."

I let out a shaky sigh of relief, sinking back into the pillows. "Thank God..."

Dominic didn't smile. He leaned down, placing both hands on the metal guardrails of my bed, trapping me beneath his intense, unyielding gaze.

"Now," Dominic whispered, his voice dangerously soft. "Let's talk about why my top security team swept the ballroom after the shooting and found a encrypted earpiece dropped near the east pillar."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small plastic bag containing a crumpled piece of paper. He unfolded it, laying it flat on the tray table beside my bed.

It was a printed federal dossier.

At the top was a clear, high-resolution photograph of me from eight years ago, wearing a dark gray federal analyst uniform.

Beneath the photo, in bold black ink, were the words:

TARGET: EVELYN VANCE. FORMER FINANCIAL ANALYST, DOJ SPECIAL TASK FORCE. STATUS: MOST WANTED.