Twenty-two powerful guests watched me slap the most feared man in Chicago after he grabbed my wrist and ordered me to sit beside him. Everyone thought I had just humiliated Damian Romano in his own mansion, but two seconds later, a bullet ripped through the chair meant for me, and I realized his terrifying behavior was the only reason I was still breathing.

The silver tray felt cold against my hip, a stark contrast to the stifling heat that seemed to swallow the grand dining room of the Romano estate. Twenty-two powerful, impeccably dressed guests sat around a mahogany table long enough to host a state banquet, their attention split between the glistening crystal glassware and the man sitting at the head of the table.

Damian Romano.

Even his name carried the weight of an anchor dropped in deep water. To Chicago’s underworld and its high-society elite alike, he was a phantom—untouchable, ruthless, and entirely devoid of mercy. For six weeks, I had worked as a maid in this fortress hidden away in Lake Forest, adhering religiously to a singular, non-negotiable rule: work quietly, stay invisible, and never, under any circumstances, give a man like him a reason to remember my name.

Unfortunately, fate had a cruel sense of humor. Damian already knew who I was. Or, at the very least, my presence had caught his razor-sharp radar.

“Harper,” he said sharply, cutting through the polite murmur of elite conversation. “Sit down.”

My breath hitched. The chair directly beside him remained conspicuously empty throughout the entire multi-course dinner. Around us, even Victor Crane, the estate manager whose face always looked carved from petrified wood, wore a mask of absolute horror. Victor hated disruptions. He hated anything that strayed from his rigid protocol even more.

I swallowed hard, my fingers tightening around the edge of the silver tray. I forced a polite, trembling whisper, keeping my eyes fixed on the intricate floral centerpiece. “I’m working, Mr. Romano.”

“Not anymore.”

Damian stood up.

There was a sudden, suffocating shift in the atmosphere. The heavy silver chandeliers overhead seemed to dim, or perhaps it was just the collective intake of breath from twenty-two pairs of lungs. Something flickered in Damian’s dark, fathomless eyes—something that sent a violent shiver sprinting down my spine.

It wasn’t anger.

It was pure, unadulterated fear.

Before my brain could process the warning bells screaming inside my head, he had crossed the distance between us. His hand shot out, his fingers wrapping firmly around my wrist with a grip that brooked no argument, and he began pulling me straight toward the empty chair.

Panic, cold and suffocating, flared in my chest.

“No!”

In a fraction of a second, six years of carefully buried trauma violently unspooled. The grand Chicago mansion vanished. The glittering chandeliers dissolved into the harsh, flickering fluorescent light of a cramped, miserable Milwaukee apartment. I was twenty-five again, trapped against a peeling wallpaper wall while my ex-boyfriend, Tyler Bennett, crushed my wrist in his heavy grip, telling me in a low, venomous voice that I wasn’t allowed to leave the room until he finished talking.

Muscle memory, born of survival and desperation, took over.

I tore my arm free with a primal surge of adrenaline. Without thinking, my hand whipped through the air, and I slapped Damian Romano’s hand away.

Hard.

The sound cracked like a whip through the opulent dining room. The silence that followed was absolute, terrifying, and profound. Twenty-two wealthy, influential elites stopped breathing. The fork of a city councilman hovered mid-air. Victor Crane looked like he was about to suffer a medical emergency.

Damian didn’t look angry. In fact, his gaze didn’t linger on his stinging hand at all.

Instead, his head snapped toward the towering, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the sprawling, manicured estate grounds.

A gunshot exploded.

The heavy mahogany chair beside him shattered into a million pieces. Wood splintered violently across the marble floor as a high-velocity projectile tore through the exact spot where I was supposed to be sitting.

A scream ripped from my throat, raw and terrified. Before I could even hit the ground, Damian’s arm banded hard around my waist, lifting and dragging me down beneath the heavy oak table.

“Stay down,” he commanded, his voice a low, gravelly rasp against my ear.

This time, I obeyed without a single second of hesitation.

Chaos erupted above us. Heavy boots thundered across the marble as armed security guards flooded the room from every exit. Another deafening gunshot shattered a secondary glass pane, sending guests screaming in blind panic, diving beneath tables and scrambling for cover. Yet, amid the absolute pandemonium, Damian remained unnervingly, terrifyingly calm.

“Gabriel,” he called out.

From the shadows near the terrace doors, a man materialized with a Beretta drawn and ready. Gabriel, Damian’s cousin and the head of security, scanned the perimeter with eyes like flint. “North lawn. First shooter is down.”

“First?”

Damian’s eyes darkened, sharpening into a predatory glare.

Gabriel understood the unspoken horror instantly. “Search again,” Damian ordered, his grip on my waist tightening protectively.

I turned my head slowly, my gaze locking onto the destroyed remains of the chair just inches away. A clean, devastating bullet hole marked the exact spot where my chest would have been resting. If I had taken one more step forward, if I had obeyed him instantly instead of hesitating, I would have died on the marble floor holding an empty silver plate.

Damian turned his face toward me, his dark eyes searching mine through the gloom beneath the table. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” I whispered, my voice shaking so badly my teeth chattered.

At that moment, Victor Crane rushed over, ducking low, his face mottled with righteous indignation. “Mr. Romano, Miss Ellison’s behavior was completely unacceptable! I’ll handle the disciplinary matter immediately.”

Damian’s jaw tightened. “For what?”

“She struck you, sir.”

Damian glanced slowly from Victor’s outraged expression to the splintered ruin of the chair.