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.

Hours dissolved into a blur of flashing security lights, frantic hushed whispers, and the grim sweep of forensic investigators scouring the estate for shell casings. The guests had been evacuated through the subterranean service tunnels, leaving the grand house feeling like a tomb wrapped in tension.

I sat rigidly on a leather armchair in the lower-level security hub, wrapped in a thick wool blanket that someone had thrown over my shoulders. My hands still trembled, the phantom pressure of Tyler’s grip in my past and Damian’s hand on my wrist in the present bleeding together into a confusing web of terror and gratitude.

The heavy steel door swung open, and Gabriel walked in, closing it firmly behind him. He looked at me for a long moment, a strange, unreadable expression softening his rugged features.

“Am I fired?” I asked, my voice barely audible above the hum of computer monitors.

A faint, dry chuckle escaped Gabriel’s lips, his mouth almost forming a smile. “For hitting Damian? He survived. Considering he’s taken worse from rival syndicates and walked away smiling, a slap from a terrified maid isn’t going to crack his skull.”

He pulled up a rolling chair, sat down in front of a massive multi-screen monitor bank, and tapped a few keys. A high-definition security recording blinked to life on the central screen.

“Look at this,” Gabriel instructed gently.

On the screen, the dining room came alive again. I watched my digital self moving gracefully between dinner guests, clearing wine glasses while the first sniper’s preparations played out in fast-forward. Security guards were stationed at the perimeter, unaware of the lethal optics locked onto the house.

Gabriel hit pause.

“Watch your tray,” he said.

I leaned forward, my eyes scanning the polished silver surface of the tray I had been holding on screen. A tiny, nearly invisible red dot danced across the metal reflection.

My stomach plummeted into an abyss of cold dread.

The laser dot moved with chilling precision. It tracked upward, moving straight toward my back, zeroing in between my shoulder blades with mathematical certainty.

Then, on the screen, Damian’s head snapped toward me.

He saw it.

I watched his dark eyes track the reflection on my tray in real-time. Without a second of hesitation—without pausing to shout a warning that would have drawn the sniper’s immediate trigger-pull—he stood up, crossed the floor in two terrifyingly fast strides, and seized my wrist to yank me out of the line of fire.

Two seconds later, my slap connected with his face.

And a microsecond after that, the high-caliber bullet vaporized the chair.

My breath caught in my throat, cutting off completely. Tears welled in my eyes as Gabriel froze the horrific image on the screen, framing the exact trajectory of the round.

“He knew,” I whispered, the words tasting like ash.

Gabriel nodded slowly, leaning back in his chair. “If Damian had stopped to explain what was happening, Harper, you would be dead. He took the blow from your hand so he could pull you down. He didn’t care about his pride. He cared about your heartbeat.”

Guilt—heavy, burning, and relentless—flared in my chest. I remembered the harsh sound of my palm striking his cheek, the absolute humiliation I had inflicted on him in front of the most powerful people in the city, and the brutal reality that he had protected me through every second of it.