Chapter 5 – THE ORPHAN’S SHIELD

The roar of a shotgun blasted through the bedroom.

Plaster exploded from the wall right behind my head. I screamed, dropping to the floor, clutching the black ledger against my chest.

But the second shot never came.

Damian had already moved. With terrifying speed, he grabbed the heavy cedar chest and shoved it violently across the hardwood floor, slamming it into the knees of the two closest gunmen.

At the exact same moment, Thomas lunged.

He tackled Dominick, taking the frail but vicious old man to the ground.

“Anna, run!” Damian shouted over the chaos.

I scrambled backward on my hands and knees, but one of the gunmen recovered. He racked his shotgun, aiming the massive barrel directly at my face.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

But a small, desperate figure threw herself over my body.

Celeste.

The woman who had ordered me to pick up pearls like a dog was now using her own body to shield a servant.

“Don’t!” Celeste screamed at the guard. “My father pays your wages, you idiot! Stand down!”

The guard hesitated, confused by the conflicting loyalties.

That one second of hesitation was all Damian needed. He delivered a brutal, sweeping kick to the guard’s ribs, sending the man crashing through the glass coffee table.

“Get out of here!” Damian yelled at us.

Celeste grabbed my arm, hauling me to my feet. Evelyn was already at the door.

But as we turned to flee, a gunshot rang out that stopped the world.

It wasn’t a shotgun blast. It was a sharp, clean pop from a small handgun.

I turned back.

Thomas was lying on the floor, holding his stomach. Blood bloomed like a dark red rose through his white dress shirt.

Standing over him was Dominick, holding a small silver derringer he had kept hidden in the handle of his cane.

“No!” Evelyn screamed, her voice tearing through her throat.

She ran toward the gunfire, ignoring the danger. She fell to her knees, pressing her hands frantically over Thomas’s bleeding wound.

“Michael, look at me, stay with me!” she sobbed, her hands slick with red.

Damian froze. He looked at his father bleeding on the floor.

Then, something inside the mafia boss snapped.

He didn’t reach for a gun. He didn’t say a word.

Damian crossed the room in two massive strides, grabbed his grandfather by the lapels of his expensive custom suit, and lifted the eighty-six-year-old man completely off the floor.

Dominick gasped for air, his feet dangling.

“You took thirty years from them,” Damian growled, his eyes completely black with rage. “You will not take another second.”

Damian hurled the old man against the wall. Dominick crumpled to the floor, his cane snapping in half beneath him.

The remaining guards raised their weapons, but a new voice thundered from the hallway.

“Put the guns down!”

Five elderly men in immaculate suits stood in the doorway.

The heads of the Five Families.

They had heard the gunfire. They had come upstairs.

And they were looking directly at the black ledger clutched tightly against my chest.

The oldest boss, a man named Carmine, looked at Damian, then at the bleeding Thomas, and finally at Dominick writhing on the floor.

“Damian,” Carmine said, his voice like gravel. “What is happening in this house?”

Damian didn’t look at the bosses. He looked at me.

“Anna. Give them the book.”

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