Chapter 2

*He thinks I'm a helpless pet,* I thought, teeth chattering as I backed into the shadow of the hedge. *He thinks because I cried when he slipped that ring on my finger, I’ll never fight back.*

I turned my back on the light and plunged into the dark.

The estate grounds stretched out like a white graveyard. The open lawn was the danger zone—two hundred yards of exposed snow between the formal terraces and the dense pine forest that separated the compound from Route 9.

I stayed low, crouched in a runner’s sprint, each step an agony of resistance. The snow reached my mid-calves, soaking through the seams of my leather boots, turning my toes into blocks of numb stone. The wind whipped sideways, tearing at my hood, whipping loose strands of hair across my eyes like wet twine.

*One hundred yards.*

To my left, the perimeter floodlights on the security shack hummed. I kept my eyes fixed on the sweeping beam. Three seconds to the left, two seconds pause, three seconds to the right. Miller had sworn his people controlled the loop, but in the mafia world, faith was just another word for suicide.

Suddenly, the sweeping beam stuttered. It froze on the center path, its bright halogen glow illuminating the flurries in a blinding pillar of light.

My boot caught on a submerged flagstone. I stumbled, pitching forward onto my hands and knees, burying my wrists up to the elbows in ice.

*Move, Gianna. Move!*

I scrambled behind the marble base of a frozen fountain, pressing myself flat against the cold stone. My breath came in ragged, white plumes.

Through the shrieking wind, a sound cut through the storm.

A high-pitched, electronic wail.

*The estate siren.*

The alarm had been tripped.

My blood ran like liquid nitrogen. Fourteen minutes wasn't up yet. It had only been nine! Had someone checked the suite early? Had Patrizio cut the council short?

The heavy iron doors of the stables banged open in the distance. Over the howl of the wind, I heard the sharp, distinct crack of an engine revving—the twin-cylinder growl of a security snowmobile. Then came the shouts of men, their voices carried on the blizzard like the barking of wolves.

*"Cover the north gate!"* a voice roared. It was Marco, Patrizio’s head of security. *"Cut the power to the external relay! Nobody leaves this perimeter alive—the Don wants every inch swept!"*

They weren't looking for an intruder. They were looking for *me*.

Panic spiked into my throat, tasting like copper. If they caught me now, there would be no soft-spoken threats. Patrizio would lock me in the basement vault where they kept the syndicate ledgers and the untraceable cash. He would make sure I never saw daylight again. He had warned me: *“Step past the gates, and you will not survive.”*

I pushed myself off the frozen marble and ran.

I abandoned caution. I tore across the final fifty yards of open lawn toward the black wall of the pine trees, my legs burning with lactic acid, my lungs screaming for air. Behind me, the headlights of the snowmobile swept across the terrace, catching the deep, jagged trail of footprints I had carved into the virgin snow.

A spotlight hit my back.

A shout went up. *"There! By the treeline!"*

A sharp *crack* split the air, followed by the dull thud of a round tearing through the trunk of a spruce three feet to my right. Bark sprayed against my cheek, stinging like shrapnel.

They were firing at me.

*Patrizio’s men were shooting at me.*

Tears of rage and terror blurred my vision, but I didn't stop. I threw myself into the dense cover of the evergreens. Branches whipped across my face, scratching my skin and tearing at my scarf, but the thick canopy immediately swallowed the glare of the spotlights. The snow was thinner beneath the ancient pines, the ground covered in frozen needles and deadwood that cracked under my boots.

I didn't look back. I plunged deeper into the timber, downhill, following the natural slope of the ridge.

The estate had once been a logging tract in the nineteenth century, and my father had known every square foot of this valley before the Leoni family pushed their borders north. He had told me stories when I was a girl: about the underground drainage culverts built beneath the state highway to keep runoff from flooding the private access road.

*Two hundred yards to the culvert.*

The snowmobile couldn't navigate the tight trunks of the pine grove, but I could hear the crunch of boots behind me. Men on foot. Trained soldiers who didn't lose their footing in the dark.

*"Gianna!"*

The voice echoed through the trees. It wasn't Marco.

It was Patrizio.

He had come out himself. The sheer, terrifying weight of that voice seemed to bend the very storm around it. It wasn't panicked; it wasn't frantic. It was a commanding, predatory roar that sent a shiver straight down my spine.

*"Gianna, stop running!"* he called out, his voice closer than it had any right to be. *"The road isn't safe! Turn around and come back to the house!"*

*He thinks I'm an idiot,* I snarled internally, digging my fingernails into my palms until the leather groaned. *He thinks he can order me back into his slaughterhouse!*

"Never!" I choked out into the wind, the word lost in the roar of the blizzard.

I reached the steep embankment that fell away toward Route 9. The highway was silent, closed down by the state police due to the whiteout. At the base of the twenty-foot drop, half-buried under a wall of black ice and snowdrifts, was the yawning mouth of the corrugated steel culvert.

I slid down the bank on my side, sending a cascade of loose shale and frozen dirt tumbling before me. I crashed into the ditch at the bottom, water from the thawed runoff instantly soaking through the knees of my trousers.

I scrambled up, shivering violently, and ducked into the shadow of the culvert.

The inside was a narrow tunnel of ribbed steel, four feet high, smelling of wet rust, road salt, and dead leaves. I crawled on my hands and knees through two inches of freezing, sluggish water, my knuckles dragging on the rough metal ridges. Every breath scraped in my throat like sandpaper.

Ten yards through the dark. Twenty yards.

Ahead, the other end of the pipe opened into a wooded ditch beside an abandoned scenic turnout off Route 9.

And there, parked beneath the heavy boughs of an unplowed weeping willow, was the low, matte-black silhouette of a Chevrolet Suburban.

Its parking lights blinked twice—amber, amber.

*The signal.*

A sob of sheer, disbelieving relief tore from my chest.

I dragged myself out of the mouth of the culvert, collapsing into the knee-deep drift beside the turnout. My body was shaking so violently I could barely stand, my hands blue beneath the torn gloves.

The passenger door of the Suburban swung open.

A man stepped out into the blizzard, his tall frame clad in a heavy charcoal federal trench coat, a thermal tactical cap pulled low over his forehead. He wore gold-rimmed glasses that caught the pale glow of the SUV's interior dome light, and pinned to the breast of his windbreaker was a gold shield that gleamed against the dark.

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