bullet did.
“Down!” she screamed.
Then she slammed her body into Victor Romano.
The impact knocked him backward into the booth. Claire felt the hard wall of his chest, the sudden grip of his hand catching her arm, the brutal shock of her shoulder connecting with him. Then the window exploded.
The bullet cut through the place where he had been.
It tore across the table, blasted through glass, sprayed wine like blood, and buried itself in the far wall. Screams tore through the room. People dropped to the carpet. Marco had a gun out before Claire could breathe. Adrian overturned the table and began shouting names into an earpiece.
Claire lay half across Victor, stunned by the ringing in her ears.
For one strange moment, the most feared man in New York stared up at her as if he had never truly been surprised before.
Then his eyes moved to her temple.
“You’re bleeding,” he said.
She touched her forehead and saw red on her fingers.
“I saw it,” she whispered. “A red dot. On you.”
That was when everything became worse.
Victor did not thank her. He did not push her away. He did not ask who she was.
He closed his hand around her wrist and said, “She comes with us.”
Claire tried to stand, tried to explain that she had a locker downstairs and a brother waiting for her call and a life that might be small but still belonged to her.
No one listened.
Marco pulled her through a service corridor while Adrian moved ahead with a gun in his hand. The kitchen staff pressed themselves against steel counters. Mr. Lang stared at her with open terror, as if Claire had done something worse than save a life.
They ran down emergency stairs until her legs burned, through a loading dock soaked in rain, and into a black armored SUV idling behind the building.
The door slammed.
The tower vanished.
Claire’s old life vanished with it.
Inside the SUV, Victor sat across from her, his white shirt dusted with glass. A streak of her blood marked his cuff. He spoke into a phone in Italian, every word clipped and cold.
Claire could not understand him, but she understood the tone.
Someone had tried to kill him.
Someone would pay.
That kind of promise did not need translation.
“I need my phone,” Claire said.
Adrian, seated beside her, gave a soft laugh. “Of course you do. Should we stop for your purse too? Maybe a snack?”
Victor ended the call and looked at him.
“Give her yours.”
Adrian’s expression tightened. “Victor, she—”
“Now.”
The phone was in Claire’s hand a second later.
Her fingers shook as she dialed Ben’s number from memory. He answered breathless, panic already in his voice.
“Claire? Are you okay? The restaurant said something happened.”
Hearing him nearly broke her.
Ben was twenty-one, but illness had taken pieces of his life before he had the chance to use them. He was too thin, too tired, too used to hospital lights. Claire had raised him through caseworkers and cheap apartments and nights when dinner was whatever they could stretch from a can.
She had kept him alive by being careful.
Tonight, careful had shattered.
“I’m okay,” she said, though nothing about her was
