BOUND BY BLOOD AND SILENCE

Emma did not take the dagger.

Instead, she locked eyes with Julian, catching the microscopic shift in his pupils—a deliberate glance toward the western pillar. He knew about the sniper. He had arranged it before they were even captured in the subway.

""Emma,"" Helena commanded, her voice dropping into a razor-edged threat. ""Take the blade. Sign the ledger.""

""You told me my father was weak,"" Emma said, her voice clear, resounding through the vaulted crypt with sudden, absolute authority. ""You told me Salvatore died because he was a coward.""

She stepped forward, closing the distance between herself and Julian until the fabric of their clothes brushed.

""Salvatore wasn't a coward,"" she said, looking straight into Helena’s frozen eyes. ""He left a safety deposit key inside my shoe before Victoria’s men took me. A key to a vault that holds every recording he ever made of you planning the execution of Cesare Rossi.""

Helena’s mask shattered. Her hand flew toward the small pearl-handled pistol inside her coat. ""Kill them!""

Before the words fully left her mouth, a high-caliber round shattered the high stained-glass window with the roar of thunder. The bullet struck the stone floor two inches in front of Helena’s boots, showering her in jagged marble shrapnel.

Chaos erupted in the crypt.

The two guards behind Emma raised their weapons, but Julian was already moving. He caught the first guard by the throat, slamming him into the stone pillar with sickening force, stripping the submachine gun from his hands in one fluid, brutal motion. He fired a controlled burst into the second enforcer’s chest before the man could clear his holster.

The council elders scrambled in blind panic, knocking over candelabras. Flames caught the heavy tapestry lining the altar, roaring to life in seconds.

Victoria shrieked, pulling a small silver revolver from her evening bag, aiming directly at Emma's head. ""You ruin everything!""

Emma didn't freeze. The three years of surviving in the margins, the endless hours of dodging brutality in the underworld corridors, took over. She lunged forward, grabbing a heavy brass candlestick from the altar, and swung it with all her strength into Victoria’s forearm.

The bone cracked. The gun went off wildly, the bullet ricocheting off the vaulted ceiling, before Victoria dropped to the flagstones, clutching her shattered wrist in agony.

Julian grabbed Emma by the waist, hauling her behind the massive granite tomb of a fourteenth-century bishop as return fire chewed into the stone above their heads.

""Are you hit?"" Julian barked, his hands checking her shoulders, her neck, his dark eyes wide with frantic urgency.

""I'm fine!"" she gasped, coughing as thick, black smoke from the burning tapestries filled the crypt. ""Who is on the roof?""

""My men,"" Julian said, checking the magazine of the captured weapon. ""They tracked the transponder in your locket. I set the frequency to ping my second-in-command if my heart rate exceeded one-forty.""