“Keep her.” Those were the two words I heard my mafia husband say about another woman on our fifth wedding anniversary,

Lucian’s head snapped toward the archway. The silver stiletto slipped slightly in his fingers, but before he could spin around, Elena pulled the trigger.

The bullet tore clean through Lucian’s right shoulder, spinning him violently to the ground with a cry of pain.

Instantly, the crypt erupted into chaos.

Six of Lucian's mercenaries stationed in the upper gallery opened fire, their automatic rounds chewing into the stone pillars, sending clouds of powdered limestone and splintered mummies cascading down like morbid confetti. Mateo and his team stormed the rotunda, laying down a devastating field of suppressing fire.

"Adrien!" Elena screamed, sprinting across the kill-zone. She slid across the blood-slicked stone floor, coming up beneath the suspension chains.

Adrien looked down at her through his one open eye, his battered lips parting in a mixture of disbelief and fierce, desperate pride. "Elena... you insane woman... I told you to run..."

"Shut up and let me get you down," she snapped, tears burning her eyes as she pulled out bolt cutters from her tactical rig. With two furious, adrenaline-fueled crunches of steel, she sheared the padlock securing the chains to the floor anchor.

Adrien collapsed heavily into her arms. She caught his massive weight against her shoulder, groaning under the strain, refusing to let him hit the ground. His skin was burning with fever, his pulse erratic, but his arm wrapped around her back with the crushing grip of a man clawing his way back from hell.

"Aurelia?" he gasped into her ear, his breath hot and ragged.

"Safe. High in the Alps. Lucian will never touch her."

A bullet struck the stone floor two inches from Elena's boot. Across the rotunda, Lucian had crawled behind a stone sarcophagus, clutching his bleeding shoulder, his face contorted in psychotic rage.

"Kill them both!" Lucian screamed to his men. "Blow the exits! Seal them in this tomb!"

"We have to move, now!" Mateo shouted over the deafening roar of gunfire, taking down another operative leaping from the catacomb stairs. "They've rigged charges along the northern arch! This whole place is going to collapse!"

Adrien forced himself onto his feet, leaning hard against Elena. He snatched a discarded handgun from the floor with his good hand, his eyes locking onto Elena with absolute, lethal clarity.

"Five years ago, Elena," Adrien rasped, his voice cutting through the gunfire, "I told them to *keep Vanessa* because she had the Syndicate’s detonator codes. I let you think I betrayed you so you would stay far away from this war. But I never touched another woman. It was always you. It will always be you."