Three hours before my wedding, I heard the man I was about to marry say, “I don’t want her. I never did.”

The struggle was brief, brutal, and final.

Derek lashed out blindly with his blade, but Ethan caught his wrist, twisting it until the bones in Derek’s forearm snapped with a sickening pop. Derek screamed, dropping the knife.

Ethan pinned his cousin to the ground, his forearm crushing Derek’s windpipe, his face mere inches away.

"You brought war to my home," Ethan whispered, his voice shaking with a rage so pure it chilled the room. "You touched my wife. You threatened her life."

"Ethan... please... blood... we're family..." Derek wheezed, his eyes bulging as his oxygen vanished.

"You ceased being family the moment you looked at her," Ethan said coldly.

With a swift, ruthless jerk of his hands, Ethan ended Derek’s life.

The warehouse fell into a profound, ringing silence, broken only by the sound of rain drumming against the corrugated metal roof.

Ethan knelt there for a moment over his cousin’s body, his chest heaving, blood soaking through his bandages in dark, heavy waves. Slowly, he rose, turning toward me.

The killer in his eyes evaporated, replaced by a desperate, frantic terror.

"Clara," he breathed, stumbling toward my chair.

He dropped to his knees before me, his scarred hands slicing through the nylon ropes with trembling haste. The moment my hands were free, I threw my arms around his neck, pulling his battered, bleeding body tightly against mine.

"You came," I sobbed into his soaked shoulder, the adrenaline finally crashing down into tears. "You came for me."

"I told you," Ethan rasped, his arms wrapping around me so fiercely I could feel the ragged pounding of his heart against my ribs. "I would burn the world down before I let them take you. Are you hurt? Did he—"

"I'm fine," I said, pulling back to cup his blood-streaked face in my hands. "Look at you, Ethan. You're bleeding to death."

"I don't care," he said, pressing a fierce, desperate kiss to my lips, tasting of copper and rain. "You're alive. That's all that matters."

The heavy warehouse doors groaned open. Brian entered, followed by a dozen Carter soldiers, their weapons lowered.

"It's done, Boss," Brian announced quietly, his eyes taking in the scene. "Russo’s strike team is eliminated. And... Vincent Moretti is outside in an armored transport. What are your orders?"

I stiffened, looking at Ethan.

My father. The man who had sold me, then tried to have us both executed for territory.

Ethan looked at me, his gray eyes softening into something infinitely patient, infinitely respectful. He reached into his coat, pulled out a silver revolver, and gently placed the grip into my right hand.

"He is your father, Clara," Ethan murmured, his voice gentle amidst the carnage. "Whatever happens to him is your choice. You hold the gavel. Not me."

I looked down at the cold steel of the weapon, then out toward the open doors where the rain poured over the city of Chicago.