Elena Vitiello POV:
The deafening roar stripped away all hearing, the world burning in fire.
A high-pitched ringing pierced my ears as the shockwave rolled past us. The air instantly thickened with the acrid, choking stench of burning rubber, vaporized gasoline, and cordite.
I didn't panic. The smell of explosives and the heat of the fire triggered a cold, detached calmness in my brain. It was a familiar sensation, a dark echo of the brutal gang wars I had survived in Chicago.
A shower of shattered glass and twisted metal fragments rained down on the plaza, clattering against the stone paving like deadly hail.
I pushed against the heavy weight of the guard captain on top of me.
"I'm fine," I said, my voice steady.
He scrambled off me, his gun still drawn, scanning the smoke.
I stood up. I brushed the dust and ash off my black wool coat. I looked at the side of the Rolls Royce. The pristine black paint was scorched and blistered from the heat, but the military-grade armor hadn't yielded an inch. It had done its job.
I stepped around the hood of the car and surveyed the plaza.
It looked like a war zone.
The grey van was a twisted, unrecognizable pile of burning metal. Flames licked aggressively at the blackened frame.
At the base of the stone pillar lay Sofia. Her body was contorted into an impossible, broken angle. The fire had caught her clothes, burning away whatever was left of her. She was dead.
I stared at her charred remains. There was no triumph in my chest. Just a cold, hollow irony that her vanity had ended in ash.
I shifted my gaze to the right.
In the mud, ten feet from the burning wreck, lay Luca and Matteo.
Matteo was pinned beneath the heavy steel door that had been blown off the van. His left leg—the one that still had flesh—was crushed. A jagged piece of white bone had pierced straight through his skin and pants, leaking dark blood into the muddy water. He was conscious, his fingers digging frantically into the dirt, but he couldn't even draw enough breath to scream.
Luca lay flat on his back near the steps. The impact against the stone had cracked his skull open. A steady, thick stream of blood pulsed from a gaping wound on his forehead, pooling into the ruined, red rose petals around his head.
His eyes were half-open, staring blankly at the grey sky. His pupils were rapidly dilating, losing focus. His chest barely moved.
I walked slowly toward them. I stopped exactly three steps away.
I looked down at the men who had once controlled my entire existence. I didn't reach for my phone to call an ambulance. I didn't smile. I just watched them bleed with the absolute indifference of a stranger.
In the distance, the wailing shriek of police sirens and ambulances tore through the Manhattan air, growing louder by the second.
The surviving college students were huddled behind the police barricades down the block, screaming and crying.
Suddenly, the screech of heavy tires drowned out the sirens.
Three black, heavily armored tactical SUVs jumped the curb and slammed to a halt at the edge of the plaza.
The doors flew open before the trucks even fully stopped.
Dante erupted from the lead vehicle.
He looked like a man possessed. His face was pale, his eyes wide and wild with a terror I had never seen in him before. The childhood trauma of losing his family to a car bomb had ripped open the second he heard the report.
He sprinted past the burning wreckage. He ignored the guards, the fire, and the blood on the ground.
He crashed into me.
His massive arms wrapped around my body, crushing me against his chest with a force that bruised my ribs. He buried his face in my neck, inhaling my scent.
I felt his massive frame trembling.
"I'm here," I whispered, wrapping my arms around his waist. "I'm safe."
Dante let out a ragged, shaking breath. He ripped off his heavy black trench coat and wrapped it tightly around my shoulders, cocooning me.
He raised his large hand and gently pressed it against the side of my face, physically turning my head away so I wouldn't have to look at the carnage anymore.
He pressed a fierce, desperate kiss into my hair.
"We are going home," Dante rasped, his voice thick with adrenaline and fear.
He kept his arm locked around my waist, practically carrying me toward his SUV.
As we walked away, the paramedics rushed the plaza, dropping to their knees beside Luca and Matteo with trauma kits.
Dante paused by the open car door. He turned his head and shot one final, freezing glare at the two dying men on the ground. He looked at them like they were nothing but dirt waiting to be swept away.
He guided me into the back seat and climbed in after me. The door slammed shut, cutting off the sirens and the smell of blood.
He pulled me onto his lap, burying his face in my hair.
"No one can take you from me. Not even death."
