Mara Chen's POV
The gunfire stops.
Mara waits in the sealed training room, her heart thundering against her ribs. Five minutes pass. Ten. Twenty. Nothing but silence and the sound of her own breathing.
Then Lucia appears through the reinforced door, unhurt.
"It's clear," she says, her expression grim. "They hit the perimeter but didn't breach. Valentina handled it."
Relief floods through Mara, but it's immediately replaced by something darker—hunger to be the one protecting Valentina instead of hiding.
"Start training," Lucia says, as if nothing happened. "You need to be ready."
For what, she doesn't say.
The next six hours are pure hell.
Lucia drags Mara to a basement training facility deeper than before. Gun ranges on one side, hand-to-hand combat mats on another. Lucia tosses her a real gun—loaded, dangerous.
"How many people have you killed?" Lucia asks.
"Zero," Mara answers.
"Today, that changes. In this world, hesitation equals death. If someone comes at Valentina, you don't hesitate. You don't think. You kill." Lucia steps closer. "Can you kill someone to protect her?"
Mara thinks of Caroline and Robert, living on stolen money in the Cayman Islands.
She thinks of Valentina's dark eyes and vulnerable voice: Everyone close to me dies.
"Yes," Mara says.
"Prove it," Lucia commands. She sets up human-shaped targets at the far end of the range. "Shoot. Head and chest. Don't miss."
Mara raises the gun.
Her first shot goes wide. The recoil is stronger than expected, and her hands shake.
"Pathetic," Lucia says coldly. "Again."
Mara fires again. Again. Again.
Her shoulders burn. Her hands blister where the gun kicks back. But something shifts around shot fifty—her body stops fighting the weapon and starts working with it. By shot seventy-five, she's thinking less and moving more. Instinct over thought.
By the hundredth shot, she's hitting center mass every single time.
The targets are shredded. Pieces of paper and plastic scatter around her feet like confetti.
Something dark awakens inside her chest—a thing with teeth and hunger.
She's good at this.
She likes it.
"Better," Lucia says. "But not enough."
She leads Mara to the hand-to-hand mats and hands her a wooden training knife.
"Defense scenario," Lucia explains. "Someone attacks Valentina. You intervene. Show me what you'd do."
Lucia moves slow at first—teaching blocks, teaching positioning, teaching how to disarm. But as the hours bleed into afternoon, Lucia stops moving slow.
She attacks like someone trying to kill.
Mara learns that knife defense isn't elegant. It's brutal. It's desperate. It's about wanting your opponent dead more than you want to survive.
And Mara wants it.
She blocks. She counters. She moves with a precision that surprises her. Once, she actually manages to disarm Lucia and press the wooden knife to her throat.
"Kill me," Lucia says, breathing hard.
Mara hesitates for just a second.
"See?" Lucia says, stepping back. "That hesitation is what gets people dead. When the moment comes, you can't think. You can't feel mercy. You have to be the weapon."
But then Lucia smiles—small, genuine.
"You're getting there," she says. "Faster than anyone I've trained."
Around hour five, Valentina arrives.
She enters the training facility quietly and takes position in the observation room above the combat mats. Mara doesn't see her at first—not until their eyes meet through the glass.
Valentina is watching her.
Mara's concentration shatters.
Her next move is sloppy. Lucia capitalizes, and suddenly Mara is on her back, Lucia's training knife pressed to her neck.
"Focus," Lucia snaps. "You're leaving yourself open."
But Lucia's eyes flicker upward, toward the observation room, and something knowing crosses her face.
They continue training, but Mara is hyper-aware of the presence above her. Valentina watching. Valentina's eyes following every movement. Valentina seeing Mara become something darker, something more dangerous.
When Lucia finally calls the session over, Mara is drenched in sweat. Her hands are blistered. Her muscles scream. But she's never felt more alive.
"Good work," Lucia says. "Be here tomorrow, same time."
Mara heads to the shower, and that's when Valentina finds her in the corridor.
She's alone.
"You were incredible," Valentina says softly, backing Mara against the wall. "I watched the whole thing."
"You weren't supposed to," Mara says, breathless.
"I know." Valentina reaches out and traces the line of Mara's jaw—a gesture that's becoming familiar, becoming necessary. "I needed to see who you really are. When you stop pretending to be weak."
"I'm not pretending," Mara says.
"I know." Valentina's hand moves to Mara's neck, her thumb stroking the pulse point. "That's what terrifies me."
She leans in, and this time she does kiss her—brief, desperate, a promise and a threat wrapped into one. When she pulls back, her eyes are dark with something like fear.
"Don't let this change you completely," Valentina whispers. "I need you alive. And I need you human."
"I can be both," Mara says.
But even as she says it, she's not sure it's true.
Lucia finds them when Mara emerges from the shower, dressed in clean clothes.
"We have a problem," Lucia says grimly, holding out a phone.
On the screen is security footage from the warehouse that was hit earlier. Multiple angles. Multiple shooters.
"The attack this morning," Lucia explains. "It wasn't Konstantin testing our defenses. It was reconnaissance. Someone on the inside gave him the location. Someone gave him timing. Someone gave him intel."
Mara's stomach drops.
"A traitor," she whispers.
"Yes," Lucia confirms. She pulls up another file—financial records. "And we just found proof. Someone's been transferring information to Konstantin's organization. Someone's been paid very well for it."
"Who?" Mara asks.
"That's what we're trying to figure out," Lucia says. "But there's something else."
She swipes to a new image.
It's a photo of Rosa—Valentina's sister, the pediatric surgeon. She's at her apartment, standing in front of her window. The photo is recent. Maybe from today.
And underneath the photo is a message in red text:
We know where she is. We know where they all are. The Russo family is falling. And you, Valentina, are next.
Lucia shows the phone to Valentina, who's just emerged from the elevator.
Valentina's face goes absolutely white.
"Rosa," she says. "Call her. Now."
Lucia dials. It rings. And rings.
No answer.
"Try again," Valentina demands.
Another ring. Another unanswered call.
"Valentina," Lucia says carefully. "Maybe she's just at work. Maybe her phone is—"
The elevator dings behind them.
Marco DeLuca steps out with four guards flanking him.
His expression is cold.
"Don't bother calling her again," Marco says quietly. "Rosa's with Konstantin. And she's going to stay with him until you surrender everything—your territory, your organization, your power."
Valentina's hand moves toward her gun, but Marco is already pointing his weapon at her chest.
"I wouldn't," he says. "You move, and you die. Lucia moves, and she dies. The girl..." He glances at Mara with something like pity. "The girl dies either way."
"Marco," Valentina says, her voice ice. "Why?"
"Because you're weak," Marco says. "Your father would never have let sentiment cloud his judgment. But you... you let this girl—" he gestures to Mara "—into your life. You let her matter. And now everyone you care about becomes a liability."
He raises his gun.
"Surrender, Valentina. Right now. You have five seconds to decide: your sister's life, or your pride."
The elevator doors close behind him with a soft hiss.
And in that moment, sealed in the penthouse with a traitor pointing a gun at the woman she's falling for, Mara understands what Lucia meant about the darkness awakening inside her.
Because the only thought in her mind isn't fear.
It's how fast she can move.
And whether she's fast enough to kill Marco before he kills Valentina.