Matteo Conti threw me over his shoulder, and suddenly my terrible birthday shift became a fight to stay alive.

The armored SUV cut through the rain-slicked asphalt of downtown Boston like a black blade. Streetlights smeared across the bulletproof glass in streaks of amber and crimson, casting long, fractured shadows across Matteo Conti’s carved jawline.

I pressed my back hard against the leather seat, my heart hammering a furious rhythm against my ribs. My knuckles were white where I clutched the hem of my ruined cocktail apron.

“You know about my mother,” I said again, my voice trembling despite my best efforts to keep it steady. “Explain. Right now. Or so help me God, I will kick this door open at sixty miles an hour.”

Matteo didn’t blink. He reached up, casually unbuttoning his blood-splattered collar, revealing the corded muscle of his neck. “The door is magnetically locked from the front console, Maya. You’d only break your ankle.”

He knew my name.

Of course he knew my name. He hadn’t asked for it once back at the Velvet Room, yet it rolled off his tongue with smooth, chilling familiarity.

“Who are you?” I whispered, cold dread pooling in my gut. “And what were you doing in my club?”

Up in the passenger seat, Leo Mercer—his head of security, who looked like he chewed gravel for breakfast—was rapidly typing into an encrypted tablet. “Perimeter is clean, boss. Two tail vehicles dropped off near the Tobin Bridge. We’ve routed toward the harbor safehouse.”

“Confirm the secondary sweep,” Matteo said evenly, never breaking eye contact with me. Then, he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, invading my space with the sheer, suffocating gravity of his presence. “What I am about to tell you will sound insane. But considering you just watched a high-caliber round turn a mahogany beam into sawdust an inch from your ear, I suggest you listen carefully.”

“I’m listening,” I hissed, crossing my arms over my chest to stop my hands from shaking. “And you have about thirty seconds before I start screaming.”

“Your name is Maya Ward,” he said, his voice dropping an octave into a low, resonant baritone. “You are twenty-six today. You work forty-eight hours a week between the Velvet Room and a diner in Southie. You have zero debt in your own name, because every spare cent you earn goes to St. Jude’s Memory Care in Cambridge. To room 214. Where your mother, Eleanor Ward, has lived for the last four years.”

Every word felt like a physical slap. The air left my lungs.

“You’ve been stalking me,” I breathed, nausea rising in my throat. “You’re a sick bastard.”

“I haven’t been stalking you, Maya,” Matteo replied without a shred of guilt. “I’ve been protecting you.”

“Protecting me? From what? Overpriced rent and bad tips?”

“From the men who murdered your father.”

The interior of the SUV went dead, suffocatingly silent. The hum of the engine felt miles away.

My breath caught in my throat. “My father died in a hit-and-run on Route 9 when I was eleven. It was an accident.”

“Your father was Dr. Arthur Vance,” Matteo countered ruthlessly. “He changed your family’s surname to Ward three months before he was pushed into oncoming traffic. He was the chief software architect for Conti Dynamics’ original neural encryption framework—the foundation of my family’s entire defense empire. And two weeks before he died, he vanished with a master decryption cipher known as the Chimera Protocol.”

I stared at him, my mouth dry, my head spinning wildly. “You’re lying. My dad was an accountant. He wore corduroy jackets with elbow patches and smelled like spearmint gum.”

“He was a genius,” Matteo said softly, and for a fraction of a second, the cold titanium in his dark eyes softened. “And he knew that if Chimera fell into the wrong hands, it could dismantle the private infrastructure of half the free world. He hid it. Not with a bank, not on a server. He hid the physical drive with the only person he trusted.”

“My mother,” I whispered, the puzzle pieces clicking together with terrifying, sickening speed.

“Eleanor,” Matteo confirmed. “And when her early-onset Alzheimer’s began accelerating five years ago, the wolves realized the clock was ticking. If she lost her memory entirely, the location of the cipher would die with her. Or worse—she would accidentally give it away.”

I shook my head violently, pressing my palms against my temples. “No. No, this is ridiculous. You’re spinning a fairy tale to justify kidnapping me!”

“Boss,” Leo interrupted from the front, turning his head. “We have incoming footage from the club’s rear alley.”

Leo handed the tablet back. Matteo took it, tapped the screen, and angled it toward me.

The grainy, black-and-white security footage played. It showed the crowded floor of the Velvet Room. It showed me carrying my tray of whiskey glasses. It showed Matteo’s security detail moving past. But then Matteo paused the video and zoomed in on the man in the gray jacket.

The man’s eyes weren’t on Matteo.

The barrel of the suppressed handgun beneath his lapel wasn’t angled toward the billionaire.

The crosshairs of his line of sight were locked dead-center on the back of my skull.

“The shooter wasn't after me, Maya,” Matteo said quietly, his voice cutting through the fog of my denial like a scalpel. “He was sent to eliminate you. Because as long as you are alive, Eleanor will never speak to anyone else. You are her anchor. If you die, Eleanor breaks completely, and they can search her facility without anyone filing protective orders.”

A cold sweat broke out across my collarbone. My stomach violently churned.

“Who sent him?” I asked, my voice barely audible over the roaring in my ears.

“A man named Julian Sterling,” Matteo answered, his jaw tightening until the muscle ticked. “My former business partner. And the man who currently holds thirty percent of Boston’s political machine in his pocket.”

The SUV banked sharply to the left, tires squealing against wet concrete, before dipping down a subterranean ramp. Heavy metal security gates groaned open, revealing a cavernous, concrete bunker beneath a nondescript commercial building on the waterfront.

The vehicle jerked to a complete stop.

The locks clicked open.

Matteo pushed his door open, stepped out into the damp subterranean air, and turned back to offer me a hand. His tailored sleeve was torn, his knuckles were bruised, and a trail of dried blood still marked his temple from the shattered glass back at the club.

He looked every bit the ruthless tech monarch the media claimed he was—powerful, unyielding, and dangerous.

“You have two choices, Maya,” he said, extending his palm. “You can step out of this car and let me keep you alive long enough to stop Sterling. Or you can walk out those gates right now, take the T back to Southie, and be dead before sunrise.”

I looked at his open hand. Then I looked into his eyes—dark, intense, and harboring a storm that felt just as lethal as the bullets flying through the Velvet Room.

I swallowed my fear, raised my chin, and slapped his hand away.

“I can walk on my own,” I said coldly, stepping down onto the concrete.