The Mafia Boss Called Her a Thief—So She Broke the Necklace and Showed Him What Was Inside

The sound was not an explosion; it was a high-frequency *crack* that sounded like a whip snapping in a small room.

The black diamond shattered along its structural axes, releasing the built-in spring mechanism inside. But instead of releasing acid, the tiny, pressurized chamber—engineered forty years ago by Samuel Vance—vented a blinding spray of compressed magnesium powder directly into Vaneck’s face.

"My eyes!" Vaneck screamed, clawing at his face as the blinding chemical flash seared his retinas.

In that exact microsecond of chaos, Sebastian moved.

Even with his hands bound by heavy zip-ties, he was a lethal weapon. He drove his forehead into the nose of the guard to his left, sending the man sprawling with a shattered face. Before the second guard could bring his rifle to bear, Sebastian spun, looping his bound arms over the man's neck and dropping his full weight backward, snapping the guard's collarbone with a sickening crunch.

"Norah, down!" Sebastian bellowed.

Norah dropped beneath the mahogany desk as gunfire shredded the wood above her. The third guard fired wildly, his bullets chewing into the ceiling and Persian rugs. Sebastian rolled across the floor, scooped up the fallen guard's sidearm with his bound hands, and fired three rounds through the underside of the desk into the shooter's chest.

The salon went dead silent, save for the wet, ragged screaming of Henrik Vaneck, who was crawling on hands and knees across the carpet, blind and bleeding.

Sebastian stood up slowly, chest heaving, his dark wool coat torn and stained with soot. He walked over to the desk, picked up Norah’s heavy bench shears, and sliced through the zip-ties binding his wrists with one violent motion.

He tossed the shears aside and reached down, extending a scarred hand to Norah.

"Are you hurt?" he asked, his voice strained with an intensity that bordered on fury.

Norah looked up from beneath the desk, brushing black diamond dust from her sleeves. Her hands were trembling slightly, but her eyes were bright, clear, and unyielding.

"I ruined the stone," she said, her breath shaking.

Sebastian stared at her for a beat, and then, in the middle of that blood-soaked salon on a rotting tugboat in Rotterdam, he let out a short, rough laugh. He pulled her to her feet, his hands lingering on her shoulders, checking every inch of her for injury.

"It was an ugly ring anyway," he murmured, his thumb brushing a speck of gray soot from her cheekbone.

"Vaneck is still breathing," Norah pointed out, looking down at the groveling old man.

Sebastian turned. The humor vanished from his face, replaced by the ancient, implacable coldness of the Romano bloodline. He walked over to Vaneck, stood above him, and pressed the sole of his boot onto the old man’s outstretched hand—the hand that held the silver cane.

"You spent thirty years hiding behind proxies and hiring killers," Sebastian said down to him. "Did you really think my father died without leaving me his teeth?"

"You don't understand..." Vaneck wept, blood and white magnesium dust crusting around his eyes. "The syndicate... Rotterdam... Chicago... it's already set in motion. The shipments are arriving at Navy Pier tonight. You can't stop the buyout!"

Sebastian knelt down beside him, his voice dropping to a whisper that made the hair on Norah’s arms stand up.