Elena’s POVThe first shot shatters everything.Glass explodes inward from the massive ballroom windows, raining down like deadly confetti. Screams rip through the air, sharp and panicked. Tables flip. Chairs topple. People dive under anything they can find.Dante’s men are already moving, guns drawn, forming a loose perimeter around us. Return fire cracks from the balcony doors, from the mezzanine, from somewhere high across the street. Bullets chew marble, splinter wood, punch through velvet drapes.Dante shoves me behind a fallen pillar, his body a solid wall between me and the room. “Stay down!”I don’t.I see him first — the young guard, barely twenty, the one who always brought me coffee in the mornings at the estate. He’s sprawled on his back near the orchestra pit, blood blooming dark across his white shirt, chest heaving too fast, too shallow.He’s st
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