Mrs. Whitmore’s sharp eyes narrowed, boring into mine as if she could peel back my skin and read the desperate lies keeping me upright. The heavy silence of the sitting room felt vacuum-sealed.

Noah and I were sitting on the plush rug by the fireplace. We were building a complex structure out of wooden blocks.

Suddenly, the heavy oak door of the playroom slammed open.

Standing in the doorway wasn't Damian.

It was a tall, scarred man with cold, dead eyes, holding a heavy-caliber pistol with a silencer attached. Behind him stood two of Damian’s outer-perimeter security guards—bound, gagged, and bleeding from their temples.

Marcus Thorne, Damian’s most trusted lieutenant, had betrayed him.

“Well, well, well,” Marcus sneered, stepping into the room with a crooked, vicious smile. “The boss is tied up in a board meeting across town dealing with a warehouse fire, thinking his precious little estate is secure. And what do we have here? A housekeeper playing babysitter.”

Noah let out a sharp gasp of pure terror, scrambling backward until his spine hit the wall, clutching Captain Buttons so tightly his knuckles turned white.

I threw myself in front of the boy, my heart hammering against my ribs like a pneumatic drill.

“Get out,” I hissed, trying to keep my voice from shaking.

“Oh, I’m getting out, sweetheart,” Marcus laughed, raising the pistol and pointing the silencer directly at my chest. “And I’m taking the boy with me. Damian loves this kid more than his own empire. With the boy in my hands, Damian will hand over every dock, every warehouse, and every offshore account on a silver platter.”

He took a step forward, his finger tightening on the trigger.

“Say goodbye, sweetheart.”

Time seemed to slow down to a agonizing crawl. I looked back at Noah.

The boy’s eyes were wide, filled with the exact same horror he had experienced eight months ago when his mother collapsed on the kitchen floor. He was watching another monster raise a weapon to destroy his world.

Something inside Noah snapped. Not from fear—but from a desperate, primal urge to protect the only person who had tried to save him.

Noah’s lips parted. His small chest heaved.

For eight months, he had been a silent shadow. For eight months, forty-two specialists had failed.

And then, a sound cut through the howling blizzard—rough, unused, and trembling with raw, unfathomable power.

“NO!”

Marcus Thorne froze in his tracks, his eyes widening in sheer shock as he looked down at the five-year-old boy.

Noah scrambled forward, throwing his small body over my legs, screaming at the top of his lungs with every ounce of fury his little soul could muster:

“STOP! LEAVE HER ALONE!”

The word echoed off the high ceiling like a thunderclap.

Before Marcus could recover his senses and redirect the gun, the French doors behind him shattered inward in an explosion of flying glass and splintered wood.