CHAPTER NINE #3
Ten feet away, Matteo heard the exchange.
The Underboss tore his eyes away from the hostages and looked at Zina.
He saw the complete shift in her posture—the way her center of gravity dropped, the way her muscles coiled with practiced dangerous intent.
The suspicions he had harbored for months instantly crystallized into certainty.
She was extraordinary. She was a weapon.
"Do you need a piece?" Matteo barked across the landing, his voice cutting through the tension.
Sandro’s head snapped toward his best friend, stunned by the question.
"No," Zina replied, her eyes black with adrenaline, calculating the trajectory to the targets below. She looked at Matteo, recognizing a fellow predator. "Just cover my blind spot the second I drop."
Matteo didn't hesitate. "Done."
With no other choice left, Zina mobilized.
She didn't take the stairs. She vaulted directly over the marble railing, dropping fifteen feet straight down into the center of the grand foyer.
She landed in a perfect, silent crouch directly behind the tactical squad. The men didn't even have time to register the sound of her landing before she struck.
She was flawless. A shadow operative unleashed.
Zina exploded upward, driving the heel of her bare foot with bone-shattering force into the kneecap of the man holding a gun to Francesca’s head.
As the joint snapped and the man screamed, dropping his aim, Zina used his collapsing momentum to launch herself into the air.
She wrapped her thighs around the neck of the second gunman.
With a violent, twisting torque of her core, she snapped his neck and rode his falling body to the floor.
The remaining three gunmen spun around in pure shock, bewildered by the unarmed, bare-footed ghost tearing their squad apart.
That microsecond of confusion was all she needed. Zina rolled across the marble, sweeping the legs of the third man, driving her palm upward to shatter his nose, driving the bone straight into his brain.
The stalemate was broken. The guns were no longer on the family.
Up on the landing, Sandro snapped out of his paralyzing shock. The instant he saw her move, the realization of what she truly was hit him like a freight train, but the tactical necessity overrode the betrayal.
"Now!" Sandro roared.
Sandro and Matteo opened fire from above. Their suppressed rounds rained down with precision, tearing through the final two gunmen before they could aim at the blur of motion that was Zina.
It was over in less than thirty seconds.
The grand foyer was silent, save for the gasping, terrified breaths of the three Moretti women huddled on the floor.
Zina stood up slowly from the center of the carnage.
Her dark hair was wild, Sandro’s white shirt stained with the blood of the men she had just dismantled.
She looked down at her arm. One of the final bullets from the crossfire had grazed her bicep.
A thin, hot stream of blood was dripping down her pale skin, staining the shirt.
Footsteps pounded rapidly down the marble staircase. Sandro sprinted toward her, Matteo right behind him.
Sandro stopped three feet away from her.
The Don of Milan was shell-shocked. His chest was heaving, his eyes wide and unanchored.
He was staring at the woman he loved—the sweet, gentle baker who blushed when he held her hand—who had just executed three elite tactical mercenaries with her bare hands.
But it wasn't the reveal of her true identity that unraveled him. His eyes dropped to the blood running down her arm, pooling on the floor beside her bare feet.
"Zina, you're bleeding," Sandro gasped, his voice cracking, the formidable wall of his composure disintegrating. He reached out with trembling hands, terrified to touch her, terrified she was mortally wounded. Anything else he could handle, but not this. "My God, you're hit."
"I am fine," Zina said firmly, her voice turning sharp and unyielding, the coldness of the assassin keeping her grounded. She ignored the wound, her dark eyes locking onto his with fierce desperation. "Sandro, listen to me. Are my mother, my grandmother, and Reza safe?"
Sandro stared at her, struggling to process the rapid, violent shift in reality. "Zina, look at your arm—"
"Sandro, answer me!" she demanded, her voice echoing with the unmistakable, commanding authority of a Kazan. "Did they breach the bakery? Are they safe?"
"Yes," Sandro choked out, forcing himself to focus, finally registering her question. "They are safe."
The tension instantly drained out of Zina’s body. She closed her eyes, exhaling a long, shaking breath as the adrenaline began to bleed away.
"Thank you," Zina breathed out softly, leaning back against the cool marble pillar, exhausted.
Behind them, Lucia, Rosa, and Francesca slowly climbed to their feet. They stared at Zina in breathless, terrified awe. The woman they had dismissed, the peasant they had insulted for having no pedigree, stood amidst a pile of dead men, bleeding and unfazed.
She wasn't a civilian. She was something else – supernatural. And she had just saved their lives.