The first attack hit before Sofia Bell could decide whether Enzo Moretti was protector or captor. A shot shattered the lock. Enzo Moretti covered her with his body, returned fire once, and forced a path into the building's service corridor.
They escaped with the sealed record but not the evidence that proved who had signed it. Inside a guarded room, Enzo Moretti traced its payments and erased seals. Every path led back to someone Sofia Bell had defended for years.
Enzo Moretti placed a contract beside the evidence. For thirty days they would appear united, share information, and never move without security. In return, he would give her access to the one archive capable of proving Sofia, not Enzo, owns the ledger capable of destroying every crime family in New York. The final clause was strangely specific: neither of them could pretend the attraction between them was part of the agreement.
She laughed once, without humor. “You wrote a rule against falling for you?”
“I wrote a rule against lying about it.”
Their first move together became another ambush. A messenger slipped Sofia Bell a key engraved with the date of her greatest loss. It opened a private box containing photographs of Enzo Moretti meeting the person who had arranged armed men called her principessa and demanded the key her father had hidden in her childhood necklace.
She pressed the photographs against his chest. “Tell me why I should not leave.”
He did not deny the meeting. He stepped close enough that anger became heat and covered her hand with his over the evidence. His pulse beat once beneath her palm, too fast for the cold man everyone else feared.
“I went there to stop what happened to you,” he said. “I failed. I will not fail twice.”
The lights died before she could decide whether to believe him. His phone lit with a live video of the person Sofia Bell trusted most bound to a chair.
“You have until midnight,” the caller said. “Sofia, not Enzo, owns the ledger capable of destroying every crime family in New York. Ask Enzo Moretti what else he is hiding. Then decide which one of you I kill first.”