Chapter 3 - The Gala of Blood
Three months later, Blackthorne House was flooded with crystal light, expensive champagne, and the dangerous elite of New York’s underworld.
It was Dominic Mercer’s annual charity gala, a glittering farce where politicians washed their money, syndicate bosses negotiated shipping lanes under the guise of philanthropy, and ordinary staff were treated like pieces of furniture.
Mara had been drafted to help the catering staff. Wearing a borrowed, plain black dress that hugged her slender frame, she moved through the ballroom with a silver tray, dodging intoxicated congressmen and men carrying concealed weapons beneath custom tuxedos.
Her eyes scanned the room nervously, searching for Caleb.
The boy had been brought down for twenty minutes to greet the guests—a mandatory appearance to project an image of a stable, dynastic family man for Dominic’s associates. Caleb looked miserable in his navy tuxedo, standing near a towering display of white roses, picking at a cookie.
That was when Mara saw him.
A man standing near the orchestra balcony—a minor-league associate from the Russian Bratva whom Dominic had recently squeezed out of a Brooklyn dock contract—slowly reached inside his tuxedo jacket.
His hand curled around the grip of a suppressed pistol.
His eyes weren't looking at Dominic. They were locked onto the six-year-old boy standing alone beneath the chandelier.
Mara didn't think. She didn’t calculate the odds or remember the rules.
When the first bullet shattered the crystal overhead, raining glass across the floor, she dropped her tray and sprinted.
Bang. White roses exploded in a flurry of petals.
Bang. The second bullet tore past her ear.
By the third, she had already launched herself across the polished marble, throwing her body entirely over Caleb just as the impact punched into her flesh with terrifying, searing force.
The chaos that followed was deafening. Screams ripped through the ballroom. Security guards tackled the shooter, weapon fire echoed against the stone walls, and the room dissolved into a stampede of terror.
Beneath Mara’s bleeding weight, Caleb was screaming, his small hands clutching her dress.
Then came the roar that froze everyone in the room.
Dominic Mercer’s voice cut through the gunfire like a chainsaw. He didn’t care about the shooter, the panic, or the shattered glass. He dropped to his knees beside Mara, his hands stained with her blood as he lifted her lifeless-feeling body off his son.
“Stay with me, Mara!” Dominic commanded, his voice cracking with a raw, primal panic that terrified his own men. “You hear me? You don’t get to die after saving my boy!”
As the darkness finally pulled Mara under into a cold, silent void, a whispered voice pierced through her fading consciousness—a voice she hadn't heard in eight long years.
“Well, well, look what the cat dragged in. Fancy meeting you here, little sister.”
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Standing near the edge of the fleeing crowd, lowering a small pocket knife he had used to slip away from the chaos, was a man with cold, dead eyes and a familiar scar across his jawline.
Victor Thorne. The man Mara had spent nearly a decade hiding from.
