Three hundred guests watched the fiancée of New York's most feared mafia boss swing her jeweled heel toward my leg, trying to send me crashing into a tower of champagne glasses. But before she could touch me, I caught her ankle with one hand—and when an elderly man near the orchestra whispered, "That style is impossible," the mafia boss himself went pale, as though he'd just seen a dead man come back to life.

Alexander didn't hesitate. His weapon barked twice, dropping the two nearest guards before they could turn their sights. Silas Vance followed, his heavy shotgun roaring with concussive thunder, clearing the left flank.

The ballroom erupted into absolute chaos.

Gunfire tore through the silk drapes and shattered the remaining crystal chandeliers. Alexander moved with ruthless, terrifying efficiency, flanking behind overturned tables, covering my advance with pinpoint suppression fire.

"Sophia! Move!" Alexander roared over the din.

I didn't need to be told.

The remaining four operatives scrambled to re-engage, but I was already within their perimeter. The Quiet Current did not fight the bullets; it moved where the bullets were not.

I slid across the polished marble, using the slick glass fragments to accelerate my slide beneath a hail of automatic fire. My rattan sticks uncoiled from my back like twin strikes of lightning.

*Clack. Crack.*

I shattered the first operative’s wrist, redirected his falling rifle into the second operative’s ribs, and drove the butt of my stick into his temple. They collapsed together in a tangle of limbs.

The third man drew a combat machete, swinging with savage, downward brutality.

*Let the water yield.*

I didn't block the blade. I stepped inside the strike, brushing the flat of the steel past my shoulder with my left palm, while my right stick drove upward into his throat. He gagged, his momentum carrying him directly into my hip toss. He crashed onto a pile of overturned mahogany chairs and did not move again.

The fourth operative turned to run, but Alexander met him at the center aisle, driving the butt of his rifle into the man's chest with a sickening crunch that ended the fight.

Silence slammed back down over the ballroom, broken only by the crackle of burning velvet curtains and the heavy, ragged breathing of Donald Lane.

The senator dropped to his knees, the handcuffed briefcase dragging his arm down. "Alexander... please. We can make a deal. I have names. I have the entire federal oversight committee—"

"Shut up, Donald," Alexander said coldly, keeping his rifle leveled at the senator's forehead.

Victoria stood frozen near the head table, the pearl-handled revolver shaking violently in her grip. Her makeup was ruined, black mascara running down her pale cheeks like ink. She looked at Alexander, then at the bodies of her elite security detail lying broken across the marble, and finally at me.

"You ruined everything," Victoria wept, her voice high and deranged. "You were nobody! You were a dirty little servant! You had no right to touch me!"

She swung the revolver toward me, her finger tightening on the trigger.

She was ten paces away. Alexander was too far to reach her.

I didn't draw a gun. I took one single, explosive step forward, drawing my father's right rattan stick back to my shoulder, and threw it like a javelin.

The thirty-inch rod cut through the air with a deafening whistle, striking Victoria’s right wrist with surgical precision.

*Crack.*

The revolver flew from her shattered grip, spinning harmlessly across the marble. Victoria shrieked, clutching her broken wrist to her chest, collapsing onto her knees in the middle of the ruined champagne pyramid she had once tried to knock me into.

Alexander walked slowly to her side. He didn't look at her with anger. He looked at her with pure, unadulterated disgust.

"You wanted to know why she wasn't a nobody, Victoria?" Alexander said softly, looking down at his former fiancée. "Because her father died like a king to save a stranger. While your father lives like a rat, selling out his own country for offshore accounts."

He gestured to Marcus, who had just entered the ballroom with eight fresh enforcers.

"Secure Donald Lane and his daughter," Alexander ordered, his voice echoing through the ruined hall. "Deliver the senator and the evidence files to the Department of Justice in Washington tonight. As for Victoria... let her father's disgrace be her inheritance. Strip her accounts, seize the properties, and ensure she never enters this city again."

Victoria was dragged away, screaming curses that died into pathetic sobs as the elevator doors closed.