The Mafia Baby Was Starving to Death — Then the Maid Did the One Thing His Father Was Too Broken to Understand

"Dante!" Mateo’s voice cracked over the tactical radio clipped to Dante’s vest. "They're coming up the grand staircase! Heavy armor! We're holding the second-floor landing, but they've got flashbangs!"

Dante’s jaw tightened. He looked at Wren, then down at Nico, who had woken up and started crying softly at the sound of the explosion.

Time had run out.

"Fall back to the third-floor corridor," Dante barked into his radio. "Draw them into the kill zone by the portrait gallery. Do not let them reach the nursery."

He turned back to Wren, his hands coming up to grip her shoulders. There was no more time for hesitation, no more pretending they were just employer and employee.

"Listen to me," Dante said, his voice fierce, desperate, and intensely intimate. "If anything happens to me, the safe room code is 0-4-1-2. Isabel’s birthday. There is a tunnel leading down to the cliffs where a boat is waiting. Mateo will take you across the Sound to a safehouse in Canada. Everything you need is already down there."

Tears spilled over Wren’s cheeks. "I'm not going without you, Dante. Do you hear me? I am not losing another person I care about."

Dante froze. The words hung in the suffocating air between them, heavy with everything they had unspoken for weeks. A raw, intense emotion flickered across his dark eyes—fear, not of death, but of leaving her behind.

He reached up, his rough, calloused hand cupping her cheek, wiping away a tear with his thumb.

"If I survive this night," Dante whispered fiercely, "you aren't leaving my side ever again. Do you understand me?"

Wren nodded, her breath catching in her throat. "I understand."

He pressed a fierce, desperate kiss to her forehead, then grabbed his rifle, spun around, and stepped out into the hallway, slamming the reinforced steel door shut behind him. The heavy locks clicked into place, plunging Wren and the baby into the soft, secure glow of the emergency lights inside the safe room.

Outside, the war for the Salerno estate erupted into absolute chaos. Gunfire echoed through the halls like rolling thunder, the sharp cracks of automatic weapons mixing with the shouts of men and the shattering of priceless antiques. Wren clutched Nico to her chest, rocking back and forth on the edge of the emergency cot, her lips moving in a silent, desperate prayer.

Ten minutes passed that felt like ten lifetimes.

Then, the gunfire stopped.

Silence fell over the mansion—a heavy, suffocating silence that was even more terrifying than the noise. Wren held her breath, staring at the steel door.