THE SILENT SACRIFICE: HOW MY MOBSTER HUSBAND BROKE MY HEART TO SAVE MY LIFE

"You always talked too much, Trent," Carlo suddenly rasped from beneath Falcone's gun.

Falcone didn't even have time to react.

Despite three broken ribs, despite hours of brutal torture, Carlo had not been hanging helpless.

He had spent the last ten minutes grinding the plastic zip ties around his wrists against the sharp, ornamental iron scrollwork of the banister.

With a roar of pure, feral rage, Carlo threw his entire body weight backward, snapping the weakened plastic fibers.

His bloody hands shot upward, clamping down on Falcone’s gun wrist like an iron vise, forcing the barrel toward the ceiling.

A deafening shot shattered the chandelier overhead, raining crystal shards across the mezzanine.

"Fire!" Sal roared from the ground floor.

The room erupted into chaos.

Sal’s men opened fire on Falcone’s bodyguards along the railing.

Two of the New York gunmen were hurled backward over the banister by the force of the rifle rounds, crashing onto the marble below.

The third gunman turned his weapon toward Carlo, but I was already moving.

I drew Frank’s Glock from beneath my coat, dropped to one knee to stabilize my sight picture, and placed a single round directly through the gunman’s throat.

He collapsed instantly, his weapon clattering harmlessly down the stairs.

On the mezzanine, Carlo and Falcone were locked in a savage, life-or-death struggle.

Falcone was fresh and armed, but Carlo was driven by a protective madness that defied human anatomy.

Carlo slammed Falcone’s wrist against the iron banister repeatedly until the silver .45 slipped from his fingers and plunged sixty feet down to the living room floor.

Falcone screamed in pain, driving a heavy knee into Carlo’s broken ribs.

Carlo gasped, his grip faltering as the breath exploded from his lungs.

Falcone pulled a serrated combat knife from his tactical belt and lunged forward, aiming the blade directly for Carlo’s throat.

I sprang up the mezzanine stairs two at a time, discarding the empty Glock and drawing the ceramic blade from my forearm sheath.

"Carlo! Down!" I screamed.

Carlo dropped his weight to the floor, rolling away across the blood-slicked boards.

Falcone turned his blade toward me with a desperate, wild swing.

The steel blade sliced through the fabric of my jacket, grazing my shoulder, but I didn't stop my momentum.

I ducked under his extended arm, hooked my boot behind his ankle, and drove the ceramic blade straight through the meat of his right shoulder.

Falcone shrieked, the knife dropping from his paralyzed fingers.

I grabbed him by the throat of his expensive charcoal suit, spinning him around and slamming him violently against the outer glass wall of the penthouse.

The glass, already cracked from the earlier gunfire, groaned under the impact of his weight.

Below him, through the spider-webbed fractures, the entire city of Chicago was spread out like a bed of dying embers under the gray morning light.

Falcone gasped for air, his hands clawing uselessly at my wrists.

"Wait... Bianca... wait..." he choked out, terror finally replacing his arrogance.

"I have accounts... millions... untraceable..."

"You should have left my husband where you found him," I whispered into his ear.

Carlo dragged himself up from the floor, leaning heavily against the railing, his face pale and covered in blood, but his dark eyes fixed entirely on Falcone.

"Bianca," Carlo rasped softly.

I looked back at my husband.

His gaze was not filled with judgment, nor was it filled with horror at the violence in my hands.

It was filled with awe, reverence, and an unconditional, absolute devotion.

"He entered our home without an invitation," Carlo said, his voice deep and steady despite the blood in his chest.

"Show him the door, my heart."

I looked back at Trent Falcone.

I pulled my blade free from his shoulder, planted the sole of my combat boot against the center of his chest, and kicked with every ounce of strength remaining in my body.