She Pulled Three Puppies and a Drowning Stranger From an Icy River — Then Learned She Had Rescued the Mafia Boss

CHAPTER 5

The puppies smelled the threat before anyone heard it — bristling fur, a low growl carried on the wind. Dileia blew out the nearest lamp and pulled Lazar into the shadowed corner behind the stone wall.

“They’re here,” she whispered.

Outside, dark figures moved toward the false lights she’d set, exactly as planned. A trap snapped shut on a boot with a sharp cry of pain. Another man stepped straight through thin ice into the creek beneath the snow, cursing at the cold biting his leg. Confusion spread through the formation. Dileia pushed her father’s old rifle through the window crack and fired once into the air — not to kill, but to shatter whatever confidence they’d walked in with.

They fell back to the tree line to regroup. The first attack had broken at the threshold.

“You just bought us time,” Lazar said.

“And they’ll come back more careful,” she answered. She was right.

The second approach was slower, testing every step, avoiding the traps. A blow struck the back door, and it gave. Two men crossed the threshold with guns raised, flashlights sweeping the dark. Dileia blew out the last lamp, plunging the room into near-total black — and in that darkness her advantage returned. She knew this house by feel. They didn’t.

One man struck the table she’d deliberately left in the path and stumbled. Lazar lunged from the shadows with everything he had left, tearing the gun from the man’s hand despite the pain screaming through his side — but the effort cost him. He staggered, breathing broken, fading fast.

The second man turned toward him. Dileia grabbed the extinguished lamp and hurled it, throwing off his aim just as his shot buried itself in the wall instead of Lazar. A rough hand seized her arm and yanked her back; she fought with everything a mother fighting for her life could summon, losing ground against a stronger opponent.

Then the door flew open and Marlo arrived like a storm, exactly on time, having delivered Pippa safely and raced back through the snow. He subdued the man holding Dileia in seconds. “Get him out back — I’ll hold them!”

Dileia dragged Lazar to the stone wall, feeling fever burning through his skin. “Are you all right?”

“I’m alive,” he said. “Because of you. Always because of you.”

Through the broken window, a new figure stepped calmly into the yard — unhurried, certain, a man who believed he already held every piece on the board.

Lazar breathed out a name thick with years of held-back hatred.

“Casius.”