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They reached the final corridor.

Steel doors loomed ahead, faint light shining through their seams. Savvine and Xander exchanged a last glance.

He stepped forward and tapped a HUD control.

His shimmering helmet slid back, revealing his face. His eyes were still lit with battle craze, and his lips curled in a predator’s smile.

She did the same, meeting his heated gaze with measured wrath.

The aperture hissed open.

The control room was a circular chamber lined with crimson and gold paneling, the ostentation unmistakably Lombardi.

Velvet-padded consoles. Over-designed thrones for chairs. And a half-dozen lieutenants stood glaring, guns on the ground before them.

Although disarmed, they bristled with fury, tattoos, and pride.

At their center, one man sat forward in the captain’s throne, elbows on knees, hands knotted together.

Thick brows, a crooked nose, olive skin lined with sun and vice, his presence radiating deep-seated hate.

Savvine smirked. ‘Well, well.’

Xander strode in beside her, calm, lethal. ‘If it isn’t Don Salvadore Lombardi himself.’

The mob boss stood, mouth twisted in contempt.

‘Fokkyou, Alexandr-Alexandr Levine Roman,’ he spat. ‘You too, Savvine Bianchi.’

She smiled like a blade drawn. ‘Game. Set. Match.’

Don Salvadore Lombardi’s eyes flashed with venom as Savvine advanced, her posture unyielding.

His lips curled. ‘You treacherous littlestrega,’ he sneered, and in a blink, drew a compact photon weapon from inside his jacket, aiming it straight at her heart.

Time fractured.

Before Savvine could react, Xander moved..

He stepped in front of her in a blur of motion, his chest blocking the shot milliseconds after the laser discharged.

An orchid bloom of power whipped from him, and his spectral lycan form burst from the mist of his shimmer.

Massive. Ancient. Crowned in violet flame, fur laced with radiant glyphs.

He snarled, a profound and shattering growl, as the bolt hit square in the chest.

Xander’s lycan form absorbed the blast, and the resulting glow shimmered all over his body.

His eyes turned into twin storms of controlled fury, a roiling amethyst and molten. The room plummeted in temperature, and the shadows thickened behind him.

Salvadore’s eyes narrowed. Slits of silver-black fire shimmered in his irises as he stepped down from his captain’s seat and fired again.

Xander moved too fast for the eye. The air blurred.

Vivid amethyst flames rippled outward as he took the second laser blast square in the chest.

Power curled around him, folding the light into his spectral form.