The Mafia Boss Ignored the Chubby Glassblower—Until the Furnace Exploded and She Saved His Life. But When He Discovered What She Had Sealed Inside His Glass Sculpture, He Realized the Explosion Was No Accident!

For the next six days, Ren lived in a furnace of her own making. The basement became her entire world. Ezra Calhoun kept his word with chilling precision: food was delivered twice a day by armed guards, fresh cylinders of compressed oxygen and argon were wheeled in without question, and Milo was brought down every afternoon to assist her with gathering cullet and cleaning tools.

Calhoun watched.

He didn't speak often. He would sit at a raised drafting table in the corner of the studio with an open ledger, a tumbler of whiskey, and a loaded snub-nosed revolver resting on his papers. He watched her move. At first, he watched with the suspicion of a predator assessing a threat, but as the hours turned into days, his gaze shifted. He watched the way her heavy hips balanced against the pivot of the pipe, the fluid grace of her scarred wrists turning sixty pounds of glowing glass, and the sheer power in her round shoulders as she wrestled heat that would have broken lesser men.

""You don't breathe when you shape the head,"" he observed on the fifth night, his voice cutting through the hiss of the glory hole. It was nearly three in the morning. Ren was drenched in sweat, her hair plastered to her temple, her rough linen shirt clinging to her curves.

""If you breathe onto borosilicate while it's above a thousand degrees, the moisture in your breath causes micro-fractures in the skin,"" Ren muttered, keeping her eyes glued to the white-hot globule on the pontil rod. ""Your father would have known that.""

Ezra stood up and walked over, stopping just beyond the heat perimeter. He picked up the heavy iron shears and handed them to her without being asked, catching the exact rhythm of her movement. His hand brushed hers—calloused skin against calloused skin, an electric shock that made her breath hitch despite herself.

""My father was a butcher who wore a suit,"" Ezra said quietly. ""He didn't care how the glass was made. He only cared what it could hide.""

Ren froze for a fraction of a second, then quickly rolled the rod on the steel marver, flattening the breast of the glass bird. ""What is that supposed to mean?""

""The Ashen Order didn't ship finished crystal to Europe because they appreciated the arts, Ren,"" Ezra murmured, stepping closer, his shoulder nearly touching hers. ""A solid glass casting, if hollowed correctly with an internal vacuum chamber, can pass through any customs inspection in the world. Diamonds don't show up on standard density tests if they are encased in lead crystal of the same refractive index.""

Ren kept rolling the rod, her pulse hammering in her ears. ""And is that what you want me to do? Smuggle blood diamonds for your dinner party?""

""No,"" Ezra said, his voice dropping into a dark, razor-sharp whisper. ""I want to catch the man who has been using my shipping lines to move them behind my back. The man who tried to kill me with that furnace when he realized I was auditing the manifests.""

Suddenly, the studio’s overhead halogen lights flickered twice and died.

The glory hole’s orange glow cast monstrous, dancing shadows across the concrete walls. From the ceiling vents above, the faint, sickening smell of sulfur and burning motor oil began to drift down.

""Get behind the table,"" Ezra commanded instantly, his hand dropping to the revolver at his hip. The transition from brooding mob boss to lethal killer took less than a heartbeat.

Ren didn't drop the pipe. The glass was at twelve hundred degrees; if she laid it down, it would weld itself to the steel bench and shatter the three days of work she had poured into the core. ""The ventilation damper just closed,"" she hissed, sniffing the air. ""Someone cut the auxiliary exhaust fan upstairs! The carbon monoxide is going to dump straight down the flue!""

""Drop the rod, Ren!"" Ezra barked, grabbing her good arm to pull her toward the emergency exit.

""No!"" she shouted, wrenching free with surprising strength. ""Help me into the lehr! If the thermal drop hits this glass now, the shockwave will blow out every quartz bulb in this room!""

Through the darkened doorway leading from the service elevator, heavy footsteps sounded. Two men in tactical balaclavas stepped into the studio, their silhouettes outlined by the orange mouth of the furnace. In their hands were suppressed submachine guns.

They didn't hesitate. They raised their weapons directly at Ezra's chest.

Ren acted before thought could intervene. With a guttural roar, she swung the long stainless-steel blowpipe like a quarterstaff. At the end of the five-foot rod sat thirty pounds of glowing, semi-molten glass burning at thirteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit. The molten mass struck the first gunman square in the chest, igniting his nylon vest in an instant fireball of screaming agony.

The second gunman fired a burst, but Ezra had already tackled Ren to the concrete, rolling over her to cover her body with his own as 9mm rounds sparked wildly against the marver table and shattered the nearby displays. With a cold, practiced motion, Ezra raised his snub-nosed revolver between her shoulder and his chest, firing three steady rounds into the dark.

The second gunman dropped with a wet thud.

Silence descended, broken only by the crackle of the burning vest and the heavy, ragged breathing of two bodies pressed flush against the concrete floor. Ezra lay fully on top of Ren, his heavy chest rising and falling against hers, his eyes inches from her face in the flickering amber gloom. For three long seconds, neither of them moved. His hand was tangled in the hair at the nape of her neck, his fingers warm and gripping.