The Mafia Boss Thought He Had Hired an Ordinary Nanny—Until She Walked Into His Death Ring and Tamed His $1.4 Million Stallion with a Single Touch

Outside, near the stables, the fog was so thick you could cut it with a knife.

Holly wasn't in the panic room.

When Weston had come down to move her, he found her standing by the tack room with a heavy iron riding crop in one hand and a bolt cutter in the other. She refused to hide while men with guns hunted her.

"I've spent ten years running from men who want to bury me," she told him, her eyes burning with a fierce, reckless light. "I'm not hiding in a box while someone else fights my war."

Weston hadn't argued. He had simply handed her a Sig Sauer P226, checked the magazine, and told her to stay behind his left shoulder.

Now, they stood in the center of the main indoor training arena.

The heavy wooden doors at the far end splintered inward with a deafening crash. Three men in tactical gear rushed into the arena, their weapons raised, scanning the dim space through night-vision goggles.

"Clear!" one shouted.

"Not quite," a voice whispered from the shadows.

Before the men could turn, the massive double doors of the central stalls flew open with a violent slam.

It wasn't a man who charged out of the darkness.

It was Midnight.

The 1,400-pound black Friesian stallion was a terrifying, magnificent engine of raw fury. Driven wild by the shouting, the smell of gunpowder, and the instincts of a predator protecting his territory, the stallion let out a high-pitched, war-like scream that shook the dust from the rafters.

The lead mercenary fired a burst of submachine gun fire into the dirt.

The sound only enraged the horse further.

With a powerful leap, Midnight lunged forward, his massive front hooves striking the first mercenary squarely in the chest, sending him flying backward through the air before he slammed into the wooden rail and went limp.

The second man panicked, swinging his rifle toward the horse.

Holly didn't hesitate. She stepped out from behind the pillar, raised the Sig Sauer with both hands, and squeezed the trigger twice.

Bang. Bang.

Both rounds caught the mercenary in the shoulder and thigh, dropping him instantly into the dirt.

The third man—the lead fixer who had recognized her from the federal bulletin—turned his weapon directly at Holly, his finger tightening on the trigger.

Before he could fire, a shadow detached itself from the darkness beside him.

Weston moved with terrifying, lightning-fast violence. He slammed his forearm across the mercenary's throat, driving him against the arena wall with a bone-crunching impact that knocked the weapon from his hands.

Weston pressed the barrel of his own pistol directly beneath the man's chin, his gray eyes burning like frozen coals.

"You came to my house," Weston whispered, his voice so cold it made the air feel like ice. "You threatened my daughter. And you laid hands on the woman under my roof."

The mercenary choked, his eyes wide with terror as he stared into the face of a man who had already decided he was already dead. "Salvatore... Salvatore said—"