Three hundred guests watched the fiancée of New York's most feared mafia boss swing her jeweled heel toward my leg, trying to send me crashing into a tower of champagne glasses. But before she could touch me, I caught her ankle with one hand—and when an elderly man near the orchestra whispered, "That style is impossible," the mafia boss himself went pale, as though he'd just seen a dead man come back to life.

Chen raised his hand, giving the signal to fire.

"Move!" Alexander roared, grabbing my arm and throwing us both behind a stack of steel shipping crates just as bullets shattered the concrete where we had been standing.

Gunfire erupted across the warehouse. Alexander’s security team returned fire, creating a chaotic wall of noise, flashing muzzles, and shattering glass.

"Sophia, stay down!" Alexander commanded, unholstering two handguns and returning fire over the crate, dropping two Syndicate enforcers advancing down the main aisle.

"Alexander! Behind you!" I screamed.

Three Syndicate assassins dropped from the catwalk above, landing silently behind Alexander with iron batons drawn.

Alexander turned, firing his weapon, but one of the attackers struck his wrist with a heavy rod, knocking his gun across the slick floor. The second attacker lunged at his head with a tactical blade.

I didn't hesitate.

I vaulted over the steel crate, my sneakers gripping the wet surface, and executed a flying kick that struck the second attacker directly in the collarbone, sending him spinning into a pile of wooden pallets.

The remaining two attackers turned their attention to me.

I fell into the stance of the Quiet Current.

The first attacker swung his heavy baton in a lethal horizontal strike aimed at my neck. I stepped into his range, sliding my left arm along the inside of his elbow, deflecting the blow upward while using my palm to strike his chin. He dropped like a sack of stones.

The second attacker lunged with a combat knife.

I read his shoulder hips before he even thrust the blade. I caught his wrist, twisted it outward using his own momentum, and swept his front leg out from under him. The knife clattered harmlessly against the concrete.