Time seemed to slow as Victor's hand emerged from his jacket, the gleam of polished steel catching the light from the crystal chandelier. The same gun that had killed me in my previous life, held by the same hand, aimed with the same deadly intent. But this time, I wasn't caught off guard.

I crashed into Damian, sending both of us tumbling behind the head table as the first shot rang out. The bullet shattered the champagne flute that had been in my hand moments before, spraying crystal and Dom Pérignon across the white tablecloth.

"Stay down!" Damian's voice was sharp with command as he shielded me with his body, his gray eyes blazing with a fury I had never seen before. Around us, the ballroom had erupted into complete chaos – screams, stampeding feet, the crash of overturned chairs and tables as three hundred guests fled for their lives.

"How touching," Victor's voice carried over the pandemonium, cold and controlled despite the insanity of what he was doing. "The loving couple, together until the end. Though I'm afraid the end is coming sooner than you planned."

I could hear his footsteps approaching, measured and deliberate. In my previous life, this was when he had cornered me alone, when Damian had already been convinced of my guilt. But this time was different. This time, my husband was between me and the gun.

"Uncle Victor, put the weapon down." Damian's voice carried the authority of someone accustomed to being obeyed, but there was an edge of desperation beneath it. "Whatever this is about, we can work it out."

"Work it out?" Victor's laugh was harsh and bitter. "The way we 'worked out' your father's concerns about my business practices? The way we 'worked out' the board's questions about the missing funds from the Singapore project?"

Missing funds. This was new information, something I hadn't learned in my previous timeline. Victor's corruption went deeper than I had realized.

"You killed my father." Damian's voice was flat, emotionless, but I could feel the tension radiating from his body.

"Your father was weak," Victor replied dismissively. "He would have destroyed everything our family built with his naive idealism and moral posturing. Someone had to think practically about the future of the Black empire."

I could see Victor's feet beneath the overturned table we were hiding behind. He was moving closer, trying to find an angle for a clear shot. But the chaos in the ballroom was working in our favor – overturned furniture provided cover, and the emergency lighting that had kicked in created shifting shadows that made us harder to target.

Think, Evira. You lived through this once. You know how it ends. What can you do differently?

"Marcus!" I called out, hoping Damian's assistant was still in the ballroom somewhere. "The fire alarm!"

I heard the sound of running feet, and then the piercing wail of the fire alarm system filled the air. Emergency sprinklers activated throughout the ballroom, sending cascades of water down from the ceiling. The added chaos and reduced visibility would give us precious seconds.

"Clever girl," Victor's voice was closer now, maybe ten feet away. "But cleverness won't save you from a bullet."

That's when I remembered something else from my previous life – something I had noticed but hadn't understood at the time. Victor was left-handed, but he held his gun in his right hand. The unfamiliar grip would affect his accuracy, especially in the chaos and poor lighting.

"Damian," I whispered urgently, "he's left-handed but using his right. When I say go, move left."

Before Damian could question my logic, I grabbed one of the heavy crystal vases from the fallen centerpiece and hurled it to our right, where it crashed against the far wall. As Victor instinctively turned toward the sound, I shouted, "Go!"

We broke cover, moving left as I had instructed. Victor's shot went wide, shattering a mirror behind where we had been crouched. The sound was deafening in the enclosed space, but we were already moving, using the water from the sprinklers and the maze of overturned furniture to stay ahead of him.

"You can run," Victor called out, his voice echoing strangely in the water-soaked ballroom, "but you can't hide forever. And you can't change what's already been set in motion."

What did that mean? In my previous timeline, I had died before learning about any larger plan. Was there more to his scheme than just killing me?

We had reached the service entrance to the kitchen when I heard the sound I had been dreading – Victor's footsteps, getting closer again. But then I heard something else. Other footsteps. Multiple sets, moving with military precision.

"NYPD! Drop your weapon!"

The police. Someone had called them – probably multiple someones, given the gunshots in a ballroom full of New York's elite.

"This is a private family matter!" Victor shouted back, but his voice had lost its earlier confidence. "You have no authority here!"

"Drop your weapon now, or we will consider you a hostile threat!"

I could hear Victor muttering to himself, the words too low to make out but the tone increasingly desperate. A man who had spent years carefully orchestrating events was seeing his control slip away completely.

"He's not going to surrender," I whispered to Damian. "He has too much to lose."

"Then we need to end this ourselves," Damian replied grimly. "Before he hurts someone else."

Before he hurts someone else. The words struck me oddly. In my previous life, Damian had been part of the plan to eliminate me. But this Damian – the man who had just protected me with his own body, who had believed my accusations over his uncle's evidence – was a different person entirely.

Or maybe he was always this person, and Victor's manipulation ran deeper than I realized.

"Sir! Drop your weapon immediately!"

The police were closing in, but Victor still had his gun, and desperate men with weapons were unpredictable. I could hear him moving again, probably trying to find a position where he could make a final stand.

"Evira," Damian said urgently, "I need you to listen to me very carefully. When I give the signal, I want you to run for the main entrance. Don't look back, don't hesitate, just run."

"What about you?"

"I'm going to make sure Victor can't hurt anyone else."

No. I had already lost him once to Victor's schemes. I wasn't going to lose him again to Victor's desperation.

"We do this together," I said firmly. "I'm not leaving you."

Before Damian could argue, Victor's voice rang out across the ballroom one final time.

"If I can't have the Black empire, then no one can!"

The sound that followed wasn't a gunshot. It was something much worse – the distinctive metallic click of a grenade pin being pulled.

A grenade. Victor wasn't just planning to kill us. He was planning to bring down the entire ballroom, along with anyone who might still be inside.

"Everybody out!" Damian roared, his voice carrying over the sound of the fire alarm. "Now!"

We ran. Through the service entrance, down the hallway, past the panicked catering staff who were already evacuating. Behind us, I could hear the police shouting orders, the sound of boots on marble, and underneath it all, Victor's voice counting down.

"Ten... nine... eight..."

We're not going to make it. The main entrance was too far away, and even the service exits might not be enough to get us clear of the blast radius.

"The wine cellar!" I shouted, remembering the layout of the mansion from my previous life. "It's reinforced concrete!"

"Seven... six... five..."

We reached the cellar stairs just as the world exploded behind us.

The blast was overwhelming – a wave of sound and pressure that seemed to go on forever. The lights went out, emergency power failed, and we were plunged into absolute darkness. Dust and debris rained down from above, and I could hear the groaning of stressed stone and steel.

But we were alive.

For several minutes, we lay in the darkness, coughing and choking on the dust, waiting to see if the mansion's structure would hold. Gradually, the sounds of destruction faded, replaced by the distant wail of sirens and the shouts of emergency responders.

"Evira?" Damian's voice was hoarse but steady. "Are you hurt?"

"I don't think so." I took inventory of my body – bruises, cuts from flying debris, but nothing serious. "You?"

"I'm fine." His hand found mine in the darkness, warm and reassuring. "We did it. We survived."

We survived. But barely, and only because I had knowledge from my previous life. If this had been my first time through these events, we would both be dead.

"Damian," I said softly, "there's something I need to tell you. About tonight, about everything that happened. About how I knew—"

"Later," he interrupted gently. "Right now, let's just focus on getting out of here alive."

But even as we waited for rescue, I couldn't shake the feeling that this was only the beginning. Victor was dead, his immediate threat eliminated. But his last words echoed in my mind: If I can't have the Black empire, then no one can.

What had he set in motion beyond tonight's events? What other plans were already in progress, timed to activate regardless of whether he survived?

The real game is just beginning, I realized. Tonight was just the opening move.

From somewhere above us came the sound of voices calling our names, emergency responders searching for survivors. Soon, we would be pulled from this cellar into a world where Victor Black was dead but his legacy of corruption and betrayal lived on.

The first move had been played. Now it was time to see what the other players would do in response.