THE MAFIA BOSS’S FIANCÉE TOLD ME TO THROW OUT THE OLD WOMAN’S SOUP—THEN LUCA MORETTI SMELLED IT AND SAID, “SARAH ATE THIS EVERY DAY BEFORE SHE DIED.”

The kitchen felt like a sealed vault running out of oxygen.

Luca stood motionless, holding the torn slip of paper between two fingers. The raw, terrifying authority that had kept the Moretti empire intact for three generations rolled off him in waves.

“Who had access to your apartment, Evelyn?” Luca asked.

“No one,” the old woman said, her voice trembling. “Only my landlady... and a cleaning service that comes on alternate Thursdays.”

Vanessa took a slow breath, trying desperately to rebuild her composure.

“Luca, darling, think about this logically. This woman is in her seventies. She lives in an old walk-up in Pilsen. Anyone could have picked the lock. Or perhaps she lost the second page herself and fabricated this story for money.”

Luca turned his head slowly. The look he gave Vanessa made her flinch backward.

“Evelyn Hart refused a two-million-dollar endowment from my family when Sarah passed,” Luca said, each word landing like a lead weight. “She took only her standard hourly wage. She doesn't fabricate stories for money.”

He looked at me.

“Claire.”

“Yes, Mr. Moretti.”

“Take Lily up to the nursery. Have Marco and two guards stay inside the room with her. Lock the secondary security doors.”

“Daddy?” Lily’s small voice trembled. “Are we not having cake?”

Luca crouched down until he was eye-level with his daughter. The terrifying coldness vanished from his eyes, replaced entirely by fierce, protective devotion.

“We will have cake, my heart. Mrs. Hart’s soup first, and then the biggest slice of chocolate cake in the world. But right now, Daddy has to handle business with Vanessa. Go with Claire.”

Lily nodded, holding tightly to my hand.

I led her out of the kitchen through the private service corridor, bypassing the crowded ballroom where laughter and the clinking of champagne flutes still echoed blissfully unaware of the storm brewing beneath the surface.

Upstairs, the nursery was warm and bright. Marco, Luca’s most trusted head of private security, was already waiting by the door.

“Orders, Claire?” Marco asked quietly.

“Full lockdown on this floor. Nobody enters without Mr. Moretti’s direct visual clearance. Not even Miss Bellini.”

Marco’s eyes narrowed slightly, but he didn't question it. He simply nodded and stepped inside, his hand resting casually near his concealed shoulder holster.

I waited until Lily was safely coloring at her low wooden table before heading back down the spiral staircase. But instead of returning to the foyer, I heard hushed, panicked whispering coming from the library at the end of the east wing.

The door was cracked an inch.

I pressed my back against the wainscoting and listened.

“You don't know what you're interfering with, Luca,” Vanessa’s voice hissed. The honeyed sweetness was completely gone, replaced by a venomous desperation. “Sarah was not the saint you remember. She was paranoid. She was hallucinating in those final months.”

“She knew your face seven years before you spilled your drink on my jacket at the Drake Hotel,” Luca replied. His voice was deathly calm. “She knew you were watching my daughter. She knew you had an alias.”

“That photograph proves nothing! St. Jude’s employed over four hundred healthcare workers!”

“Then why did you tell me your family lived in northern Italy for four generations? Why did my background checks on you only show financial activity starting six years ago?”

A heavy thud echoed—the sound of Luca slamming his palm against the mahogany desk.

“Who sent you into my house, Vanessa?”

“Nobody sent me! I love you! I love Lily!”

“If you speak my daughter’s name again with a lie on your lips,” Luca warned, his tone dropping an octave into pure menace, “you will not walk out of these gates tonight.”

There was a frantic scuffle, the sound of heels clicking rapidly toward the private garden terrace doors, and then the library door swung wide open.

Vanessa rushed out, her makeup slightly smeared, her chest heaving. When she saw me standing in the hall, her eyes flashed with pure hatred.

“You’re enjoying this, aren't you, Dawson?” she whispered viciously.

“I only care about Lily,” I replied evenly.

“You won't care about anything when this family falls apart. If you know what's good for you, pack your bags and leave tonight before Luca finds out the whole truth.”

She pushed past me and vanished down the corridor toward her private suite.

I stood there for a second, my heart hammering.

Before Luca finds out the whole truth.

What truth?

I walked into the library.

Luca was standing by the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, staring at Sarah’s torn letter under the green reading lamp. His tuxedo jacket was unbuttoned, his tie loosened. He looked like a man who had suddenly realized the ground beneath his feet was an illusion.

“Claire,” he said without turning around.

“Lily is safe with Marco, sir.”

He let out a ragged breath.

“Evelyn told me something else before I sent her to the guest suite under guard.”

“What did she say?”

Luca turned to face me. In his hand, he held an old brass key with a worn blue ribbon tied to the loop.

“Sarah had a private summer cottage in Lake Geneva. A place I bought for her before the war with the Rossi family escalated. She used to go there when the city became too dangerous.”

“I remember you mentioning it once.”

“I haven't set foot in that house since Sarah’s funeral,” Luca whispered. “Evelyn said Sarah hid an unedited carbon copy of all her personal journals behind the antique wallpaper in the master bedroom there.”

He walked over to me, extending the brass key.

“I cannot leave this estate tonight without alerting our guests and the syndicates watching my every move. Vanessa has allies in this city. If she realizes what Sarah left behind, she will have that cottage burned to ashes before dawn.”

I looked down at the brass key.

“You want me to go.”

“Take my unmarked sedan. The one parked behind the greenhouse. Take the back roads through Kenosha.”