TAKE THAT LITTLE GIRL'S MICROPHONE AWAY, YOU IGNORANT LITTLE MAID! SHE HAS NOTHING IMPORTANT TO SAY!”

Isabella burst into tears at the sound of her mother’s voice. I held the little girl against my chest, burying her face into my neck to cushion her sobs, but my own breath hitched in my throat.

Luca sank onto the edge of the dust-covered desk. His head was bowed, the audio recorder clutched between his hands like a sacred relic.

*“Luca,”* Elena’s voice whispered through the speaker, tremulous and strained. *“I know you think I've become distant. I know you think the paranoia has taken hold of me after my father’s murder. But you must listen to me. Vanessa Bellini is not who she pretends to be.”*

A sharp intake of breath came through the recording, accompanied by the rustle of paper.

*“Six months ago, I began feeling sick after our weekly family dinners at the Bellini estate. Nausea, tremors, blurred vision. Your personal physicians told you it was grief. But I ran my own tests through a private clinic in Switzerland under an assumed name. Luca... they found thallium in my blood. Slow, calculated, undetectable poisoning.”*

Luca’s jaw clenched so violently I heard his teeth grind together from across the room. A terrifying vein throbbed along his temple.

*“I didn't tell you because I didn't have the proof of who was doing it,”* Elena continued, her voice breaking slightly. *“And I knew your pride. I knew an accusation against Antonio Bellini’s daughter without irrefutable evidence would spark a war within the syndicate that would burn Chicago to the ground. But three nights ago, I found Vanessa in your father’s old study. She was searching for the ledgers. The ledgers your father kept that document the Bellini family’s secret betrayal twenty years ago—how Antonio sold your uncle to the feds to secure his own territory.”*

Luca froze. His dark eyes lifted toward the corner of the room where a heavy iron safe stood behind a false bookcase.

*“She didn't find the ledgers,”* the recording went on. *“I had already moved them to Roberto Ferraro’s vault. But she saw me. She looked at me, Luca, and she smiled. She whispered that you would look so much better in black at my funeral, and that Isabella would finally have a mother who knew how to raise a proper Bellini heir. I'm taking Bella tonight. Roberto has arranged a private flight to Zurich. If my car fails... if the brakes fail on the highway... look at the maintenance logs from Antonio’s private garage. They serviced my brakes yesterday. Luca, protect our baby. Protect Bella. Do not let that monster touch my daughter.”*

A sudden beep signaled the end of the recording.

Total, suffocating silence descended upon the study.

Luca did not move. He sat like a stone statue carved from grief and wrath. The silence stretched so long that even Isabella stopped crying, looking at her father with wide, apprehensive eyes.

“Emily,” Luca said quietly.

“Yes, Mr. Moretti?”

“Did my daughter ever tell you about the medicine Vanessa gave her?”

My blood ran cold. “Medicine, sir?”

Luca stood up, his towering figure radiating a deadly aura. He walked over to us, his gaze locking onto Isabella. “Sweetheart. Look at Daddy.”

Isabella lifted her head from my shoulder.

“Did Vanessa give you anything to drink when I was away on business?” Luca asked, his voice impossibly gentle despite the storm raging inside him.

Isabella nodded slowly. “The bitter tea. She told me it was special vitamins so I would grow up pretty like her. She said if I told Daddy, he would be disappointed in me for being weak.”

Luca’s hand tightened around the recorder until the plastic cracked under his grip. He closed his eyes for three seconds. When he opened them, the man who looked back was not just a father. He was the apex predator of the Chicago criminal empire—a man whose mercy had just been permanently eradicated.

“Emily, keep Isabella in this room,” Luca commanded. “Lock the doors from the inside. Do not open them for anyone except Marco, Dante, or myself. Understood?”

“Mr. Moretti, please be careful,” I whispered instinctively.

He stopped at the threshold of the door, glancing back at me. His gaze lingered on my face, noticing how fiercely I was shielding his daughter. “You protected her tonight when everyone else in that ballroom was looking at their plates, Emily. No harm will come to you in this house. Ever.”

He pulled the heavy doors shut. The iron chains rattled as he locked them from the outside, leaving us safe within the fortress of his father’s study.