THE MAFIA BOSS WATCHED ME CARRY A HEAVY SOUP TRAY PRESSED AGAINST MY HIP—THEN HIS FIANCÉE SAID, “HER HAND GOT CAUGHT IN THE LINEN CLOSET,” BEFORE HE HAD ASKED WHY I COULDN’T HOLD IT NORMALLY.** I almost made it to the table. Six more steps.

“My help?” I asked, holding Leo tightly against my chest. “I’m a maid, Mr. Moretti. I don’t know where mafia secrets are buried.”

“You clean my father’s old study,” Luca said, his eyes perfectly steady. “The room at the end of the east wing. The one Vanessa is forbidden to enter.”

I nodded slowly. The room was practically a museum. Heavy velvet curtains, a massive oak desk, and walls lined with leather-bound books. I dusted it every Tuesday.

“My father was a paranoid man,” Luca said, stepping closer, keeping his voice low so as not to frighten Leo. “He didn’t trust safes. He trusted architecture. The ledger is hidden in a hollow compartment behind the baseboard of the fireplace.”

“Then go get it,” I said.

“I can’t,” Luca replied. “The room is sealed with an electronic biometric lock. Only my thumbprint opens it. But the lock is wired to alert Marcus, the head of security, anytime the door is opened after 10:00 PM.”

“Marcus is bringing you the SUV,” I reminded him.

“Which means Marcus is currently sitting in the security control room, watching the monitors,” Luca said. “If I trigger that door, he’ll know I’m not at the engagement party. He’ll ask questions. If Vanessa has loyalists inside my security team, they’ll tip her off.”

I stared at him. “Then how do we get inside?”

Luca reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, heavy brass key.

“This is a manual override key,” Luca explained. “It bypasses the biometric scanner. But it only works if someone simultaneously disables the local alarm box inside the adjoining library. It requires two people. One to hold the alarm switch, one to turn the key.”

I looked down at my son. Leo was shivering, wrapped in my coat, exhausted and terrified. I couldn’t leave him.

“I’ll stay with the boy,” a voice said from the shadows.

I spun around, a scream dying in my throat.

Julian stepped out from behind a row of washing machines. He had followed us from the study. He looked completely shattered, a hollow shell of the confident best man from the dinner table.

Luca raised his gun, pointing it squarely at Julian’s chest.

“I’m unarmed, Luca,” Julian said, raising his empty hands. “You have my gun. I just... I couldn’t sit in that room doing nothing. Not while Mia is out there.”

He looked at me, tears brimming in his eyes.

“Claire, I swear on my life, I will not let anyone through that door. Let me guard your son. Please. Let me do one honorable thing tonight.”

I hesitated, my heart warring between maternal panic and the desperate truth in Julian’s eyes. He was a father trying to save his daughter. He understood exactly what I was feeling.

I knelt down to Leo’s eye level.

“Baby, Mommy has to go help Mr. Moretti for ten minutes. Julian is going to sit right here with you. Can you be brave for ten more minutes?”

Leo nodded bravely, sniffing. “Can we go home after?”

“I promise,” I said, kissing his cheek.

I stood up and looked at Luca. “Let’s go.”

We left the laundry room, moving swiftly up the servant stairs to the second floor. The east wing was quiet, the heavy carpet swallowing our footsteps.

We reached the adjoining library.

“The alarm box is behind the painting of the hunting dogs,” Luca whispered.

I walked over, pulling the heavy frame away from the wall. Behind it was a small metal panel with a heavy toggle switch.

“When I give the signal, hold it down,” Luca instructed, walking out into the hallway toward his father’s study.

I gripped the switch. My injured left hand throbbed in protest, but I ignored it.

“Now,” Luca hissed from the hall.

I slammed the switch down.

I heard the heavy click of the brass key turning.

“Got it,” Luca said.

I let go of the switch and hurried out to the hallway.

Luca pushed the heavy oak door open. The room smelled of old paper, leather, and stale cigar smoke. The air was frigid.

Luca walked straight to the massive stone fireplace. He knelt on the hearth, pulling a pocket knife from his suit trousers. He wedged the blade into a tiny seam in the wooden baseboard and pried it outward.

The wood popped free.

Inside the dark recess was a thick, black leather-bound book.

The Ledger.

Luca pulled it out. He didn’t open it. He just held it, staring at the cover like it was a live snake.

“Thirty years of blood,” he murmured.

But as he stood up, the moonlight streaming through the window caught something else hidden inside the baseboard compartment.

Something small and metallic.

I stepped closer. “What is that?”

Luca reached back in. He pulled out a crumpled, faded Amtrak train ticket.

And a heavy, gold locket.

The reversal hit him instantly. He stared at the locket, his breath hitching.

“This was my mother’s,” Luca whispered, his voice cracking. “She wore it every day. My father told me she lost it in the river the year she died.”

He clicked the gold latch open.

Inside wasn’t a picture of Luca or his father.

It was a picture of a little girl with bright blonde hair.

Vanessa.

“I don’t understand,” I breathed.

Luca’s eyes widened as the devastating truth finally locked into place.

“Vanessa isn’t my fiancée because my father arranged a good match,” he said, his voice entirely hollow. “Vanessa is my half-sister.”

The revelation hung in the freezing air, suffocating in its tragedy.

“My father had an affair,” Luca said, staring at the photo. “With Vanessa’s mother. He kept it a secret. When Vanessa’s mother threatened to expose him, he ordered a hit on her. He killed her in a staged car accident.”

Luca looked at the train ticket.

“Vanessa found out. She found the locket. She knows he killed her mother. That’s why she infiltrated this family. She doesn’t want the ledger to turn it over to the FBI. She wants it to find the names of the men who drove her mother off the road.”

She was going to kill them all.

And she was going to burn the Moretti family to the ground doing it.

Before Luca could process the horror of his own family’s sins, the heavy oak door to the study slammed shut.

The lock clicked.

We were trapped.

From the hallway, a voice called out.

It wasn’t Marcus. It wasn’t Julian.

It was Vanessa.