THE MAFIA BOSS WATCHED THIRTY-FOUR ENGAGEMENT GUESTS FALL SILENT AS HIS BLEEDING MAID COLLAPSED, BUT THE EMPTY WHEELCHAIR BESIDE HER RAISED A TERRIFYING QUESTION.

“Were you planning to make my mother disappear before our wedding?”

Luca Moretti asked the question so quietly that I could hear blood dripping from my fingers onto the ballroom floor. I wanted him to shout. I wanted him to be the terrifying man the newspapers described, the man whose enemies supposedly crossed the street when they recognized his silhouette. Instead, he stood perfectly still, holding a paper with his own forged signature, waiting for the woman he intended to marry to answer him.

Vanessa Bellini pressed a hand to the diamonds at her throat. “Luciano, you know how difficult your mother has been since her illness. I was arranging specialized care. That is all.”

“Her name is Isabella,” Luca said. “She told you no.”

“She's frightened of hospitals.”

“Then why does this document forbid her family from visiting?”

Vanessa's gaze darted toward me. “Because certain employees have been encouraging her paranoia.”

I held the wheelchair upright with my elbows. The muscles in my forearms burned, and the room rocked around me. One of the guests, an elderly gentleman with a silver pocket watch, stepped forward as though he wanted to help. Vanessa's father caught his sleeve. Nobody wanted to be the first to interfere with a Moretti family argument.

Luca turned to Daniel, his security chief. “Go to the south gate. Keep that van there. No one drives away until we know who's inside and whether they're safe. Call the police and an ambulance.” Then he addressed the guests. “The celebration is over. My staff will help anyone who wishes to leave through the main entrance.”

That was when I finally released the handles. My fingers wouldn't uncurl. Luca caught the chair before it rolled, then caught me as my knees gave way.

“I tried to stop them,” I whispered.

“I can see that.” His dark eyes moved over the slashes on my hands. “You don't have to prove anything else tonight.”

I wanted to believe him. But somewhere outside, his mother might still be locked inside a vehicle. “Please don't let them move her,” I said. “She told me she wanted to stay.”

“We're going to her.”

He didn't carry me like the helpless heroine in a story. He asked whether I could stand and listened when I said no. He called a doctor to examine me, then arranged for two employees to bring a chair, clean towels, and a first-aid kit. The ballroom emptied in uneasy waves. I watched the guests file past the white roses, looking anywhere but at the spots of blood on the polished marble.

Vanessa tried to leave with them.

“Not yet,” Luca said.

“You can't imprison me.”

“I haven't. You're free to speak to the officers when they arrive. But you are no longer welcome in my home.”

“You'll regret humiliating me in front of everyone.”

Luca glanced at the empty wheelchair. “I already regret what happened while I trusted you.”

She walked out with her father, furious and white-faced. Daniel assigned a guard to preserve the transfer documents and the bedroom corridor. Luca stayed beside me until the estate physician, Dr. Miriam Shaw, knelt on the carpet to inspect my wrists.

“These need cleaning and likely stitches,” she said. “Some are deeper than they look.”

I jerked when she touched a cut near my thumb. “Mrs. Moretti—”

“Has a son who knows where the south gate is,” Dr. Shaw answered. “You have hands that need attention.”

For the first time all evening, I allowed myself to close my eyes.

Minutes later, a radio crackled. Daniel's voice came through: “Boss, she's here. The rear door is locked from the outside, but we've opened it. Mrs. Moretti is conscious. She's asking for you.”

Luca's face changed so sharply that I understood how long he'd been afraid of losing her. “Put her on the phone.”

A weak but furious voice reached us. “Luciano? Please tell me you didn't marry that girl while I was gone.”

A sob escaped him, half laughter and half grief. “Not a chance, Mama.”

“Good. Now someone please get me out of this ridiculous van.”

I might have laughed too, if the room hadn't begun to tilt. Dr. Shaw ordered a stretcher and persuaded Luca to let her take me to the small medical room near the front hall. I had been raised to apologize for every inconvenience I caused. I apologized when she cut away the makeshift bandages, when an antiseptic swab stung, and when I couldn't answer a simple question without crying.

“You are injured, Sophie,” she said firmly. “You are not making trouble.”

That sentence hurt in a place no bandage could reach.

An hour later, with my hands cleaned and wrapped and a mild pain medication beginning to work, I heard Isabella Moretti approaching. She was being brought in her own wheelchair, the one I'd pushed into the ballroom. Her gray hair had slipped free of its pins, and her lavender cardigan was buttoned unevenly. A blanket covered her knees. Even pale with exhaustion, she looked at me as though she were the one checking on an injured child.

“Sophie, darling. Look at your hands.”

“I'm sorry I left you in the sewing room.”

“You did exactly what I asked. I sent you to find my son.” She raised her eyes to Luca. “And someone finally listened.”

Luca knelt beside her. I watched him take her hand and press it against his cheek. No one in the room spoke. The clock on the mantel ticked through several seconds before Isabella broke the silence.

“I was put in that van after Sophie ran downstairs,” she said. “The attendants told me they had legal authority. One said I had been declared unable to make decisions for myself.”

“By whom?” Luca asked.

“A doctor I have never met. Thomas Vale, according to the paperwork. They kept repeating his name as if that would make me agree.”

Luca looked at Dr. Shaw. “Have you heard of him?”

“He's licensed in Illinois,” she said cautiously. “That doesn't mean he examined your mother or authorized anything valid. We need the actual records.”

Isabella pressed a trembling finger against the wheelchair arm. “They also took my blue document case. It was in my handbag. I saw one of the men give it to Vanessa.”

“What's inside?” Luca asked.

“Things your father left me. Things that should never have been in her hands.”

I remembered the folder Vanessa had thrust toward me upstairs. The transfer form had been on top, but beneath it there'd been another page showing a company logo: a white tower against a blue lake. I had assumed it belonged to the nursing facility. Now I wasn't sure.

“I saw that symbol,” I told them. “On a page under the transfer agreement.”

Isabella turned toward me. “A tower? With three windows?”

“Yes.”

Her lips parted. “Lakeshore Holdings.”

Luca frowned. “The old real-estate company?”

“The company your father promised would never touch the Eastgate property while I lived.”

The words made the room go quiet again. I knew the Eastgate property only as the large brick building beside the lake where Isabella sometimes held charity lunches. I'd helped her pack donated blankets for the older residents of the adjoining apartments. She always insisted on writing their names on the labels herself.

Luca gently asked, “Mama, what does that have to do with a medical transfer?”

“I don't know yet. But Vanessa spent the last month asking when I'd stop attending trust meetings.” Isabella inhaled slowly. “Then suddenly someone decided I couldn't attend anything.”

Daniel arrived with a police officer and a plastic evidence bag containing a copy of the transport order. The officer introduced herself as Detective Renee Walker. She explained that the van attendants had been separated for interviews and that the driver claimed the booking came through a private placement agency. Nobody had a valid court order authorizing them to take Isabella against her stated wishes.

“Can you prosecute Vanessa?” Luca demanded.

“We're investigating what happened,” Walker answered, looking him straight in the eye. “I need documents, witnesses, and statements without anyone here deciding the outcome for me.”

A different Luca might have threatened her. This one stepped aside. “You'll have our cooperation.”

Isabella pointed toward me. “Start with Sophie. They cut her while she was protecting me.”

My throat tightened. “I didn't see who broke the glass. There was a struggle.”

“That's all right,” Walker said. “Tell us only what you saw.”

For nearly forty minutes, I described the bedroom, the two attendants, the panel that shattered, and the sound of Isabella's voice saying no. My account felt terribly small beside the violence of the evening, but Detective Walker wrote every detail down. She asked whether Vanessa had given an order in front of me. I said yes. She asked whether I had seen an official order from a judge. I said no.

When the questions ended, Luca stood in the doorway, his jacket gone and his sleeves rolled back. He looked less like a feared boss than a son who had nearly lost his mother and was finally realizing how close he'd come.

“I've arranged for someone to take you to the hospital for your hands,” he said. “I'll cover the expenses.”

“The estate already pays my wages,” I protested.

“This isn't a favor. You were injured at work.”

I thought about my little apartment above a bakery, the overtime shifts I had worked to keep it, and how frightened I'd been of being fired for disobeying Vanessa. “Am I still employed?” I asked before I could stop myself.

Luca looked stunned. “Of course. Though you can choose whether you want to return.”

Before I could answer, his phone vibrated. He checked the screen. The relief drained from his face.

“What is it?” I asked.

He hesitated, then showed me a message from the estate attorney: THE BLUE CASE IS MISSING. THERE IS A SECOND TRANSFER DOCUMENT, AND SOMEONE FILED IT THIS AFTERNOON.

Under the message sat a photograph of Isabella's signature on a property authorization.

She had supposedly signed it at 4:12 p.m.