THE MAFIA BOSS'S FIANCÉE HUMILIATED A POOR MAID IN FRONT OF 30 MILLIONAIRES FOR PULLING HIS CHAIR AWAY—BUT WHEN THE TATTOOED MAFIA KING DISCOVERED WHAT WAS HIDDEN UNDERNEATH, HE LOCKED EVERY DOOR... AND THE VOICE THAT CAME THROUGH THE DEVICE EXPOSED HIS BRIDE'S DEADLIEST SECRET!

I had never known my father to be anything except faithful to my mother.

So when Matteo told me that a woman in Milwaukee claimed to have been Samuel Parker's wife, my first reaction was anger.

"She's lying," I said.

"Maybe," Matteo answered. "We're checking."

Luca watched me carefully. "You don't have to meet her."

"I know."

"You can let Caroline handle it."

"I know that too."

I looked at the photograph on the table. My father beside Antonio Moretti, a dark-haired woman, and a baby whose identity had become the center of our investigation. The image was old. The date had been altered. And the woman had lived under a false name inside Luca's house.

"I want to know why she hired me," I said. "And why someone wants me to believe my father had another family."

Caroline arranged the meeting at a neutral medical facility, with a nurse present and a written agreement that the conversation would be voluntary. The woman was recovering from injuries suffered during an apparent attempted abduction. Her legal name, according to hospital records, was Isabel Navarro. She had used the aliases Mrs. Vale and Clara Parker at different times.

When I entered the room, she began crying.

"Grace."

I stopped in the doorway. "Don't."

She pressed a tissue against her mouth. "I'm sorry."

"You told people you were my father's wife."

"I told them I used that name. I never said I married him."

"Then why use it?"

She looked toward Caroline. The attorney nodded for her to continue.

"Samuel gave me his name for protection after I escaped Vittorio. He said people searching for Isabel Navarro would overlook Clara Parker."

"Why Clara?"

"It was his sister's name."

I stared at her. My father's older sister Clara had died before I was born. I knew her from a photograph on our mantel.

"And the baby?" I asked.

Isabel closed her eyes. "My daughter."

"Where is she now?"

"Safe, I hope."

"You don't know?"

Her hands shook. "I haven't seen her in sixteen years."

I sat down because my knees suddenly felt unreliable.

Isabel told us that she had once worked for a financial-services company controlled by Vittorio Moretti. She discovered that charitable accounts were being used to conceal payments for kidnappings, intimidation, and illegal surveillance. When she tried to leave, Vittorio threatened her infant daughter. Samuel Parker and Antonio Moretti helped her escape. The photograph had been taken on the day they arranged for her child to be placed with a trusted relative under a different surname.

"What happened to your daughter?" I asked again.

"I was told she was adopted. I was told looking for her would put her in danger."

"Who told you?"

"Antonio. Samuel agreed."

Luca stiffened. "My father separated you from your child?"

Isabel looked at him. "He believed it was the only way to save her. Whether he was right is a question I have lived with every day."

Her voice broke. "I hated him for it. And I was grateful to him. Sometimes both in the same hour."

I thought about my own mother waiting at the safe residence. I couldn't imagine being told that keeping a child alive meant never seeing her again.

"Why did you come to work for Luca?" I asked.

"Because Vittorio resurfaced. He knew Samuel had left evidence, but he didn't know where. I thought the Moretti house might still contain Antonio's records. When I saw your application, I recognized your name."

"So you hired me to find my father's secrets?"

"At first, yes."

The admission hurt.

"And later?"

"Later I watched you work double shifts and send half your wages to your mother. I saw you refuse to take credit for other people's mistakes. I wanted to warn you, but I was afraid they'd find us both."

"They found us anyway."

Isabel lowered her eyes. "I know."

Caroline asked about the attack on the mansion. Isabel denied providing access codes. She said she'd received a message threatening her daughter unless she cooperated. She had responded with a false schedule intended to send the attackers to an empty service corridor. Someone altered it. The attacker who named her had seen only a message bearing her alias.

"Can you prove that?" Caroline asked.

"My phone was taken when I was attacked. But I made a copy of the message on a memory card. It's inside the lining of my coat."

The coat was retrieved from the hospital's belongings cabinet. A nurse witnessed the search. The card was there.

Daniel later confirmed that Isabel's copy had been altered after it left her device. The original named an empty storeroom. The version given to the attackers identified the corridor where I had been helping Elena.

"Someone wanted both of us blamed," I said.

Luca nodded. "And someone knew you would help an injured employee rather than leave her behind."

The thought chilled me. My kindness had become part of someone else's plan.

Back at the mansion, the investigation turned toward Vanessa. She'd been questioned by Caroline and a separate investigator. Her story had changed three times. At first she claimed Julian had threatened her. Then she said Vittorio had promised to erase Julian's debt. Finally she admitted she'd known about the pressure sensor, though she insisted she hadn't known about the chandelier mechanism.

"I wanted Luca frightened," she confessed in a recorded interview. "I thought he'd turn to me. I thought he'd need me."

I listened in disbelief.

"She helped put him in danger so he would love her more?"

Caroline paused the recording. "That is what she says. We still need evidence to determine what she knew about the lethal device."

Luca stood beside the window. "I never promised Vanessa a love story. I promised a marriage that would bring our families peace."

"Did you love her?" I asked.

He looked at me. "I respected what I thought she was. I cared about her. But no, Grace. Not the way you're asking."

I didn't know whether that answer relieved me or made me sadder. Vanessa had built her future around a man who could never give her what she wanted. Instead of leaving, she'd chosen a terrible path.

"That doesn't excuse her," I said.

"No," Luca replied. "It doesn't."

That evening, a courier delivered a package to Caroline's office. It contained documents showing that Vittorio had financed the Bellini family's failing businesses through Briarstone. Vanessa's father had accepted the money years earlier. Julian's debt was not a sudden gambling disaster. It was an obligation designed to trap the entire family.

"She may have been recruited long before the engagement," Caroline said.

Luca looked sick. "How long?"

"At least two years."

Two years. Long enough for dinners, vacations, shared photographs, and promises to become a cover for surveillance.

Matteo entered with another discovery. A shipping company tied to Vittorio had paid for private medical care at a secluded property near Lake Geneva. The bills listed a patient only as A.M.

Antonio Moretti.

Luca read the invoices three times. "They kept him alive."

"Possibly," Matteo said. "The payments are recent, but the initials alone don't prove identity."

"Then we verify."

I watched Luca grip the edge of the table. His father's voice had returned from the dead. Now a trail of medical payments suggested the man himself might still be alive. Hope was doing to Luca what fear had done to me: making every second unbearable.

"If he's alive," I said gently, "we need to think about what he may have been through."

Luca looked at me. "I know."

"And what he might need when we find him."

He nodded. "I know."

We spent the next two days working with Caroline, Daniel, and an independent investigator named Mara Chen. Chen had experience tracing financial crime and locating missing people. She insisted on confirming the medical invoices, the estate's ownership, and the identity of anyone claiming to be Antonio before Luca approached the property.

Her findings were worse than we'd expected.

The Lake Geneva estate had an underground medical suite, a private airstrip, and a communications room capable of intercepting local radio traffic. The property was legally owned by a foundation that funded several children's charities. Those same charities appeared in Samuel's notes.

"The charitable work is real," Chen said. "Some of the money helps families. That's what makes the rest so hard to see. Legitimate operations are being used as cover."

"Can we shut it down?" Luca asked.

"With evidence and cooperation from authorities, perhaps. But the people behind it have had years to hide their tracks."

Then Chen placed a photograph on the table.

A silver-haired man sat in a wheelchair beside a window. His face was partially turned away, but a scar ran from his ear toward his jaw.

Luca went still.

"My father had that scar," he whispered.

Chen didn't offer certainty. "The photograph is six weeks old. We have not confirmed the man's identity."

Luca stared at it as though he could force the image to speak.

I touched his shoulder. "We don't have to decide everything tonight."

"I waited eleven years," he said.

"Then don't let another hour make you careless."

He looked at me for a long moment. "You have a way of saying the thing I least want to hear."

"You seem to need that."

His mouth curved into the faintest smile.

Later, when everyone else had gone, he found me in the kitchen making tea. The mansion was quieter than it had been in weeks. Several staff members had taken paid leave while security was rebuilt. The empty halls made the house feel too large.

"Grace," he said, "I owe you more than thanks."

"You already said thank you."

"That's not what I mean."

He came closer but stopped an arm's length away.

"I don't want you to feel that saving my life means you owe me yours. If you want another job, I'll help you find one. If you want to stay, we'll change the terms so you answer to the house manager, not to me personally. And if you want nothing from me, I'll respect that too."

I studied him. "You practiced that speech."

"Twice."

I laughed before I could stop myself.

His expression softened. "I meant every word."

"I know."

He hesitated. "There's something else."

My pulse quickened.

"I think about you when you're not in the room," he said. "Not because of the investigation. Not because you saved me. I think about whether you've eaten, whether your mother is sleeping, whether you still laugh at those ridiculous cooking shows."

I stared at him.

"I know this is complicated," he continued. "I know I'm still legally engaged until everything is formally resolved. I won't ask you for anything while that remains true. But I don't want to lie to you."

The honesty frightened me more than a practiced declaration would have.

"I think about you too," I admitted. "And I hate how dangerous that feels."

He didn't touch me. He simply nodded.

"Then we go slowly."

The next morning, Caroline delivered a court order preserving records from the Lake Geneva property. Chen had coordinated with investigators who were prepared to pursue the evidence lawfully. For the first time, it seemed possible to confront Vittorio without stepping into his trap.

Then Daniel burst into the office carrying his laptop.

"Boss. Someone accessed the old Ashford Grand recordings."

Luca turned. "From where?"

"From a server inside the Lake Geneva estate. They uploaded a video and sent it directly to Grace."

My phone vibrated.

I opened the file.

A dim room appeared. A man sat in a wheelchair, his face turned toward the camera. His hair was silver. His skin was pale. But his eyes—dark, sharp, unmistakable—were Luca's eyes.

The man spoke slowly.

"Luca. If this reaches you, don't come for me."

Luca gripped the desk.

The man continued. "Your uncle wants the girl because Samuel hid the account key in something she carries."

My breath caught.

Something I carried?

The man leaned closer to the camera.

"Grace, your father gave you a silver locket when you turned sixteen."

My hand flew to my throat. I wore that locket every day. I'd never taken it off for more than a few minutes.

"Do not open it inside that house," the man said. "Vittorio has people closer than you think."

A door slammed somewhere beyond the camera.

The man's expression changed.