THE MAFIA BOSS’S FIANCÉE TOLD ME TO SEAT HIS EIGHTY-TWO-YEAR-OLD FAMILY CLOCKMAKER WITH THE STAFF—BUT WHEN LUCA MORETTI SAW THE OLD MAN HOLDING HIS FATHER’S POCKET WATCH, HE STOOD UP AND SAID, “THAT WATCH WAS BURIED WITH HIM.” “He is not sitting at the engagement table.”

The red dot rested perfectly over my father’s heart.

“Get down!” Luca roared, tackling my father back into the hospital room just as the window completely shattered.

A suppressed gunshot echoed through the night.

The bullet tore through the drywall where my father had been standing a millisecond prior.

I screamed, dropping to the floor.

“Sniper across the street,” Luca yelled, pulling my father to the ground behind the overturned hospital bed.

I crawled toward them, my hands shaking.

“Dad!” I grabbed his arm. “Are you hit?”

“I’m fine, Emma,” my father said, pulling me into a fierce hug. He felt strong. Real. “I’m so sorry I lied to you. I had to protect the trust.”

“I don’t care about the trust!” I cried.

“Julian’s cleanup crew,” Luca assessed grimly, peaking over the edge of the mattress. “They’re not going to let him walk out of here alive. He knows too much.”

Another bullet smashed through the television monitor above us.

We were pinned down.

“Mr. Moretti,” my father said urgently, reaching into his sock. “I didn’t just wait around this past year. I knew Julian would come for me eventually.”

My father pulled out a small, crumpled piece of paper.

It looked exactly like the train ticket Luca had found in the clock.

“What is that?” Luca asked.

“Thirty years ago, your father bought two tickets to Montreal,” my father explained, handing it to Luca. “One for him. One for Julian. He was going to exile Julian peacefully to avoid a war.”

Luca stared at the ticket.

“Julian didn’t take the deal,” my father said softly. “He cut the brakes instead. But your father told me to keep the second ticket. He said it was the key to unlocking the real insurance policy.”

“What insurance policy?” I asked.

My father looked at Luca. “The safety deposit box. The number on that ticket corresponds to a vault at First Fidelity. Your father didn’t just leave you a legitimate shipping empire, Luca. He left you the absolute destruction of every corrupt politician, judge, and FBI agent Julian ever bought.”

Luca’s eyes widened.

If Julian’s entire network was in that box, it explained why the sniper wasn’t rushing the room.

They didn’t just want my father dead. They wanted him to surrender the location of the leverage.

Suddenly, my father’s cell phone—a burner phone he had hidden under the mattress—rang.

He answered it, putting it on speaker.

“Tomaso,” a cold, synthesized voice said through the line. “Throw the ticket out the window, and your daughter lives.”

My father looked at me. His eyes were filled with absolute resolve.

“No,” my father said into the phone.

Then, he did the unthinkable.