**THE MAFIA BOSS’S FIANCÉE TOLD THE MAID TO THROW AWAY HIS DEAD WIFE’S PHOTOGRAPH—BUT WHEN THE BACK OF THE FRAME CAME LOOSE, SOMETHING FELL ONTO THE MARBLE FLOOR THAT MADE HIM STAND UP.** At 7:42 on Friday evening, I was carrying a silver picture frame toward the trash when Adriana Voss called me back in front of twenty-six guests.

“Don’t do it, Marco!” my father yelled, his voice rough and ragged. “She’ll kill you all anyway! Save Emma!”

Adriana viciously pistol-whipped him across the jaw. My father crumpled to his knees on the marble floor, gasping in pain.

“Dad!” I screamed, trying to pull away from Marco’s iron grip on my arm.

“Emma, stop,” Marco hissed in my ear, dragging me back into the shadows of the second-floor landing, out of Adriana’s direct line of sight. “If you run down there, she executes you both. Think.”

“He’s alive,” I sobbed, the shock and relief violently colliding with absolute terror. “I buried an empty casket. They lied to me. He’s alive, Marco. You have to save him.”

“I will,” Marco vowed, his voice a low, terrifying rumble of pure certainty. “But I can’t do it if I hand over the ledger. The ledger is our only leverage. If she gets it, we all die.”

Down below, the gunfire had ceased completely. A tense, suffocating standoff had settled over the grand foyer. Marco’s men held their positions behind the pillars, aiming at Adriana’s guards, but no one dared fire while she held my father hostage.

“You have sixty seconds, Marco!” Adriana’s voice echoed up the grand staircase. “Throw the ledger down, or the old man dies.”

Marco looked at me. Then he looked at Daniel, who was trembling violently against the wall.

“Danny,” Marco whispered, crouching down to eye level with his son. “I need you to go down the servant’s hall to the panic room. Lock the door. Do not open it until you hear my voice. Understand?”

“What about you?” Daniel cried softly.

“I’m going to fix this,” Marco promised, kissing the boy’s forehead.

Daniel looked at me, gave a brave, shaky nod, and ran down the dark corridor, disappearing into the shadows.

Marco stood up. He slung the shotgun over his shoulder and pulled his handgun from his holster.

“What are you going to do?” I asked, wiping my tears, forcing myself to focus. I was a carpenter’s daughter. I knew how to fix broken things. I couldn’t fall apart now.

“I’m going to give her what she wants,” Marco said quietly.

He reached into his inner suit pocket and pulled out the parchment ledger. He held it in his left hand, his gun in his right.

“Stay here,” Marco ordered.

He stepped out from the shadows and walked to the top of the grand staircase, fully exposing himself to the men below.

“I have it, Adriana,” Marco’s voice boomed through the foyer, calm and dripping with authority.

Adriana looked up, a triumphant smile spreading across her face. “Bring it down, Marco. Slowly.”

“I’m not bringing it anywhere,” Marco countered. “You want it? You come up and get it. Send your men outside. Just you and me on the stairs.”

Adriana laughed. “Do you think I’m an idiot? I’m not walking into a trap.”

“It’s not a trap,” Marco said smoothly. “It’s a guarantee. You want the leverage my wife stole from your father. I want the man who built the hidden compartments for my syndicate. You let Arthur go, and you walk up these stairs. If your men raise their weapons, I drop a lighter on this parchment, and your father’s legacy burns.”

Marco pulled a silver Zippo lighter from his pocket and sparked it. The flame flickered dangerously close to the fragile, ancient paper.

Adriana’s smile vanished. The ledger was the only thing keeping the rival families from slaughtering her faction. She needed it intact.

She looked at her enforcers. “Fall back to the driveway. Keep your weapons trained on the door.”

The men hesitated, then slowly backed out of the shattered entrance, their boots crunching on the broken glass.

Adriana roughly yanked my father to his feet by the collar of his shirt. She pressed the gun into his spine and began walking him slowly up the grand marble staircase.

“If you try anything, Marco,” Adriana warned, her eyes locked on the flame in his hand. “I shoot him in the back, and then I shoot you.”

Marco didn’t flinch. He stood at the top of the stairs like a king defending his castle.

As they reached the middle of the staircase, Marco spoke.

“Let him go, Adriana.”

Adriana stopped. She was ten steps below Marco.

She shoved my father forward. He stumbled up the remaining stairs, falling onto the landing right next to Marco.

I couldn’t stop myself. I broke cover and ran to him, dropping to my knees and throwing my arms around his battered neck.

“Emma,” my father wept, burying his face in my shoulder. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I left you.”

“I’ve got you, Dad,” I sobbed, holding him tight. “I’ve got you.”

Adriana stood on the stairs, holding her gun steady on Marco’s chest.

“How touching,” Adriana sneered. “Now. The ledger.”

Marco slowly lowered the lighter. He held the parchment out over the railing.

“Take it,” Marco said.

Adriana reached up, her fingers grazing the edge of the paper.

That was when I saw it.

Dangling from Adriana’s left wrist, partially hidden by her dark coat sleeve, was a heavy, ornate wooden rosary.

It wasn’t just any rosary. I recognized the deep, jagged carvings on the olive wood beads. My father had carved that exact rosary for Elena six years ago. He had told me it was a special commission.

But as the chandelier light hit the beads, I realized they weren’t just decorative carvings.

They were numbers.

“Marco, wait!” I screamed, jumping to my feet.

Adriana snatched the parchment from Marco’s hand and simultaneously raised her pistol to fire.

But Marco was faster.

He didn’t shoot her. He simply sidestepped, grabbed Adriana’s wrist that held the gun, and violently twisted it backward. Adriana shrieked in pain as the weapon clattered down the marble steps.

Marco slammed her against the heavy mahogany banister, pinning her by the throat.

“You lost, Adriana,” Marco growled.

“Did I?” Adriana gasped, a bloody, wicked smile stretching across her face. She held up the parchment ledger in her free hand. “I have the names. I have the accounts. The city is mine.”

“Look closer,” I said, stepping forward.

Adriana frowned, looking down at the parchment in her hand.

Her face drained of all color.

The neat, precise rows of numbers were completely gone. The paper was blank.

“What is this?” Adriana panicked, desperately rubbing the parchment.

“It’s flash paper,” my father said quietly from the floor, wiping the blood from his mouth. “The ink was drafted in a chemical composite. When exposed to the heat of an open flame—like a lighter held entirely too close for ten seconds—the ink completely evaporates.”

Adriana stared at the blank paper in absolute horror. The leverage she had spent three years hunting was gone.

“But if the ledger is gone,” Adriana realized, her eyes darting between Marco and my father, “how are you going to stop the Commission from killing you, Marco?”

I looked at the heavy wooden rosary still dangling from Adriana’s wrist.

“He doesn’t need the ledger,” I said, reaching out and snatching the rosary from her arm. I held it up, the carved numbers on the beads catching the light. “Because Elena didn’t just steal a list of secrets. She stole the combination to Thomas Voss’s offshore bank accounts.”