**THE MAFIA BOSS WATCHED ME GATHER THIRTY-SEVEN WOODEN BEADS FROM THE MARBLE FLOOR AFTER HIS TEN-YEAR-OLD SON'S FIANCÉE CUT THE BRACELET OFF HIS WRIST DURING THEIR ENGAGEMENT DINNER—THEN SHE SAID, “HE BROKE IT BECAUSE HE WANTS YOU TO FEEL GUILTY,” BEFORE HE EVEN ASKED WHY THE LITTLE BOY WAS COUNTING EVERY BEAD AND WHISPERING, “I WAS SAVING THE LAST ONE FOR DADDY.”**

Luca stood perfectly still, the broken silver frame still resting in his hands.

"Vanessa was wearing your mother’s watch?" he asked. The gentleness in his voice was completely gone, replaced by a dangerous, surgical precision.

Mason nodded nervously. "I saw her in the library yesterday morning. She had her jewelry box open. She put it on her wrist, but when she saw me looking, she quickly took it off and locked it in her purse."

"Are you absolutely sure it was your mother's?"

"It had the blue stones," Mason said quietly. "And it had the scratch on the side. The one Mommy said happened when she bumped into the door frame when I was a baby."

I watched Luca's jaw tighten. The muscles in his neck strained against his collar.

Elena Moretti had died in a tragic car accident three years ago. The police report stated the vehicle had caught fire, and many of her personal effects were lost.

If Vanessa had the watch, it meant one of two things: she had somehow found it recently, or she had possessed it all along.

"Melissa," Luca said, turning to me. "Stay here with him. Lock the door. Do not open it for anyone but me."

"Yes, Mr. Moretti."

He strode out of the room.

I locked the heavy wooden door, turning the brass deadbolt until it clicked.

Mason climbed under his blankets, pulling them up to his chin. He looked small and incredibly tired.

"Is Daddy going to hurt her?"

I sat on the edge of the bed and stroked his hair. "Your dad is just going to make sure she leaves, honey. You don't need to worry."

"I didn't mean to make a mess," he whispered, a tear escaping his eye. "With the beads. I just wanted him to know I remembered."

"You didn't make a mess, Mason. You told the truth. The truth is never a mess."

We sat in silence for twenty minutes. I could hear muffled shouting from the ground floor, the sound of heavy footsteps, and a car engine revving in the driveway. Then, the grand front doors slammed shut with a force that shook the floorboards.

A few minutes later, three soft knocks came at the bedroom door.

"It's me," Luca's voice said.

I unlocked it.

Luca walked in. He looked older than his thirty-six years in that moment. In his right hand, he held a small, gold wristwatch with blue sapphire hour markers.

Mason gasped. "That's it!"

Luca sat on the bed next to his son. He held the watch delicately, tracing the deep scratch on the side of the gold casing.

"You were right, buddy. It was in her purse."

"Did she steal it from Mommy?"

"I don't know yet," Luca said honestly. "But I'm going to find out. Right now, I want you to go to sleep. Tomorrow is a new day, and we have a lot of things to fix."

He kissed Mason's forehead, pulled the blankets tight, and stood up.

He looked at me. "Walk with me, Melissa."

I followed him out into the grand hallway. The house was eerily silent. The catering staff had vanished. The engagement guests were gone.

"She claimed she bought the watch at an estate sale a month ago," Luca said quietly as we walked toward the grand staircase. "She said it was a coincidence."

"Do you believe her?" I asked. It was a bold question for a maid, but the boundaries had shifted tonight.

"No," Luca said. "Because the clasp was resized to fit her wrist. A jeweler told me last year that this specific clasp couldn't be resized without a custom tool from Switzerland. It takes weeks. She's had it for a long time."

We reached the bottom of the stairs. The dining room was dark, but the hallway light—the one Mason insisted on leaving on—cast a warm glow across the marble floor.

"She threatened you tonight," Luca said, stopping to look at me. "In the bedroom."

I swallowed hard. "It was nothing, sir."

"Do not lie to me, Melissa. I heard her mention a clinic in Ohio. And four thousand dollars a month."

I looked down at my simple black shoes. "My mother has a heart condition. The clinic is experimental, but it's keeping her alive. Miss Vanessa found out. She threatened to have her father call the director and have my mother discharged if I didn't give her the plane ticket."

Luca's eyes darkened. "And yet, you still stepped between a woman holding an iron weapon and my son. You still handed me the ticket."

"Mason is a good boy. He didn't deserve any of this."

Luca reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He dialed a number and held it to his ear.

"Vito. Wake up the men at the downtown office. I need a full financial shield placed around the St. Jude Cardiac Clinic in Ohio. I want an anonymous donation of fifty thousand dollars wired to the account of a patient named Mrs. Carter by 8:00 AM."

My breath hitched. "Mr. Moretti, no, you don't have to—"

He held up a hand to silence me, listening to the phone. "Yes, Vito. Fifty thousand. And if anyone named Bellini tries to contact that clinic, I want their calls intercepted. Do it now."

He hung up the phone and looked at me.

I was openly crying now. "I don't know how to repay you, sir."

"You already did," he said. "You kept my son safe when I was too blind to see what was happening."

He turned to walk toward his study, but then he paused.

"There's something else," he said. "When I took the watch from Vanessa's purse... I found a receipt."

"A receipt for the watch?"

"No," Luca said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "A receipt from a private investigator. Dated three years ago. Two weeks before my wife died."

My heart pounded.

"Vanessa was investigating Elena before the crash," Luca said. "And I'm going to find out why."

Suddenly, a loud, frantic knocking echoed through the silent house. It wasn't coming from the front doors.

It was coming from the kitchen service entrance at the back of the estate.

Luca's hand instinctively went to his waist, beneath his jacket, resting on the cold steel of a concealed firearm.

He signaled for me to stay back.

He walked into the dark kitchen and opened the heavy steel service door.

A man was standing in the rain, panting, his suit soaked through.

It was Mr. Sterling, Luca's personal estate lawyer.

And he wasn't looking at Luca.