THE MAFIA BOSS WATCHED ME SERVE HIS ENGAGEMENT DINNER WITH MY COLLAR BUTTONED TO MY CHIN—THEN HIS FIANCÉE SAID, “SHE CAUGHT HER NECK ON A COAT HOOK,” BEFORE HE HAD EVEN ASKED WHY I WOULDN’T TURN MY HEAD.

The words hung in the air like a death sentence.

She wants Sarah.

My knees buckled again, but Luca caught me by the waist, his strong arm anchoring me to reality.

"You are not going to her," Luca snarled, his voice vibrating with a terrifying, protective fury. He snatched the note from Daniel's hand, crushing it in his fist. "She is not touching you again."

"Luca, she has Maya!" I sobbed, gripping his shirt. "She’ll kill her! She killed my father, she'll kill my sister!"

"I won't let that happen," Luca said fiercely, his dark eyes locking onto mine. "Look at me, Sarah. I give you my word, on my life, I will bring your sister back."

I nodded, forcing myself to breathe, forcing the panic down.

"The note," Luca said, turning to Daniel. "Did she specify a location?"

"The old Navy Pier warehouses, Boss. Warehouse 4. She says we have exactly two hours to deliver the ledgers and the girl, or she starts mailing pieces of the sister back to us."

A cold shudder racked my body.

"Boss," Daniel hesitated. "We don't have the ledgers. We've been looking for Arthur Collins's hidden files for three years. If we show up empty-handed..."

"She won't care," Luca said coldly. "She just wants the money and the loose ends tied up. She plans to kill us all anyway."

He looked at me, his eyes searching my face.

"Sarah, think carefully. When your father died... did he give you anything? A key? A code? A safe deposit box number?"

I racked my brain, thinking back to the chaotic, terrifying night at the hospital.

"No," I cried. "He couldn't speak! The doctors were rushing him into resuscitation. He just... he just handed me his wallet."

"His wallet?" Luca pressed. "Do you still have it?"

"Yes," I stammered. "It's in my room. In my memory box."

"Get it."

We sprinted back upstairs to the servant's quarters. My hands were shaking so violently I could barely open the small wooden box on my dresser. I pulled out my father's worn, brown leather wallet and handed it to Luca.

Luca opened it, emptying the contents onto my small bed.

Old receipts. A faded driver's license. Two dollar bills.

And a folded piece of paper.

Luca carefully unfolded it.

It wasn't a bank statement or a coded ledger.

It was a child's drawing.

A crude crayon drawing of a house with a red roof, a bright yellow sun, and two stick-figure little girls holding hands.

"I drew this for him when I was seven," I whispered, touching the faded paper. "He always kept it in his wallet."

Luca frowned, turning the paper over. He held it up to the harsh light of my ceiling lamp.

"Arthur Collins was a master accountant," Luca murmured. "He didn't make mistakes. And he didn't leave things to chance."

He looked closely at the drawing.

"Sarah, look at the sun."

I leaned in.

The bright yellow sun in the corner of the drawing wasn't just colored in. Written faintly in pencil, disguised within the yellow rays, were tiny numbers.

"Coordinates," Daniel realized, leaning over Luca's shoulder.

Luca pulled out his phone, rapidly typing the numbers into a GPS application.

The map zoomed out, then zoomed back in, dropping a red pin on a remote, wooded area two hours north of Chicago.

"It's a property," Luca said, his eyes narrowing. "A cabin in Wisconsin. It's listed under a shell corporation my father set up twenty years ago."

He looked at me. "That's where the ledgers are. He didn't hide them in a bank. He hid them where nobody in the mafia would ever look. A dead property."

"We don't have time to go to Wisconsin," I panicked, looking at the clock. It was midnight. We only had an hour left.

"We don't need to," Luca said, a dangerous, calculating light entering his eyes.

He turned to Daniel. "Get the tactical gear. We're going to Warehouse 4."

"With no ledgers?" Daniel asked.

"We'll bring her a ledger," Luca said coldly. "Just not the one she wants."

Twenty minutes later, we were in the back of a heavily armored transport van. Ten Moretti enforcers sat in silence, racking shotguns and loading assault rifles.

Luca sat beside me, strapping a Kevlar vest over his white dress shirt. He handed me one.

"Put this on," he ordered gently.

I slipped it over my head, feeling the heavy weight of the armor.

"Luca," I whispered in the dark van. "If she realizes we're bluffing... she'll shoot Maya."

"She won't get the chance," Luca said.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy, leather-bound book. He placed it in my hands.

"What is this?" I asked.

"It's my personal ledger," Luca said, his voice dropping so only I could hear. "It details every legitimate asset I own. Hundreds of millions in clean corporate funds. Real estate. Tech companies. Shipping lines."

I stared at him, confused.

"Vanessa wants money," Luca explained. "She wants the offshore mafia accounts because they're untraceable. But my clean money is just as liquid. If things go wrong... if she realizes we don't have your father's files..."

He looked deeply into my eyes.

"You give her this. You tell her the account numbers are inside, and the transfer codes are in the margin. She'll take the bait."

"But Luca," I gasped. "This is your entire empire. Everything you've built."

"I don't care about the empire, Sarah," he said, his voice raw with a sudden, overwhelming emotion. "I care about you. I care about your sister. I will burn my entire legacy to the ground before I let that woman hurt you."

The van screeched to a halt.

"We're here," Daniel called out from the front.

Luca grabbed his assault rifle. He looked at me one last time, the mafia boss replaced entirely by a man willing to die for the woman he loved.

"Stay behind me," he said.

The heavy steel doors of the van flew open, revealing the looming, rusted exterior of Warehouse 4.

We stepped out into the freezing night air, weapons raised.

But as we approached the massive sliding doors, a spotlight suddenly clicked on from the roof, blinding us.

"Drop your weapons, Luca!" Vanessa's voice echoed through a megaphone.

I squinted through the glaring light.