**THE MAFIA BOSS WATCHED ME SERVE HIS ENTIRE ENGAGEMENT DINNER WITH MY LEFT HAND—THEN HIS FIANCÉE SAID, “SHE BURNED IT IN THE KITCHEN,” BEFORE ANYONE HAD ASKED WHAT HAPPENED.** For three seconds, nobody at the table seemed to understand why Luca Moretti had stopped eating. I did.

The wine cellar was pitch black and smelled of aged oak and damp earth.

Luca pulled Nora behind a massive row of vintage Bordeaux crates, his hand firmly gripping her left wrist. Above them, the heavy thud of combat boots echoed through the main floor of the estate. The police had breached the doors.

“Search the east wing!” a muffled voice yelled through the floorboards. “We have a warrant for a Nora Hayes. Grand larceny. Suspect is considered flight-risk and dangerous.”

Nora clamped her hand over her mouth to muffle a sob. She was shaking violently, her body sliding down the cold stone wall until she hit the floor.

Dangerous. They were calling her dangerous. She was a housekeeper who baked cookies for her daughter, and now the entire Chicago police force was hunting her.

Luca crouched down beside her. In the absolute darkness, he couldn’t see her face, but he could hear the ragged, panicked edge of her breathing.

“Hey,” he whispered, his voice incredibly soft. He reached out in the dark, his large, calloused hands finding her face. He cupped her cheeks, his thumbs gently wiping away the tears she was desperately trying to hold back. “Look at me.”

“I can’t see you,” she choked out, a bitter laugh escaping her lips.

“Then listen to me.” Luca leaned in closer, his forehead resting against hers. “They are not going to take you. They are not going to touch Maya. I am the head of the Moretti family. I own this city. Not my father. Not Vanessa. Me. Do you understand?”

Nora let out a shuddering breath, the warmth of his proximity melting through the ice in her veins. “But they have a warrant. If they find me—”

“They won’t find you,” Luca interrupted smoothly. “Because you aren’t Nora Hayes anymore. You’re under my protection. That makes you untouchable.”

For a brief, suspended moment, the chaos above them faded. Nora felt the solid, unyielding strength of him. It wasn’t just physical protection he was offering; it was a promise. A terrifying, beautiful promise.

Suddenly, the heavy iron door of the wine cellar groaned open.

A flashlight beam sliced through the darkness, sweeping across the dusty floor.

Luca stood instantly, pulling his weapon and shielding Nora with his body. He aimed directly at the light.

“Lower the gun, Boss,” a familiar voice said.

The flashlight clicked off.

It was Marco.

Luca didn’t lower his weapon. “I told you not to leave the child.”

“Maya is safe. The police didn’t go to the guest suite. They went straight to the staff quarters. They’re tearing Nora’s old room apart,” Marco said, stepping further into the cellar. “But that’s not why I came down here.”

“Then why are you here?”

Marco walked closer. Even in the dim ambient light filtering from the stairwell, Luca could see the grim expression on his security chief’s face.

Marco reached into his pocket and held out his hand.

Resting in his palm was a small USB drive wrapped in red tape.

Nora gasped, scrambling to her feet. “That’s it! That’s the drive I dropped in the coat.”

Luca lowered his gun, staring at the drive. “How did you get this, Marco?”

“Your father gave it to me thirty minutes ago,” Marco replied, his voice heavy with betrayal. “He told me he found it in Vanessa’s coat. He told me to incinerate it. He said it contained financial records that could ruin the family if the police found it during the raid.”

“But you didn’t burn it,” Luca said.

“No.” Marco handed the drive to Luca. “Because my loyalty is to you, Luca. Not the old man. I plugged it into my encrypted tablet before coming down here. You need to see what’s on it.”

Marco pulled a slim tablet from his tactical vest and handed it over.

Luca took it. He tapped the screen to wake it up. The glow illuminated his sharp features. Nora leaned in close to him, watching the screen.

There were no financial records on the drive. No offshore accounts.

There was only one file. A video file.

Luca pressed play.

The video was recorded from a hidden security camera in the Bellini estate library, dated six months ago. The night Salvatore Bellini was murdered.

The camera angle showed Vanessa sitting on a leather sofa, smoking a cigarette. Across from her stood Vittorio Moretti, Luca’s father.

But it was the third person in the room that made Nora’s blood turn to ice.

It was a man tied to a wooden chair, beaten and bloodied.

“Oh my god,” Nora whispered, clapping a hand over her mouth.

It was her husband, David.

He had died in a hit-and-run accident five years ago. Or so the police had told her.

On the screen, Vanessa stood up, walking over to David. She grabbed him by the hair, forcing his head up.

“You really thought you could hide from us, David?” Vanessa spat, her voice dripping with venom. “You thought you could run away with a maid and pretend you weren’t the true heir to the Bellini empire?”

Nora stumbled back, hitting the wine crates. Her mind spun wildly. Heir to the Bellini empire? David had been a mechanic. A quiet, gentle man who loved reading to Maya.

On the screen, David coughed up blood. “Leave them alone, Vanessa. Nora doesn’t know anything. She thinks I’m an orphan.”

“Oh, we’ll leave her alone,” Vittorio Moretti said, stepping into the frame. He raised a silenced pistol. “But the child is Bellini blood. She is a threat to Vanessa’s claim. We will find her eventually.”

Vittorio pulled the trigger.

The video ended.

Luca lowered the tablet. The silence in the cellar was suffocating.

He looked at Nora. She was staring at the blank screen, her face completely drained of color.

The truth crashed over them all like a tidal wave.

Vanessa hadn’t come after Nora because she was a witness to an affair. She hadn’t left the watch or the train ticket just to frame a maid.

She had found out who Maya was.