THE MAFIA BOSS WATCHED ME STRUGGLE TO ROLL A MASSIVE WEDDING PORTRAIT INTO HIS ENGAGEMENT DINNER—THEN HIS FIANCÉE SAID, “SHE HURT HER SHOULDER IN THE CARRIAGE HOUSE,” BEFORE HE EVEN ASKED WHY I COULDN’T LIFT MY ARM.

The air in the vault evaporated.

"Toby!" I screamed, slamming my fists against the reinforced steel door. The pain in my shoulder flared, blinding and white-hot, but I didn't care. "If you touch him, Vanessa, I will kill you myself!"

"Quiet, Claire," Vanessa's voice echoed through the speaker, bored and cruel. "He’s fine. For now. He’s eating a lollipop. But if you and Luca don’t slide that succession document under the door in the next sixty seconds, my men are going to take him for a very long drive to the river."

I dropped to my knees, sobbing, completely broken.

Luca knelt beside me. He grabbed my shoulders, forcing me to look at him.

"Look at me, Claire," he demanded, his voice a low, vibrating rumble that commanded absolute focus. "I will not let her hurt your son. Do you trust me?"

I stared into his dark, fierce eyes. He had saved us at the apartment. He had saved me in the fire.

"Yes," I choked out.

Luca stood up. He walked to the door and slid the manila envelope containing the succession document through the narrow gap at the bottom.

"There," Luca said to the intercom. "You have the empire. Let the boy go."

A moment later, we heard the sound of heels clicking away. The intercom went dead.

"She's going to the Commission," Luca said, moving quickly back to the open lockbox. "She has the document she needs to burn, and the forged one she needs to present."

"But she has Toby!" I cried.

"Daniel let himself get caught," Luca said, a grim smile forming. "He has a GPS tracker embedded in his watch. Vanessa thinks she outsmarted us, but she just brought a Trojan horse into her own car."

Luca reached into the velvet pouch that had been sitting in the lockbox.

He pulled out a heavy, solid gold ring bearing the Moretti family crest. The Boss's ring. The ultimate family heirloom.

"Put this in your pocket," he told me, handing me the ring.

"Why?"

"Because of what you asked me earlier." He pointed to the photograph of my mother in the diamond gown. "Your mother wasn't just a nurse. Elena Morgan was the younger sister of the Moretti Don. She was my aunt."

I stared at him, my brain refusing to process the words.

"You are a Moretti by blood, Claire," Luca said. "Which means Vanessa didn't just mess with a housekeeper. She messed with Mafia royalty. And the Commission is going to tear her apart."

Luca pulled a hidden lever under the viewing table. A small, secondary escape hatch built into the wall of the VIP room popped open—a secret architectural detail only the true Don would know.

"Let's go get our son," Luca said.

Our son.

The words fueled my blood with pure adrenaline. We crawled through the narrow service tunnel, emerging in the alley behind the bank.

Luca checked his phone. The GPS tracker showed Daniel and Toby were moving toward the Grand Continental Hotel.

"She brought him to the meeting," Luca growled as we hotwired a delivery van left idling in the alley. "She's using him as leverage just in case."

Ten minutes later, we pulled up to the loading dock of the Grand Continental.