THE MAN I LOVED TRIED TO ERASE ME

"I don't understand," I whispered, the paper crinkling in my trembling hands. "The boy I raised... his name is Leo. He's eight."

Dante's cold eyes narrowed. He stepped closer, the gun still perfectly steady. "My father had a son with your sister, Elena. He named him Leonardo. He's twenty-four. Adrian snatched him off the street Tuesday to blackmail my father into destroying the ledgers. I don't care about whatever stray kid your husband brought home to play house with you. I want my brother."

I looked back at the photograph of my sister. She was pregnant. But if that baby was now twenty-four, that meant she had a child sixteen years before the boy I knew was born.

"Adrian told me Elena's baby was the eight-year-old," I murmured, the pieces of my life shattering into unrecognizable shards. "He brought him to me from the hospital after she died. He said..."

I stopped. The memory hit me like a physical blow. The night Adrian brought the child home, the boy had been clutching a small, torn child’s drawing. A crayon sketch of a woman with bright red hair and a man with a star-shaped scar on his cheek. Elena had brown hair. And neither she nor her husband had a scar.

I had raised a stranger's child.

"If the boy isn't Elena's," I said, my voice hardening as a terrible realization dawned, "then whose is he?"

Dante grabbed my arm, his grip like a vice. "I don't have time for a family therapy session, Claire. Give me the briefcase. If the ledgers are in there, I'll let you live long enough to go ask your husband yourself."

He reached for the leather handle.

I didn't think. I just reacted. I swung Adrian's heavy wool coat, throwing the fabric over Dante's arm and the gun. As he stumbled back, startled by the sudden movement, I slammed the heavy briefcase directly into his kneecap.

Dante let out a grunt of pain, dropping to one knee. The gun clattered across the linoleum floor.

I grabbed the briefcase, turned, and sprinted toward the station doors.

"Claire!" Dante roared behind me.

I burst through the double doors into the pouring rain. I didn't run to my car—he would expect that. Instead, I darted down a narrow alleyway beside the station, my chest burning with every breath. I hid behind a rusted dumpster, clutching the briefcase to my chest, praying the thunder would drown out the sound of my ragged breathing.

A moment later, Dante jogged past the alley entrance, cursing loudly in Italian, scanning the dark street for my car.

I waited until his footsteps faded before I allowed myself to move. I slumped against the brick wall, soaked to the bone. I had the briefcase. I had the birth certificate. But I still didn't have Rosa or the boy I loved as my own son.

I set the briefcase on the wet pavement. The brass latches were locked with a three-digit combination.

I thought about Adrian. A man of habit. A man who thought he was smarter than everyone else.

I spun the dials. 0-5-0. My fiftieth birthday.

The latches clicked open.

I lifted the lid, shielding it from the rain with my body.

Inside, there were no ledgers. There were no financial records.

There was only a thick stack of cash—at least fifty thousand dollars—and a single, blood-stained man's watch.

I recognized the watch instantly. It was a silver Rolex with a cracked face. Adrian had given it to his former business partner, Tommy Rossi, ten years ago. Tommy Rossi, who had supposedly fled to Mexico after stealing from the syndicate. Tommy Rossi, who had a star-shaped scar on his cheek.

My stomach heaved. The boy wasn't a hostage from a rival family. He was the orphaned son of a man Adrian had murdered. Adrian had kept the child as some twisted trophy, raising his victim's son under his own roof.

My phone vibrated in my pocket.

It was a text message from an unknown number.

I know you got away from Dante. Bring the briefcase to the shipyard warehouse. Come alone, or Rosa and the boy go into the water.

An image loaded beneath the text. It was a picture of Rosa, bound to a wooden chair, her face bruised. Sitting next to her, looking terrified, was my eight-year-old Leo.

But it was the person standing behind them that made my blood run cold.