**THE MOMENT THE MAFIA BOSS’S FIANCÉE CALLED ME “A DESPERATE LITTLE SERVANT,” I HAD JUST PULLED HIS CHAIR AWAY FROM THE DINNER TABLE—ONE SECOND BEFORE HE SAT DOWN.** Twenty-eight people stopped eating.

“A false frame?” Luca asked, stepping closer and shining the flashlight where my fingers rested.

“My dad called it a ‘blind slide,’” I explained, my heart hammering as the adrenaline kicked in. The fear of the carbon monoxide was real, but the familiar logic of woodworking grounded me. “When he built secret drawers for rich clients, he would make the heavy part look immovable, but the frame itself was on a track.”

I dropped to my knees, inspecting the stone floor beneath the massive steel hinges.

“Ethan, hold the light right here,” I ordered gently.

The boy hurried over, his hands remarkably steady as he aimed the beam at the floor.

I ran my fingers along the mortar between the heavy stone blocks. It looked perfectly aged, but when I pressed hard with my thumb, the ‘mortar’ gave way slightly. It wasn’t cement. It was hardened putty, colored to look like stone. My dad’s signature trick.

“I need a knife,” I said, looking up at Luca. “Or something thin and flat.”

Luca didn’t hesitate. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a sleek, folding stiletto knife. He clicked the blade open and handed it to me handle-first.

I jammed the blade into the false mortar, dragging it along the base of the heavy steel door frame. Chunks of gray putty flaked away, revealing a rusted iron track underneath.

“Help me push,” I told Luca, standing up. “Not the door. The wall next to it.”

Luca pressed his massive shoulders against the brick wall adjoining the steel door frame. I pressed next to him.

“On three,” Luca grunted. “One. Two. Three!”

We shoved with everything we had.

With a horrific, grinding screech of metal on metal, the entire section of the brick wall—steel door, frame, and all—slid backward by about two feet, revealing a narrow, dark tunnel carved directly into the bedrock.

A rush of stale, freezing air blew over us.

“A smuggler’s tunnel,” Luca breathed, staring into the darkness. “My father used these during the prohibition days. I thought they were all filled in.”

“My dad didn’t fill this one in,” I said, stepping through the gap. “He hid it.”

As I squeezed past the heavy steel frame, my shoulder bumped against a loose brick in the wall. The brick shifted, sliding outward slightly.

I stopped. I knew my father’s work. A loose brick in a perfectly engineered sliding wall was never an accident.

I pulled the brick completely out of the wall.

Behind it was a small, dry cavity. And resting inside was a thick, leather-bound book.

I reached in and pulled it out. The leather was dry and cracking, embossed with a faded gold crest—the DeMarco family crest.

“Luca,” I whispered, handing the heavy book back to him.

Luca took the book, brushing the dust from the cover. He opened it carefully under the beam of Ethan’s flashlight.

The pages were filled with my father’s neat, architectural handwriting, but it wasn’t blueprints. It was a ledger. Dates, names, bank accounts, and payouts.

But it was the very first page that made Luca freeze.

Glued to the inside cover was a birth certificate. The edges were singed, as if someone had pulled it from a fire.

The name on the certificate was Elena Moretti.

Beneath the certificate was a handwritten letter. Luca read it aloud, his voice thick with emotion.

“To my son, Luca. If you are reading this, I am dead, and David Bennett has kept his promise to hide my greatest shame. Elena is not your sister. She is the daughter of the man I killed thirty years ago. I took her in out of guilt, but blood always remembers. She has been funding our rivals, slowly poisoning our empire from the inside. I could not bring myself to kill my adopted daughter, so I am hiding the proof here. When the time comes, do what I could not. — Donato DeMarco.”

Luca slowly closed the heavy ledger.

His father hadn’t just been murdered by a rival. He had been murdered by the daughter he had tried to save. And my father, the loyal enforcer, had hidden the truth to protect Luca, paying for it with his wife’s life and a lifetime of terror.

Suddenly, a faint, hissing sound echoed from the main cellar behind us.

I looked back through the opening. A thick, white vapor was beginning to pour from the brass ventilation grates near the ceiling.

“Carbon monoxide,” Luca said, his eyes hardening into dark, lethal obsidian. He shoved the ledger into his jacket, tucked his gun into his waistband, and grabbed Ethan’s hand.

“Move,” Luca ordered.

We plunged into the dark, narrow tunnel. The air was thin, and the ground was uneven, slick with decades of moisture. I ran as fast as I could in my cheap waitressing shoes, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs.

“Where does this go?” I yelled back over my shoulder.

“The estate grounds end at the cliffs,” Luca yelled back, his voice echoing in the tight space. “There’s an old boathouse at the bottom of the property. This should spit us out near the water.”

We ran for what felt like miles, the tunnel sloping sharply upward. My lungs burned, and my legs ached, but the thought of my mother’s silver bracelet in my pocket pushed me forward. Elena had taken her from me. Elena had ruined my father’s life.

Finally, the tunnel ended at a heavy wooden door bound in iron.

Luca didn’t bother looking for a handle. He stepped back and drove his heavy boot into the wood near the lock. The rotted wood splintered on the first kick. On the second, the door flew open, crashing into the wet grass outside.

We spilled out into the freezing, torrential rain.

We were standing in the shadows of the old stone boathouse, about a hundred yards away from the main estate. The mansion loomed on the hill above us, its windows blazing with light against the dark, stormy sky.

Luca dropped to one knee, checking Ethan over. The boy was soaking wet and shivering violently, but he nodded bravely.

“I’m okay, Dad,” Ethan chattered.

Luca kissed his son’s forehead, then stood up, pulling his gun from his waistband. The rain washed over his face, flattening his dark hair, but he looked terrifyingly focused.

“Sarah,” Luca yelled over the sound of the crashing waves. “Take Ethan. Get to the highway. Flag down a car, go to the police, go anywhere. Just run.”

“No,” I yelled back, grabbing his arm. “Where are you going?”