"A three-year-old girl walked up to Chicago's most feared mafia boss, lifted her arms, and asked for a five-minute hug because she'd never been held by a father. Then Dominic Valenti knelt down, looked over her shoulder at me, and stared like he already knew who she was."

Dominic had dismissed the guards, ordered the head housekeeper to bring up a tray of hot chocolate and buttered toast, and personally carried a sleeping Sophie down to the small sofa in my break room before turning his attention back to me.

Now, we stood in the center of the cramped room. The massive mahogany desk in the corner—an antique that probably cost more than my entire life’s earnings—seemed entirely out of place in the modest quarters, but Dominic had had it brought down from his private study less than an hour ago, along with a heavy iron lockbox.

He didn't sit down. He paced the worn linoleum floor like a caged wolf, his hands shoved deep into his trouser pockets, his dark hair slightly rumpled from where Sophie’s small fingers had tangled in it.

“Explain it to me, Claire,” Dominic said, his voice dangerously low. “Start from the beginning. Why was your file at the agency so remarkably clean? Why did a girl with a degree in historical archiving from Northwestern end up scrubbing floors in my mansion?”

I gripped the edge of the small kitchen counter behind me, my knuckles turning white.

“My degree didn't pay for my mother’s cancer treatments, Mr. Valenti,” I said, my voice shaking with a mixture of fear and rising defiance. “And it certainly didn't pay the rent after she passed away and left me with mounting debts and a baby to feed. Agencies don't care about history degrees. They care about whether you can pass a background check and scrub grease off marble without complaining.”

“That’s not what I’m asking about,” Dominic stopped pacing. He turned sharply, his gray eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that could melt steel. He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a folded piece of thick, cream-colored paper, and tossed it onto the small laminate table between us.

I looked down at it.

It was a birth certificate. A copy of Sophie’s birth certificate, issued three years ago in a small clinic in Seattle.

My breath hitched in my throat. The room spun.

“Where did you get that?” I whispered, my voice barely audible.

“When my men run background checks on the staff—even the cleaning crew—we don't just look at criminal records,” Dominic said, his voice dropping into a raw, gravelly whisper. He walked slowly toward the table, resting his large, scarred hands on the laminate surface. “We look at bloodlines. We look at history. And when my chief of security handed me your file yesterday afternoon, he pointed out an interesting discrepancy.”

He tapped a finger against the paper.

“Your mother’s maiden name was Elena Vance. My cousin. The branch of the family that supposedly vanished during the purge eleven years ago.”

Tears pricked hot and fast behind my eyelids. I slammed both hands down on the table, the anger finally overriding the terror.

“My mother hid us for twenty years!” I shouted, the volume echoing off the small walls. “She knew what your family was! She knew what kind of monsters the Valentis were! She dragged me across three states, changed our names, and lived in constant, paralyzing fear just so men like you would never find us!”

Dominic didn't flinch. He didn't raise his voice. He just stood there, taking the blow as if he deserved every word.

“She was right to run,” Dominic said quietly. “Eleven years ago, I wasn't the head of the syndicate; I was a soldier trying to clean up a war my father started. By the time I took power, your mother and her family had already vanished into the wind. I thought they were dead, Claire.”

He reached out, slowly sliding the heavy iron lockbox across the table toward me.

“Open it,” he instructed.

I hesitated, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm. With trembling fingers, I flipped the brass latches and lifted the heavy lid.

Inside sat a stack of old letters tied with a faded blue ribbon, a gold pocket watch engraved with the Valenti family crest, and a single, faded photograph of a young woman with dark hair and laughing eyes standing beside a teenage boy who looked remarkably, unmistakably like Dominic.

“Your mother wrote to me once,” Dominic murmured, looking down at the box with a look of bone-deep exhaustion. “Right after the purge. She said she was hiding a little girl who deserved a world without blood on her hands. She told me never to look for them.”