Roman showed Nora the message.

She read it.

"Don't go alone."

"I'm not going to." He typed back a single word — *Where* — and waited.

The response came in under a minute.

An address.

A warehouse near the port, the kind of location that had been used for conversations that couldn't happen in offices or homes for as long as the city had existed.

"This is Ferrante," Roman said.

"Six years.

He handled logistics for half our European operations."

"And he's been feeding information to Marchetti the whole time."

"Apparently." Roman stood.

"He's reaching out because he knows Marchetti sent me the list.

He doesn't know I got it from Marco — he thinks it came directly from Enzo.

He's trying to get ahead of it."

"Which means he's scared."

"Which means he might tell me things he wouldn't tell me if he felt safe." Roman looked at Nora.

"I need you to stay here with Sophie.

I'll have two men outside this door and two at the gate."

"I know." She stood as well.

Sophie was deeply asleep again, curled under the jacket.

"Roman."

He stopped.

"Be careful.

Not for the empire." She held his gaze.

"For her."

He nodded once.

Then he left.

The warehouse was forty minutes from the estate.

Roman arrived with four men and left them outside.

He went in alone, because Ferrante had asked him to, and because sometimes the appearance of trust was the only way to get the truth.

Ferrante was waiting near a stack of shipping pallets, hands visible, no jacket despite the cold.

A man demonstrating that he was not armed, which meant either that he genuinely wasn't or that he was very good at appearing that way.

"You got the list," Ferrante said.

"I got the list."

"Then you know I'm on it."

"I do."

Ferrante exhaled.

"I want to explain."

"Go ahead."

"Three years ago, Marchetti's people approached me.

They had information about my brother — financial information, the kind that would have ended him if it came out.

They said all they wanted was low-level intelligence.

Guest lists.

Shipment schedules.

Nothing that would get anyone hurt." He looked at the floor.

"I told myself it was temporary.

That I'd find a way out.

I never found the way out."

"And the second name Marco gave me," Roman said.

"Benedetti."

Ferrante looked up.

"You know about Benedetti."

"I know he's been with my family longer than you have.

I know my father trusted him.

Tell me what he's been doing."

Ferrante was quiet for a long moment.

"Benedetti isn't just an informant.

He's been managing a secondary account — money that was supposed to go to operational costs but was being skimmed and funneled to a Marchetti subsidiary." He reached into his shirt pocket and removed a folded paper.

"I copied this six months ago.

I didn't know what I was going to do with it.

I kept it because I thought someday I might need it."

Roman took the paper.

It was a transfer record.

Eighteen months of transactions.

The amounts were not enormous individually, but accumulated they represented a significant sum — and more importantly, they represented a pattern of systematic theft from inside his own operation.

"Why are you giving me this?" Roman said.

"Because Benedetti is planning to move against you.

Not just steal.

Move." Ferrante met his eyes.

"He's been in contact with the faction inside Marchetti's organization — the one Enzo doesn't control.

They want to use the chaos from tonight to make a play.

They think with Helena gone and you distracted by Nora and the child, there's a window."

"When?"

"Seventy-two hours.

Maybe less."

Roman folded the paper and put it in his pocket.

He looked at Ferrante for a moment — at the man who had sat across from him at a hundred operational meetings, who had shaken his hand, who had attended his father's funeral.

"You're going to help me close this window," Roman said.

"I know."

"And then you're going to disappear.

Same terms as Marco."

Ferrante nodded.

He looked relieved in the way that people look relieved when they have been carrying something for a long time and have finally been allowed to put it down.

"There's one more thing," Ferrante said.

"Benedetti knows about Nora.

He knows about the Marchetti connection.

He's planning to use Sophie."

Roman went very still.

"Not to hurt her," Ferrante said quickly.

"To take her.

To use her as proof that the D'Angelo line has Marchetti bl00d in it — to destabilize your position with the other families.

If they believe your heir is half-Marchetti, your alliances fracture."

"Where is Benedetti now?"

"His apartment.

He doesn't know I'm here."

Roman took out his phone.

He made three calls in four minutes.

By the end of the third call, Benedetti's apartment was surrounded and Benedetti himself — who had been awake and dressed at three in the morning, which told its own story — was being escorted out the front door.

Roman looked at Ferrante.

"Go home.

Pack what matters.

Be gone by morning."

Ferrante left without another word.

Roman stood alone in the warehouse for a moment.

The city outside was quiet, the kind of quiet that only exists in the last hours before dawn when even the night has run out of things to do.

He thought about Sophie inserting herself between him and Nora on the study floor with the absolute confidence of a child who has decided where she belongs.

He thought about what Ferrante had said.

*They want to use Sophie.*

He thought about the three years he had lost, and the three years Sophie had lost, and the particular shape of the damage that had been done to a small girl who had learned to keep secrets before she learned to read.

Then he went back to his car and drove back to the estate, and back to the study, and back to the floor beside the sofa where his daughter was sleeping.

Nora was still awake.

She looked at him when he came in.

"It's done," he said.

"All of it?"

"Enough of it for tonight." He sat down beside her.

Sophie immediately redistributed herself across both of them without waking.

"Benedetti is in custody.

Ferrante is leaving the country.

The faction that wanted to use Sophie doesn't have a move anymore."

Nora let out a breath she had been holding for what felt like hours.

"And tomorrow?" she said.

"Tomorrow we start the audit.

We meet with the lawyers.

We figure out what Helena is willing to cooperate with and what has to be forced." He paused.

"And at some point — when you're ready, not before — we have a conversation about Enzo Marchetti."

"Not tonight."

"Not tonight."

Sophie made a small sound.

Both of them looked at her.

She was still asleep, but her hand had found Roman's and was holding it with the unconscious grip of a child who has learned not to let go of things she needs.

"She does that," Nora said softly.

"She's always done that.

Even when she was tiny."

Roman looked at his daughter's hand wrapped around his fingers.

Outside, the first grey light of morning was beginning at the edges of the sky.

Not dawn yet.

Just the suggestion of it.

The world remembering that it knew how to do this.

"We should sleep," Nora said.

"We should," Roman agreed.

Neither of them moved.