Luca looked at the iron key in my hand.

“Where does that go?” he asked.

“It’s my mother’s address,” I said, my heart pounding loudly in my ears. “But not her house. The old detached garage in the backyard. My father padlocked it ten years ago and made us promise never to open it. We thought it was just filled with old car parts.”

Luca took the key from my trembling fingers.

“Get your coat.”

We left the mansion before the sun fully cleared the horizon. The drive back to the suburbs felt entirely different than the night before. Yesterday, I was a housekeeper trying to survive a nightmare. Today, I was a woman holding the fate of two empires in her hands.

We parked blocks away from my mother’s house to avoid drawing attention.

The air was biting cold as we walked through the snow-covered alley behind her property.

The old wooden garage stood exactly as it had for a decade—weathered, sagging, and secured with a massive, rusted padlock.

Luca inserted the iron key. It protested, grinding against ten years of rust, but finally, it clicked.

He pulled the heavy door open.

The smell of dust and motor oil hit me instantly.

I found the light switch on the wall and flicked it. A single, bare bulb buzzed to life.

There were no old car parts.

Instead, the garage was lined with filing cabinets. In the center of the room sat a desk covered in dust, an old computer monitor, and a wall plastered with photographs, string, and newspaper clippings.

“My God,” Luca whispered.

My father hadn’t just been an informant. He had built an entire shadow investigation.

I walked slowly to the wall.

There were photos of Carlo Bellini, Vanessa, and Luca’s own father. But right in the center of the web of red string was a photograph that made my breath catch.

It was a picture of a young Luca, sitting at a diner booth.

Across from him was my father.

They were drinking coffee. They looked like friends.

“You knew him,” I said, turning to Luca.

Luca stared at the photo. His hard exterior finally cracked, revealing genuine sorrow.

“I knew him before I took over the family,” Luca said softly. “Arthur tried to pull me out of the life. He told me the Bellinis were going to betray us. I didn’t listen to him. I thought I could handle it.”

Luca walked to the desk and opened the top drawer.

He pulled out a manila folder and handed it to me.

I opened it.

Inside was a legal document. An immunity deal.

My father had secured a federal immunity deal for Luca Moretti. He was trying to save him.

“He died trying to protect you,” I whispered, tears filling my eyes.

Luca looked at me, a profound, heavy sorrow in his dark eyes.

“I owe your father my life. I owe him everything.”

He took my hand, his grip warm and steady.

“I’m stepping down, Claire. Today. I’m giving the empire to my underboss. I am done with this life.”

I looked at him, stunned. “You would do that?”

“For Sophie. And for you.”

He stepped closer, closing the distance between us.

But before he could say another word, my phone rang loudly in my pocket.

It was my mother.

I answered it. “Mom?”

“Claire,” my mother’s voice was frantic, completely breathless. “There’s someone in the house. They took Sophie.”

TITLE: The New Arrangement