The morning light broke over Lake Michigan, casting long, peaceful rays through the mansion’s windows.

But inside Luca’s study, the air was suffocating all over again.

Sophie and my mother were asleep upstairs, finally exhausted from the night’s trauma.

Luca and I sat across from each other at his massive mahogany desk. Between us sat the leather-bound ledger Vanessa had dropped.

“I thought it was over,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

Luca dragged a hand over his face. He looked at the gold foil lettering.

Arthur Dawson.

“Your father wasn’t just a mechanic, Claire,” Luca said gently. He opened the heavy ledger. The pages were filled with meticulously handwritten notes, dates, and offshore bank account numbers.

“He was a bookkeeper?” I asked, confused.

“No. He was an informant.”

Luca turned the ledger toward me.

I scanned the pages. My father had documented illegal shipments, payoffs to politicians, and the exact routes Carlo Bellini used to traffic weapons through Chicago.

“My father was building a case against the Bellinis,” I realized, the truth hitting me like a physical blow.

“Yes. And Vanessa found out. That’s why she cut the brakes on the car. She wasn’t trying to kill Sarah. She was trying to kill your father, who had borrowed the car that night. But Sarah took it instead.”

I leaned back in my chair, my head spinning.

My father died a hero, trying to take down the city’s worst monsters. But his actions had cost Sarah her life.

“Claire,” Luca said, his voice grounding me. “This ledger is dangerous. If Carlo knows Vanessa had this, he’ll know your father left a paper trail. The police could use this to dismantle the entire Bellini empire.”

“We have to turn it in,” I said immediately.

Luca hesitated. His eyes darkened.

“If we give this to the police, Carlo goes down. But my name is in here, too.”

I froze.

I looked closer at the pages. Mixed in with the Bellini accounts were transactions linked to Moretti Enterprises.

If I turned over the ledger to avenge my father, I would be sending the man who just saved my life to federal prison.

I would be leaving Sophie an orphan.

Luca stood up, walked to the fireplace, and grabbed an iron poker. He stoked the dying embers until a small flame flickered back to life.

He turned to me.

“You have a choice, Claire. Avenge your father’s murder. Or protect our family.”

He didn’t say my family. He said our family.

I stared at the ledger.

Then, I reached into the back pocket of the book. My fingers brushed against something hard and metallic hidden in a secret slit in the leather binding.

I pulled it out.

It was a heavy, rusted iron key.

And wrapped around it was a piece of tape with an address written on it.

An address I recognized instantly.

“Luca,” I whispered. “This isn’t over.”

TITLE: The Door beneath the House