"You are brave."

"I'm terrified."

"That doesn't make you less brave."

The words landed somewhere deep.

Then the vault door screamed.

Someone was cutting through it.

Luca stood.

"Take Leo."

The housekeeper moved toward the emergency hatch.

Avery refused to move.

"I'm not leaving you."

"You are."

"No."

The door gave way.

Luca fired.

The room erupted into chaos.

He pushed Avery toward the escape hatch.

She dropped into the tunnel.

Luca followed.

They ran beneath the estate.

Rain hammered the forest outside.

They found the extraction vehicle.

Avery thought it was over.

Then Greg stepped out.

Her manager.

Her ordinary life.

Her former boss.

Holding a rifle.

Avery stared at him.

"Greg?"

He smiled.

"You really were the easiest bait."

Luca's face changed.

Greg explained everything.

The job at Aurelia.

The timing.

The resemblance.

The attack.

Avery had not been a random waitress.

Someone had put her there.

Someone had known what she looked like.

Someone had known Luca would notice.

The truth made her sick.

Greg raised his weapon.

Avery saw Luca preparing to move.

She moved first.

She grabbed the weapon at Luca's belt and attacked.

The struggle ended with Greg falling.

Avery barely remembered what happened after that.

She remembered rain.

Leo crying.

Luca bleeding.

Then darkness.

When she woke, there was a monitor beside her bed.

The room smelled of antiseptic and flowers.

Luca sat beside her.

He looked exhausted.

"You're awake."

"Leo?"

"Safe."

Avery closed her eyes.

Relief came so quickly it hurt.

Luca took her hand.

"You saved my life."

"I couldn't watch you die."

He looked at her for a long moment.

"Why?"

Avery didn't know.

Maybe because he had trusted her.

Maybe because Leo had chosen her.

Maybe because she had spent her entire life believing she had no one, and somehow this strange, dangerous family had made her feel needed.

Before she could answer, the door opened.

A nurse entered.

Something about her was wrong.

Avery saw the syringe.

The woman moved toward the IV.

Avery grabbed the water pitcher.

The next moments happened too quickly to think about.

The nurse went down.

Luca's guards rushed inside.

The final assassin was taken away.

By sunrise, the Romano organization had collapsed.

The war appeared to be over.

Avery returned to the estate.

Leo greeted her as though she had been gone for years.

He reached for her.

She took him into her arms.

For the first time in her life, the word home felt possible.

Then, two weeks later, she found the file.

Luca had left the study.

Avery was sorting papers on his desk when a sealed folder fell from a cabinet.

A document slid onto the carpet.

A DNA report.

She almost ignored it.

Then she saw the name.

Isabella Romano.

Her breath stopped.

She read the report once.

Then again.

Her fingers went numb.

She wasn't Avery.

Not entirely.

She was Isabella Romano.

The daughter of the family Luca Moretti had spent years fighting.

The daughter of the man whose organization had been destroyed.

She stared at the page until the words blurred.

Then she saw the date.

The report had been prepared before the war ended.

Someone had known.

Someone had been looking for her.

And beneath the report were letters.

Old letters.

Written by a woman who signed her name as Isabella's mother.

Avery read them with shaking hands.

The truth was worse than abandonment.

Her parents hadn't thrown her away.

They had hidden her.

They had believed the Romano bloodline would make her a target.

Her mother had sent her into foster care because it was the only way she could imagine keeping her alive.

Avery covered her mouth.

All those years.

She had believed she had been unwanted.

She had been protected.

And the man sleeping down the hall had destroyed the family she had never known.

She heard footsteps.

Luca.

Avery shoved the papers into the drawer.

The door opened.

He smiled.

"You look pale."

"I'm tired."

He crossed the room.

"You should be resting."

He touched her forehead.

Avery fought the urge to step away.

His arms closed around her.

The scent of his cologne filled her lungs.

She had never hated the safety of someone's arms before.

Now she did.

Because she knew whose arms they were.

She knew what they had taken from her.

And she knew she still wanted to stay.

That was the part that frightened her most.

That night, she couldn't sleep.

At three in the morning, she left the bed.

Leo was asleep in the nursery.

Avery stood over his crib.

The child stirred.

She touched his cheek.

"You didn't do any of this."

He sighed in his sleep.

Avery closed her eyes.

"I won't let anyone hurt you."

Even if that meant protecting the son of the man who had destroyed her family.

She returned to the study.

She found the old letters again.

One sentence stayed with her.

The war between our families will consume us all.

Then she found the final pages.

Her mother had feared that if the syndicate discovered Isabella existed, they would use the child as leverage against the Morettis—or against the Romanos themselves.

So Isabella had disappeared.

The foster system had become her hiding place.

Avery sat alone in the darkness.

She had spent twenty-seven years searching for the reason she didn't belong.

Now she had one.

The answer was blood.

And blood, she was beginning to understand, was not the same thing as family.

The next morning, Marco found a burner phone in the garden.

It had received one encrypted message.

Luca read it.

His face hardened.

"Dante."

Avery knew the name.

Her uncle.

The Romano brother who had disappeared before the compound burned.

She lied when Luca asked whether she knew him.

"No."

He studied her.

She held his gaze.

He slid the phone across the table.

The message was waiting.

Isabella. I survived. I know where you are.

Avery felt the room shrink around her.

The phone rang at midnight.

Luca stood beside the window with a weapon in his hand.

A team of technicians waited downstairs.

He nodded.

Answer.

Avery picked up.

A man's voice came through the static.

"My beautiful niece."

She closed her eyes.

She had never heard a blood relative speak to her before.

The emotion that rose inside her was almost unbearable.

Fear.

Anger.

Grief.

Something dangerously close to longing.

"Who is this?"

"You know."

"I don't."

"You have your father's eyes."

Luca motioned for her to continue.

"What do you want?"

"Justice."

Dante told her what Luca had done.

What had happened to the Romano family.

Then he gave her an order.

There was a vial in the pocket of the coat she had worn the previous day.

Three drops.

Into Luca's whiskey.

Then the Moretti empire would collapse.

Avery's hands went cold.

"If I refuse?"

"Then the nursery window opens."

Her blood stopped.

"The child dies."

The line went dead.

The next evening, Avery stood in Luca's library.

A vial sat in her pocket.

Luca looked exhausted.

"Pour me a drink."

She walked toward the bar cart.

Her fingers closed around the vial.

She looked at him.

He trusted her.