The ride to my father’s house took twenty minutes, but it felt like a lifetime.

I sat in the back of Luca’s black, armored SUV. The rain had started to fall, blurring the Chicago streetlights into streaks of neon. I couldn’t stop running my thumb over the ivy engravings on my mother’s silver bracelet.

Luca sat beside me. He didn’t press me for answers. He didn’t offer empty platitudes. He just sat there, a silent, powerful anchor in the middle of the storm that had just destroyed my reality.

Marcus sat in the front passenger seat, staring intensely out the window, his jaw tight.

“Mr. Moretti,” I finally whispered, breaking the heavy silence.

Luca turned to me, his dark eyes unreadable in the dim light of the car. “Luca. You don’t work for me tonight, Emma.”

I swallowed hard. “Luca. Why did you hire me?”

He studied my face for a moment. “My head housekeeper, Mrs. Gable, handles the hiring. She told me you were highly recommended, desperate for work, and willing to take the evening shifts.”

“But Vanessa knew my family,” I realized, the sick feeling in my stomach expanding. “Vanessa gave my mother’s bracelet to her mother. Vanessa held the debt that ruined my father. Do you think she planted me in your house?”

“Yes,” Luca said bluntly. “Vanessa is arrogant, but she is not stupid. She likes control. Keeping the daughter of the man she was blackmailing under her own roof as a maid? It gave her leverage. She could watch you. Make sure your family never stepped out of line.”

The cruelty of it took my breath away. She had smiled at me. Ordered me around. Berated me for not polishing the silver perfectly, all while knowing she held the strings to my family’s destruction.

The SUV pulled onto my street, a row of modest, aging houses in a working-class neighborhood.

But as we approached my house, my blood ran cold.

The front door was wide open.

“Stop the car,” Marcus barked, reaching for the door handle before the SUV even fully halted.

Luca grabbed my arm, stopping me from following Marcus out into the rain. “Stay behind me, Emma.”

He pulled a dark handgun from his shoulder holster with terrifying ease.

We stepped out into the cold night. The house was dead silent. The porch light had been shattered.

“Dad?” I called out, panic rising in my chest. “Chloe?”

No answer.

Luca pushed the front door open wider with his foot. He swept the living room with his weapon drawn.

The house had been completely ransacked.

Couch cushions were ripped apart. Bookshelves were emptied. The few framed photos we had were smashed on the hardwood floor.

“Dad!” I screamed, pushing past Luca into the hallway.

I found him in the kitchen.

My father was slumped against the refrigerator, holding a bloody towel to his forehead. He looked older than I had ever seen him, his eyes wide and vacant.

“Dad!” I dropped to my knees, pressing my hands to his face. “Are you okay? Where’s Chloe? Where’s my sister?”

My father blinked, trying to focus on me. “Emma… I’m sorry. I tried to stop them.”

Luca stepped into the kitchen, his weapon lowered but his eyes scanning every shadow. “Who was here, Arthur?”

My father looked at the towering mafia boss, and then he began to weep.

“They took it,” my father sobbed. “They took the ledger.”

“What ledger?” I demanded, pulling the towel away to check his wound. It was a nasty cut, but not life-threatening.

My father looked at me, shame radiating from every line on his face.

“Three years ago, Emma… your mother didn’t die in a random hit-and-run.”

“I know,” I said, my voice breaking. I pulled the silver bracelet from my pocket and held it up. “Vanessa Bellini had this.”

My father gasped, closing his eyes. “Vanessa came to my accounting firm. She needed to launder money to pay off a syndicate debt. When I refused, she sent her men to intimidate me. They… they ran your mother off the road.”

Tears spilled down my cheeks.

“After that, Vanessa told me I belonged to her,” my father whispered. “She forced me to sign custody papers for a boy named Leo. To hide him from the father.”

Marcus stepped into the kitchen, his massive frame filling the doorway. “Where is my son, Arthur?”

My father flinched. “He’s safe. I couldn’t keep him here, not with Vanessa watching us. I placed him in a private Catholic orphanage under a fake name. I’ve been secretly paying his board every month with the money Vanessa thought I was laundering for her.”

Marcus let out a shuddering breath, leaning against the doorframe. “He’s alive.”

“Yes,” my father said. “But Vanessa found out I was keeping a secondary book. A leather ledger recording every illegal wire transfer she ever made. It’s the only proof that she orchestrated the embezzlement, not you, Marcus.”

Luca stepped closer. “And the men who were just here? They took the ledger?”

“Yes,” my father coughed.

“Did Vanessa send them?” Luca asked.

“No,” my father said, looking up with absolute terror in his eyes. “It wasn’t Vanessa’s men. It was the syndicate she owes money to. The Russos.”

My heart stopped. The Russo family. The most ruthless rivals of the Moretti empire.

“They didn’t just take the ledger,” my father cried, grabbing my hand. “Emma… they took Chloe. They took your sister.”

Before I could process the horror, Luca’s phone began to ring.

He pulled it from his pocket, looked at the caller ID, and put it on speaker.

A gravelly, menacing voice echoed in the small kitchen.

“Good evening, Luca,” the voice purred. “I hear you’re having some fiancé troubles tonight. Care to make a trade?”

It was Dominic Russo.

And as the reality of my sister’s kidnapping washed over me, I realized the nightmare had just begun.