The house went into immediate, silent lockdown. Dominic did not use the intercoms or the landlines. He pulled a secondary satellite encrypted device from the wall safe behind the first-edition Dante volumes and sent a single numeric sequence: *00-00-9*.

Within four minutes, twelve men led by Salvatore Gangi slipped through the kitchen gardens, their weapons muffled, replacing the private security detail that Marcus Vance had personally hired and placed on the Romano payroll six months earlier. The guards hired by Marcus were disarmed in the carriage house without a single shot fired, their zip-tied wrists secured behind their backs, hoods placed over their heads.

In the nursery upstairs, the atmosphere was suffocatingly tense.

Grace sat on the floor with Nora on her lap. The little girl had buried her face into the crook of Grace’s neck, humming the fragments of the song they had been singing earlier. Sophie was busy drawing with black charcoal on thick sketch paper.

Dominic stood near the heavy oak door, observing Grace. "How long have they been singing?"

"Three days," Grace answered without looking up. She combed her fingers through Nora’s dark, tangled curls. "Just the chorus. Just when the doors were locked and the curtains were pulled shut."

"Why didn't you inform me?"

"Because every time you come home, Mr. Romano, this house smells of terror," Grace said, her tone utterly matter-of-fact. "Your men check the windows with mirrors. You carry a gun even when you sit down to eat soup. The girls aren't stupid. They knew that if they spoke, whatever storm you keep locked inside your chest would break open. And they were terrified it would swallow them."

Dominic’s throat tightened. He looked down at his shoes. "Their mother was my life."

"She was their mother," Grace countered. "You lost your wife; they lost the sun. You went to war against the city to find who did it. You filled the cellar with bodies and left these three to starve in the quiet."

Dominic stepped closer. The anger in his chest was familiar, a loyal guard dog, but underneath it lay something far more humiliating: shame. "You're very brave for a woman who needs this paycheck, Miss Bennett."

"I took this job because my sister died in a crossfire in Brooklyn eight years ago," Grace said, finally lifting her eyes to meet his. "A car chased by two black SUVs jumped the curb on Flatbush Avenue. Nobody was ever charged. Nobody was ever named. The city just swept the broken glass into the gutter and sent my mother a bill for the ambulance."

Dominic froze. "You knew who I was before you applied."

"Of course I did. Everyone in the five boroughs knows the Romano name. I didn't come here to kill you, Mr. Romano. I came here because Mrs. Donnelly told my aunt that there were three little girls living in a castle with a monster, and they were dying of silence. I know what that silence feels like. It nearly killed my mother. I wasn't going to let it kill them."

Sophie stood up and walked across the Persian rug. She held up the charcoal sketch.

Dominic took it with hands that had broken jaws and signed death warrants.

On the page was a remarkably accurate drawing of a black Mercedes SUV. Behind the steering wheel was a man with a cross tattooed on his cheek. Standing outside the passenger door was Marcus Vance. In Marcus’s hand was an envelope. On the ground next to the car were fallen red autumn leaves—the leaves of the maples that bordered the Garden City preschool where Isabelle had been executed by two rounds through the driver's side window.

"He told us to close our eyes," Sophie whispered. Her voice was cracked, raw from disuse, but entirely lucid. "He said it was a surprise for Mommy. Then the car went *bang*. And Uncle Marcus got into his car and left us there."

Dominic closed his eyes. The rage that filled him did not burn; it froze. It was the absolute, crystalline clarity that comes to a man who realizes he has been housing his wife’s butcher at his dinner table for over a year.

***