SIX MAFIA MEN FROZE WHEN THE WAITRESS SPOKE ITALIAN

Rebecca Shaw's voice changed everything.

Until that moment, Marco Bellini had been a collection of suspicions, old sins, suspicious timing, and recordings Grant had kept for insurance.

Rebecca was different.

Rebecca was a witness.

A living one.

Grant sat on the opposite side of the conference room with an ice pack against his shoulder from the crash in Boston. Two of Luca's men watched him from the door.

He looked smaller than he had when we were together.

Maybe he had always been small.

I had simply been too close to see it.

"Where is she?" Luca asked.

Grant shook his head. "I don't know."

Luca's stare could have frozen boiling water.

"You have a recording of a woman everyone believes died five years ago, and you do not know where she is?"

"Marco sent me the audio after it happened. He wanted me to know Rebecca had survived because he needed help finding her again."

"Did you help?" I asked.

Grant looked at me.

"I tried."

The honesty was ugly.

At least it was finally honesty.

"Did you find her?"

"No. Elena got to her first."

I went still.

"My grandmother?"

Grant nodded. "Rebecca contacted Elena before she disappeared. They had some kind of emergency plan. Marco was furious because every trail ended at an old church charity in Pennsylvania."

Luca leaned over the computer.

"Which charity?"

"I don't remember. St. something."

I did.

A Christmas card flashed into my memory.

For six years, my grandmother had received one card every December from a place called St. Agnes House.

No personal message.

No signature.

Just a printed picture of a stone chapel and the words PEACE FINDS THOSE WHO KEEP WALKING.

I had once asked Elena who sent them.

An old friend, she said.

"St. Agnes," I whispered.

Grant stared at me.

"Yes."

Luca immediately reached for his phone.

I put my hand over it.

"No entourage."

His eyes narrowed.

"Again?"

"If Rebecca has spent five years hiding, six black SUVs are not going to make her feel secure."

"Neither will Grant."

"Grant isn't coming."

Grant opened his mouth.

I looked at him.

He closed it.

Luca almost smiled.

Three hours later, Luca and I drove into a small Pennsylvania town under a gray winter sky.

No convoy.

No visible security.

I knew better than to believe we were completely alone, but Luca kept his promise: no one followed close enough for me to see.

St. Agnes House stood behind an old church on a quiet hill.

It was not a convent, as I had imagined.

It was a nonprofit residence for women leaving dangerous situations.

That realization hit me hard.

My grandmother had donated to a place for women escaping control.

All those years she had watched me disappear inside my relationship with Grant, she must have understood more than I ever knew.

A woman in her sixties met us at the front desk.

"Can I help you?"

I showed her Elena's photograph.

"My grandmother knew someone here. Rebecca Shaw."

The woman's face did not change.

"I don't know anyone by that name."

I expected Luca to step in.

He did not.

He let me handle it.

I took out the Christmas card I had found among the scanned documents from Elena's attorney.

"My grandmother was Elena Valenti. She died yesterday."

The woman's eyes softened.

That was all.

She disappeared through a back door.

Ten minutes passed.

Then twenty.

Luca sat beside me on a wooden bench in the hallway.

"You are very quiet," I said.

"I am practicing not taking over."

I looked at him.

"How painful is it?"

"Excruciating."

I laughed.

The sound felt strange after the last twenty-four hours.

He looked at me when I laughed.

Not at my body.

Not like Grant used to, as if every expression belonged to him.

Luca looked as if he had discovered something he wanted to remember.

I looked away first.

The back door opened.

A thin woman with short brown hair stepped into the hallway.

She was perhaps forty-five, though fear had added years around her eyes.

She looked at Luca.

Then at me.

"You have Elena's mouth," she said.

My throat tightened.

"Rebecca?"

She nodded.

Luca stood.

Rebecca immediately stepped back.

He stopped.

"I am not here to force you anywhere."

She studied him.

"You look like Sofia."

That was apparently the right thing to say, because every wall inside Luca seemed to crack at once.

Rebecca led us into a small office.

She did not offer coffee.

She did not make conversation.

She sat across from us and folded her hands.

"Elena told me that if she died before this was finished, her granddaughter might come. She hoped you never would."

"So did I," I said.

Rebecca's mouth moved slightly.

"That sounds like her too."

Luca placed a copy of one of the recent transfer sheets on the desk.

"Did you create this?"

Rebecca looked at it.

"Yes."

"Who is responsible?"

"Marco Bellini."

No hesitation.

No uncertainty.

Luca did not move.

Rebecca continued.

"He inherited more than his father's law firm. Alessandro had built a private network inside your father's businesses. Vendors, accountants, private investigators, people who could alter records and move information. After Alessandro died, Marco found the system. He could have dismantled it. Instead, he improved it."

"Why?"

"Money first. Control later. He resented your father. Then he resented you. He believed the Rossis treated the Bellinis like servants while relying on them for everything."

Luca's voice was flat. "Marco helped raise me."

Rebecca looked genuinely sorry.

"That made you easier to control."

I saw the sentence land.

I reached beneath the table and touched Luca's hand.

I did not think about it.

I just did it.

He looked down at our hands.

Then at me.

I almost pulled away.

He turned his palm upward and held mine gently.

Rebecca pretended not to notice.

"Five years ago," she continued, "I found payments that did not belong in the Rossi accounts. I went to Marco because he was general counsel. That was my mistake. Within forty-eight hours, my apartment was searched. My office badge stopped working. Someone followed me home."

"How did you survive?" I asked.

"Enzo Greco."

Luca's head lifted.

Rebecca nodded.

"He came to my apartment the night Marco's people were supposed to take me. I thought he was there to kill me. Instead, he told me to leave through the basement and gave me cash. He said his father had once helped destroy an innocent woman and he would not repeat the sin."

Enzo.

The man who had hidden his father's role in Sofia's death.

The man who looked guilty because he carried someone else's guilt.

"Why didn't he tell me?" Luca asked.

"Because he was terrified of Marco. And maybe of you. You had a reputation even then."

Luca looked away.

He could not argue with that.

"Elena found me through Enzo," Rebecca said. "She brought me here. We spent years gathering pieces, but she refused to move until we had proof that could survive lawyers, threats, and corrupted witnesses."

"Do you have it?"

Rebecca nodded.

"Most of it. Not the one thing that matters most."

I knew before she said it.

"The recording from the night Sofia died."

"Yes. Alessandro Bellini called Arturo Greco and gave him the route. Sofia had started recording calls after she became suspicious. Elena heard the recording once. She told me it proved Alessandro knowingly sent Sofia and Luca into the ambush."

Luca's hand tightened around mine.

"Where is it?"

"Elena never told me. She said Sofia hid it herself before leaving the house that night."

Luca went very still.

"My mother hid it?"

"According to Elena."

"Then how would Elena know?"

"Because Sofia told her one sentence: If something happens, the truth is where Luca first learned not to be afraid."

Luca's face changed.

I looked at him.

"You know what that means."

He stood.

"The piano."

"What piano?"

He looked at me as if he were seeing another room, another time.

"My mother taught me to play when I was six. I was terrified of performing in front of people. She made me practice in the old music room until I could finish a piece without stopping. The first time I played for guests, she told me I had learned not to be afraid."

Rebecca leaned forward.

"Where is the piano?"

"Still in my father's old townhouse. No one lives there now."

My stomach tightened.

"Who has access?"

Luca's expression darkened.

"Marco."

His phone rang.

We all looked at it.

Unknown number.

Luca answered.

Marco Bellini's voice came through the speaker.