THE MAFIA BOSS ASKED WHO HER PLUM DRESS WAS FOR

Damian moved before the laser dot could move again.

He hit Camille at the waist and drove both of them behind the stone kitchen island as the window exploded.

A bullet punched through the place where she had been standing.

Nico fired twice toward the tree line.

“East ridge!” he shouted into his radio. “Shooter on the east ridge!”

The safe house came alive.

Backup generators kicked on. Emergency lights washed the hallways in red. Men thundered through doors as Damian kept one hand over the back of Camille’s head.

She was breathing fast beneath him.

“Are you hit?” he demanded.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

He searched her face anyway.

Her cheek had a tiny cut from flying glass. A bright bead of blood formed near her jaw.

Something inside Damian went cold and murderous.

“Damian.”

He looked at her.

“This was not random,” she said.

“No.”

“The shooter followed us from the hotel.”

“Probably.”

“And knew where this house was.”

Damian’s gaze shifted toward Nico.

That was the part no one wanted to say aloud.

Only twelve people knew the location of the safe house.

Eight were currently inside it.

Two were dead.

One was Damian.

The last was his uncle, Salvatore Moretti.

Nico’s phone rang.

He answered, listened, then swore.

“What?” Damian asked.

“Shooter abandoned the rifle. No prints. No casing trail. But the west service gate was opened eight minutes before we arrived.”

“With what?”

Nico’s expression hardened.

“Family override code.”

Camille looked between them.

“Meaning?”

Damian stood.

“Meaning whoever tried to kill you has access to my internal security.”

She pushed herself upright.

“You’re sure they were trying to kill me?”

He pointed toward the wall.

The bullet hole sat exactly where the laser had rested over her chest.

“Yes.”

For the first time since the ballroom, Camille looked afraid.

Not panicked.

Not helpless.

Simply afraid.

Damian hated it more than he had hated the gunfire.

He reached up and touched the cut on her cheek with his thumb.

The gesture surprised both of them.

Camille went still.

His hand remained there one second too long.

Then he dropped it.

“Pack a bag,” he told her.

She blinked.

“For where?”

“My house.”

“No.”

“Camille.”

“I am not moving into your house because you lied to me.”

“This is not about the argument.”

“It is partly about the argument.”

“Someone just shot through bullet-resistant glass at you.”

“And whoever did it knew this location. Why exactly is your house safer?”

Damian opened his mouth.

Then shut it.

Nico looked away to hide a smile.

Camille folded her arms.

“That’s what I thought.”

“Fine. We go somewhere no one knows.”

“We?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t remember agreeing to that.”

“I don’t remember asking.”

Her stare sharpened.

“There’s the man I recognize.”

Damian nearly snapped back.

Instead he stopped.

He had spent years giving orders because orders kept people alive.

Camille had spent two years obeying them because she was paid to manage his world.

Tonight those lines had collapsed.

He exhaled.

“Please come with me somewhere secure.”

Her expression changed at the word please.

“Where?”

“A property on the Eastern Shore. It belongs to a shell company Nico set up. No household staff. No family security system.”

Camille hesitated.

Then she nodded once.

“Until morning.”

“Until I know who fired that rifle.”

“Morning.”

Damian knew better than to argue with her when her voice sounded like that.

They left twenty minutes later in an unmarked SUV.

The drive east was silent until they crossed the Bay Bridge.

Camille sat in the front passenger seat this time. Damian drove himself.

Nico followed two miles back.

Rain streaked the windshield.

Camille stared into the darkness.

“My father hated boats,” she said suddenly.

Damian glanced at her.

“He worked at the docks for sixteen years and hated boats. He used to tell me the water was beautiful only if you stayed on land.”

Damian waited.

“He gave me these earrings on my eighteenth birthday,” she continued, touching the one remaining silver drop. “He said they were the only expensive thing he had ever bought without my mother yelling at him first.”

A small, painful smile appeared.

“He died three months later.”

Damian’s hands tightened around the wheel.

“What do you remember about that week?”

Camille looked over.

“You’re still investigating.”

“Yes.”

“Even now?”

“Especially now.”

She faced the road again.

“He was distracted. He checked the locks twice every night. He made my mother promise she would take me to my aunt’s in Richmond if he ever called and used the phrase ‘blue weather.’ I thought it was some dramatic thing adults invented to make themselves feel important.”

“Did he ever use it?”

“No.”

“Did he leave anything with you?”

“The earrings.”

“Anything else?”

Camille frowned.

“A book.”

“What book?”

“A beat-up copy of The Count of Monte Cristo. He wrote inside the cover that revenge was a terrible retirement plan.”

Despite himself, Damian smiled.

“Your father sounds practical.”

“He was ridiculous.”

Her voice broke on the last word.

Damian looked at her again.

She turned toward the window before he could see too much.

The Eastern Shore house sat at the end of a gravel road bordered by pines. It was smaller than any property Damian personally owned, with gray shingles, a deep porch, and the black Chesapeake spread beyond it.

Nico swept the property first.

Once they were inside, Camille changed out of the plum dress.

Damian was standing in the kitchen when she returned wearing borrowed sweatpants and one of his white dress shirts, sleeves rolled to her forearms.

He forgot what he was doing again.

Camille noticed.

“Don’t start.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

“I was not.”

“You have a very expressive silence.”

Damian poured coffee they did not need.

“About the earrings.”

Her hand rose instinctively to the remaining one.

“What about them?”

“Lucien Ferraro was looking at them before the shooting.”

Camille went still.

“What?”

“At the gala. When Vivian said your father’s name. Lucien looked directly at your earrings.”

She removed the remaining earring and placed it on the counter.

It was delicate, silver, with a tiny teardrop-shaped piece of smoky quartz.

“Why?”

Damian picked it up.

The metal backing felt heavier than it should.

He turned it beneath the kitchen light.

Then he saw the seam.

“Nico.”

Nico came in from the porch.

Damian handed him the earring.

Five minutes later they were standing over a disassembled piece of jewelry.

Inside the hollow silver backing was a micro storage card no larger than a fingernail.

Camille stared at it.

“My father hid something in my earrings?”

“One of them,” Nico said. “Maybe both.”

Camille’s face changed.

The missing earring.

The one she had dropped on the ballroom floor.

“Someone has the other one.”

Damian’s phone rang.

He checked the screen.

Hotel security.

He answered.

A minute later, his expression became unreadable.

Camille knew that expression now.

It meant bad news.

“What?”

“The earring was gone when security cleared the ballroom.”

“Who took it?”

“We’re checking cameras.”

Nico inserted the storage card into an isolated laptop.

A single encrypted folder appeared.

Name: BLUE WEATHER.

Camille stopped breathing.

Her father’s emergency phrase.

Nico tried the obvious passwords.

Nothing.

Then Camille whispered, “Monte Cristo.”

The folder opened.

Inside were thirty-seven scanned documents, five audio files, and one video.

The video was dated eleven years earlier.

Damian clicked it.

Before opening the video, Nico copied the entire card onto an encrypted drive.

“Your father was careful,” he said. “These files were compressed twice and hidden under fake image headers. Whoever designed this expected someone to inspect the card.”

“My father could barely program the clock on our microwave,” Camille said.

“Maybe someone helped him.”

Damian looked at the list of files.

One audio recording was titled APRIL 18 — VITTORIO.

He clicked it.

His father’s voice filled the kitchen, younger but unmistakable.

“Arthur, you take Laura and Camille and you leave tonight.”

Then Arthur: “And let Salvatore keep using your company?”

“I will deal with my brother.”

“You have been dealing with him for years.”

A pause.

Vittorio said, “You think I don’t know what he is?”

“I think knowing and stopping are different things.”

Camille closed her eyes. Her father sounded exactly as she remembered when he was angry: never louder, only more precise.

Vittorio’s voice lowered. “If he learns you copied the routes, he will come for your family.”

“That is why I made another copy.”

“Where?”

Arthur laughed once. “If I tell you, then it isn’t hidden from a Moretti.”

To Camille’s surprise, Vittorio laughed too.

The recording ended there.

Damian stared at the laptop. He had spent most of his life remembering his father as a hard man surrounded by harder choices. Hearing fear in Vittorio’s voice unsettled him.

Camille looked at him. “Your father was trying to save mine.”

“Yes.”

“And mine didn’t trust him enough to tell him everything.”

“He trusted him enough to keep meeting him.”

“That isn’t the same thing.”

“No.”

Another file contained photographs of containers marked with hospital logos. Another showed a handwritten list of customs numbers. Every piece made the conspiracy larger.

But it was the video file that Nico kept returning to.

“Whatever Arthur wanted understood most,” he said, “he put here.”

Camille’s fingers curled around the edge of the counter. “Play it.”

Arthur Rhodes appeared on the screen.

Older than the photograph in the file, exhausted, tie loosened, one cheek bruised.

Camille grabbed the edge of the counter.

Her father looked straight into the camera.

“If you’re watching this,” he said, “then Salvatore Moretti knows I found the money.”

Damian went completely still.

Camille turned toward him.

“Salvatore?”

His uncle.

His father’s younger brother.

Arthur continued.

“The charity theft is the smallest part. Salvatore is moving weapons through Pier Nine under Vittorio’s company codes. Lucien Ferraro is helping him. Vivian Blackstone knows the foundation accounts are being used to wash the payments.”

Nico swore softly.

Arthur leaned closer to the camera.

“If anything happens to me, Vittorio Moretti did not order it. He’s trying to stop his brother.”

Camille covered her mouth.

Then Arthur said something that changed everything.

“And if Damian is the one who finds this someday, tell him I’m sorry. I should have listened when he warned me not to meet Salvatore alone.”

Camille looked at Damian.

“You warned my father?”

He did not answer.

His face had gone pale.

Because there was one part of the story he had never told her.