THE MAFIA BOSS’S FIANCÉE CALLED ME A “DESPERATE LITTLE MAID” OVER A CROOKED HOMEMADE CAKE—THEN LUCA TOOK ONE BITE

“That’s impossible,” I whispered, staring at the tarnished St. Christopher medal in Luca’s palm. “Vanessa and the Judge both said Matteo died in the warehouse fire the night Sarah crashed.”

“Arthur identified the body at the county morgue himself,” Luca said, his voice dangerously calm as he opened a locked drawer beneath the butler’s pantry and pulled out a spare magazine for his pistol. “He told the coroner the dental records matched his nephew, and he had the remains cremated the next morning before my men could even look at the ashes.”

I thought of the shattered gold pocket watch sitting on the library desk: TO M.B. — UNTIL THE LAST BREATH. — S.

“If Matteo Bellini is alive,” I said, my mind racing, “and he just broke into Sarah’s safe-deposit box tonight, then how did he even know Box 409 existed?”

Luca stopped loading the magazine and looked up at me.

“Only the people in my library an hour ago saw that brass key come out of the recipe box,” he said slowly. “You, me, Lily, Marco, Arthur, and Vanessa.”

“And Arthur went straight to the police precinct to establish an alibi,” I realized aloud. “Which means Vanessa called Matteo the second she got into her car.”

Luca walked out into the front hall and called up the grand staircase to one of the two guards patrolling the second floor.

“Dante! Sit outside Lily’s bedroom door until I come back. If anyone other than me or Claire walks up those stairs, shoot them.”

“Yes, Boss,” the guard answered from the landing.

Luca grabbed his heavy black overcoat from the hall closet and headed for the front door.

I grabbed my wool cardigan off the kitchen hook and ran after him.

“Get back inside, Claire,” Luca said, his hand on the brass doorknob. “This isn't a dispute over a cake anymore. If Matteo is back in Chicago, people are going to bleed tonight.”

“My sister’s name is tied to whatever came out of that box,” I said, stepping right between him and the door. “And you don’t know what Hannah’s handwriting looks like or how St. Jude’s files their backup records. If Matteo took the originals from Box 409, I’m the only person in Chicago who knows how Hannah coded her private billing files.”

Luca stared down at me for two heartbeats.

“You’re a stubborn woman, Miss Dawson,” he muttered, pulling the door open. “Get in the car. And keep your head down.”

Twenty minutes later, Luca’s black Mercedes sedan pulled up behind the alley entrance of the Lake Shore Bank building on Michigan Avenue.

No police sirens were wailing; Luca owned forty percent of the bank’s holding company, and the night manager, a pale, sweating man in his fifties named Mr. Henderson, was waiting for us by the steel service door with a ring of keys.

“Mr. Moretti,” Henderson stammered, ushering us down the marble steps into the basement vault level. “I did just what Marco asked—I delayed calling the district detective. The alarm didn't even trip because whoever came in used an override code from the bank’s board of directors.”

“Arthur Bellini sits on the board,” Luca said grimly.

We stepped through the massive circular steel door of the vault.

Halfway down the left wall, the narrow steel door of Box 409 hung open on a drilled lock, brass shavings littering the gray carpet below.

The long black metal tray sat empty on the mahogany examination table in the center of the room.

“He was in and out in four minutes,” Henderson said, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief. “My security guard took a blow to the back of the head by the elevator, woke up just as the man walked out with a canvas ledger bag.”

Luca walked over to the empty metal tray and ran his fingers along the inside edges.

It was completely clean.

My heart sank into my stomach.

Whatever proof Sarah and Hannah had locked away five years ago—proof that would clear Sarah’s name and prove who killed my sister—was gone.

“Wait,” I said, stepping up to the mahogany examination table.

I looked closely at the metal tray from Box 409.

It was a standard three-inch-deep bank box, twenty-four inches long.

When I had helped my mother close out my father’s tiny safe-deposit box two years ago at the South Side branch, the metal tray had been lined with a removable piece of stiff black felt to keep jewelry from scratching.

I reached inside the empty tray of Box 409 and scratched my fingernail against the back corner.

A piece of stiff black felt lifted up.

And taped flat beneath the felt, pressed against the cold steel bottom where a thief grabbing a bulky canvas bag in a four-minute rush would never think to peel back the liner, was a slim burgundy leather passbook and a folded yellow carbon copy of a Western Union receipt.

“Mr. Moretti,” I breathed.

Luca stepped beside me instantly, motioning for Henderson to wait outside the vault door.

Once the manager stepped out, I pulled the burgundy passbook and the yellow slip from beneath the felt liner.

Luca opened the yellow receipt first.

It was a record for two train tickets purchased at Union Station on November thirteenth, five years ago—Chicago to Montreal.

Wait.

My breath caught.

Those were the exact two tickets Vanessa had sewn into Sarah’s coat tonight!

Except on this original yellow purchase receipt, the buyer’s signature at the bottom wasn't Sarah Vance.

And it wasn't Matteo Bellini.

The credit card signature on the receipt belonged to Vanessa Bellini.

“Vanessa bought those tickets five years ago,” I whispered, stunned. “She was only twenty-two then. Why was she buying runaway tickets for her cousin Matteo and your wife?”

Luca wasn't looking at the train receipt anymore.

He had opened the burgundy leather passbook.

It wasn't a bank book.

It was Sarah’s private obstetrics and gynecology medical journal from five years ago, stamped with the crest of St. Jude’s Hospital.

And tucked inside the front cover was a folded letter written on Sarah’s cream stationery, addressed simply: TO LUCA, IF I DON’T MAKE IT HOME.

Luca’s hands—steady when holding a gun twenty minutes ago—trembled slightly as he unfolded his dead wife’s letter.

I read the faded blue ink over his arm.

Luca,

If you are reading this, then Arthur and Matteo stopped me before I could reach you at the airport. Lily’s illness last week wasn't the flu. Hannah Miller, a clerk at St. Jude’s, found a suppressed lab order showing someone put digitalis in Lily’s tea the day the harbor merger was signed. Hannah helped me trace the prescription back to Matteo Bellini’s private clinic account.

They weren't trying to kill Lily, Luca. They were trying to put her in the ICU so you would hand over emergency power of attorney on the harbor contracts to Arthur while we sat by her hospital bed.

Wait until you read the back page of this book. You need to know why Matteo wanted you ruined so badly—and why Vanessa helped him fake his death tonight.

Luca flipped to the back page of the burgundy book.

Clipped to the final page was a birth certificate from St. Jude’s Hospital dated six years earlier.

Mother: Vanessa Bellini.

Father: Matteo Bellini.

Wait—no.

I leaned closer, squinting at the hospital transfer stamp at the bottom of the birth certificate.

The baby girl born to Vanessa and Matteo hadn't died at birth like the Bellini family had told society when nineteen-year-old Vanessa went away to "boarding school in Switzerland."

And then I saw the handwritten note my sister Hannah had paper-clipped to the corner of the birth record:

Mrs. Moretti — They didn't poison your daughter to delay the contract signing. Judge Bellini found out you cannot have any more children after Lily. If Lily dies, Luca has no heir for the Moretti shipping fortune—unless Luca marries Vanessa.

Luca slowly lowered the book, his face pale as marble.

“They didn't want power of attorney,” Luca whispered, the horror finally clicking together in his eyes. “They tried to kill Lily five years ago so Arthur could push Vanessa into my bed while I was grieving—and put Matteo’s child in line for my empire.”

Suddenly, Luca’s cell phone vibrated in his coat pocket.

He pulled it out and looked at the screen.

It was a text message from an unknown number, accompanied by a photo taken less than two minutes ago.

The photo showed the back of our delivery van parked behind the Moretti mansion’s iron service gate.