THE MAFIA BOSS’S FIANCÉE TRIED TO ERASE HIS PAST, BUT THE JANITOR HELD THE KEY TO HIS EMPIRE

The wind screamed through the shattered windows of the clocktower, whipping the dust into a frenzy around us.

Marcus Bellini stood perfectly still, the red laser sight unwavering on Luca’s chest. Two armed guards flanked him on the narrow staircase, cutting off any chance of escape.

“You’re a coward, Marcus,” Luca said, his voice steady despite the gun aimed at his heart. “You couldn’t find the ledger yourself, so you poisoned a good man and used his daughter.”

Bellini let out a dry, humorless laugh. “Good men die poor, Luca. Your father learned that the hard way. He thought he could protect the neighborhood from me. He thought he could build a slush fund to save people like Arthur Reed. But in the end, Michael lost everything.”

“My father died with his honor intact,” Luca shot back.

“Honor doesn’t pay the rent,” Bellini sneered. He shifted his gaze to me. “The watch, Emma. Toss it over.”

I gripped the heavy gold pocket watch in my hand. My mind raced. Why was this the treasure? A pawned family heirloom?

I looked at the cracked glass face. The hands were frozen at 12:00.

“Emma, don’t,” Luca whispered, stepping slightly in front of me to block the shot.

“If she doesn’t, you die right now,” Bellini warned. “I’ve spent thirty years looking for the key to Michael’s hidden accounts. I won’t let the son of a mechanic keep it from me.”

I looked at Luca. I saw the calculation in his eyes. We were trapped. If I held onto the watch, he would die, and Bellini would take it from my dead hands anyway.

I had to make a choice.

“Fine,” I said, my voice shaking. “Take it.”

I threw the watch.

But I didn’t throw it to Bellini.

I threw it as hard as I could over Bellini’s head, toward the open, gaping window that led straight down a fifty-foot drop into the alley below.

Bellini’s eyes widened in horror. “No!”

He lunged forward instinctively, his rifle dropping an inch.

It was the only opening Luca needed.

Luca moved with blinding speed. He didn’t draw his gun—he tackled Bellini, driving his shoulder into the older man’s chest and sending them both crashing onto the rotting floorboards.

The sniper rifle discharged wildly, the bullet tearing through the wooden ceiling.

I scrambled backward as the two guards rushed forward. But before they could reach us, a deafening roar echoed from the staircase.

BANG.

One of the guards cried out, clutching his shoulder, and fell backward down the stairs.

Standing in the shadows of the stairwell, holding a smoking, heavy-caliber revolver with shaking hands, was Mr. Callahan.

“I told you I couldn’t make the climb,” the old man wheezed. “I didn’t say I couldn’t shoot from the landing.”

The second guard hesitated, looking down the dark stairwell. Luca used the distraction to drive his fist into Bellini’s jaw. The billionaire went limp.

Luca snatched up Bellini’s dropped rifle and pointed it at the remaining guard. “Drop it.”

The guard slowly lowered his weapon and backed away with his hands up.

“Emma, go!” Luca shouted, pulling himself up.

We grabbed Mr. Callahan on the way down, rushing down the spiraling staircase as fast as our legs could carry us.

When we burst out into the alley, the rain was coming down in sheets.

I frantically searched the wet pavement near the base of the tower.

“The watch,” I gasped, falling to my knees in the puddles. “I have to find the watch.”

Luca knelt beside me, sweeping his flashlight across the debris. “Emma, it fell fifty feet onto concrete. It’s gone.”

“It can’t be,” I sobbed, digging through the wet trash and broken glass. “It’s the only thing my father has left of his family.”

“Look,” Mr. Callahan said, pointing his cane toward a rusted dumpster.

Sitting in a puddle, glistening under the streetlights, was the gold pocket watch.

I snatched it up. The fall had completely shattered the glass face, and the back casing had popped open upon impact.

But as I looked at the exposed back of the watch, my breath caught.

The watch wasn’t just broken. The impact had dislodged a false back inside the casing.

Tucked neatly into the hidden compartment behind the gears was a tiny, tightly rolled piece of microfilm.

“It wasn’t just a watch,” Luca murmured, staring at the film. “My father bought it back from the pawnshop. He used it as a vault.”

Mr. Callahan smiled, though he looked exhausted. “Michael always said time holds the greatest secrets.”

We rushed back to Luca’s Aston Martin and peeled out of the alley just as Bellini’s remaining men stumbled out of the clocktower.

An hour later, we were sitting in the secure, windowless basement office of Luca’s legitimate shipping company. The microfilm had been carefully fed into an old digital scanner Luca kept in a safe.

The image projected onto the computer monitor.

It wasn’t a ledger of Bellini’s crimes. It wasn’t a list of extorted businesses.

It was a bank document. A massive trust fund, established in 1996 under a proxy corporation.

The account balance at the time was two million dollars. With thirty years of compound interest, it was worth tens of millions today.

But what made me gasp were the names listed as the primary beneficiaries.

Arthur Reed.

Walter Callahan.

And twenty other families who were evicted by Marcus Bellini.

“My god,” Mr. Callahan whispered, tears welling in his aged eyes. “Michael didn’t steal the money Bellini was embezzling. He intercepted it. And he put it in a trust for all the people Bellini destroyed.”

Luca stared at the screen, profound pride washing over his face. “My father wasn’t building a slush fund for himself. He was building a lifeboat for the neighborhood.”

“And Bellini wants it back,” I realized. “That’s why he was trying to buy the letters. That’s why he poisoned my dad. He needs the money to save his failing real estate empire, and he knew Arthur was the only surviving trustee who could legally authorize the release of the funds.”

Luca turned to me, his eyes blazing with a new kind of intensity.

“Bellini thought he could erase my father’s legacy,” Luca said. “He thought he could hurt your family to get what he wanted.”

Luca picked up his phone. He dialed a number.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Vanessa warned me earlier that if I broke the engagement, her father would ruin my legitimate business by morning,” Luca said, a dangerous smile touching his lips. “I’m going to make sure Marcus Bellini doesn’t have an empire left by sunrise.”

He put the phone to his ear.

“Call the board of directors,” Luca ordered the person on the other line. “And call the FBI financial crimes division. I have a thirty-year-old paper trail they’re going to want to see.”

Before Luca could hang up, my cell phone buzzed in my pocket.

It was an unknown number.

I answered it tentatively. “Hello?”

“Emma Reed?” a woman’s voice asked. It sounded clinical. Cold.

“Yes?”

“This is St. Jude’s Hospice Care. We received a transfer order for your father, Arthur Reed, authorized by a Marcus Bellini.”

My blood ran ice cold.

“What?” I gasped. “No, my father is at a private clinic! Luca Moretti’s clinic!”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the nurse said. “Mr. Bellini produced documentation stating he has medical power of attorney. Your father was taken by a private transport ten minutes ago.”