2"I came home early and nearly fired the young maid I found sitting on my kitchen floor, making my three daughters laugh for the first time since their mother was murdered. But before I could throw her out, my eldest daughter grabbed my coat, looked me straight in the eyes, and spoke her first words in fourteen months: “Daddy killed Mommy.”

“Get them upstairs,” I commanded, my voice barely audible even to myself.

Rosa didn't hesitate this time. She scooped Mia up into her arms, grabbed Valentina by the hand, and gently peeled Lucia’s fingers away from my coat.

“Come on, girls,” Rosa murmured, her voice thick with suppressed emotion. “Miss Clara is going to draw a nice, warm bath for you in the east wing. Let’s go.”

As they hurried out of the kitchen, the young maid—the girl Rosa had hired behind my back, the one I had threatened to throw onto the street five minutes ago—remained frozen against the kitchen island. Her name tag, pinned crookedly to her simple linen apron, read Chloe.

She looked at me, her wide blue eyes swimming with a mixture of terror and profound, agonizing pity.

“Mr. Russo,” Chloe whispered, her hands clasped tightly in front of her. “I… I didn't know. I swear to God, I didn't know anything about the family politics. Rosa just told me the little girls hadn't spoken since their mother passed, and she needed someone who knew how to make bread from scratch to coax them out of their shells.”

I stood up slowly, my joints popping in the dead silence of the kitchen. I didn't look at her with anger anymore. The rage was gone, replaced by a cold, hollow void that felt infinitely more dangerous.

“Pack a bag, Chloe,” I said flatly.

She flinched, taking a half-step back. “You’re… you’re firing me?”

“I’m sending you to the safehouse in the Hamptons with a detail of four armed men,” I corrected, my eyes locking onto hers. “Because if what Lucia heard is true, then the man who told her that lie knows she remembers it. And if he knows she remembers it, your life isn't worth a cracked nickel if you stay in this house past sunset.”

Chloe swallowed hard, the color slowly returning to her cheeks as the weight of my words sank in. “You believe her?”

“My daughter hasn't spoken a single word in fourteen months,” I said, walking past her toward the doorway. “Children don't break a fourteen-month silence to lie.”

I left the kitchen and strode down the long, high-ceilinged hallway of the Long Island estate. Every portrait of my ancestors, every expensive oil painting collected during my rise through the New York syndicate world, suddenly looked like a mocking reminder of my blindness.

I walked into my private study on the ground floor—a massive room lined with mahogany bookshelves, a walk-in climate-controlled humidor, and an antique oak desk that had belonged to my grandfather.

I didn't turn on the lights. The moonlight cutting through the floor-to-ceiling bay windows was enough.

I walked straight to the antique desk, pulled out the bottom right drawer, and pressed my thumb against the biometric scanner hidden beneath the wood grain. With a soft, pneumatic hiss, a hidden compartment slid open, revealing a heavy leather-bound ledger and a secure satellite phone.

The ledger contained the internal communications logs of the Russo organization—every asset allocation, every security roster, and every high-level meeting coordinate from the past five years.

Fourteen months ago, only three living men outside of myself had access to the master logistics schedule for my family’s daily movements:

Victor Vance, my chief consigliere and the man who had stood beside me at Isabella’s open casket.

Marcus Thorne, the head of my private security detail who had managed the estate gates on the night of the funeral.

And Julian Cross, my corporate attorney and financial fixer, who handled the offshore accounts that funded our entire operation.