Christmas Eve was supposed to celebrate my engagement, but beneath the marble staircase of my Long Island mansion sat a three-year-old girl clutching a photograph of the woman I had spent four years trying to forget

The cold hit me like a physical blow the second I shoved through the service exit beside the industrial kitchens.

The wind screamed off the Long Island Sound, whipping freezing sea spray and heavy flakes of snow directly into my face. I wore only my silk dress shirt and trousers, but the biting thirty-degree air felt entirely numb compared to the inferno blazing behind my ribs.

"Dominic! Sir, wait for backup!" Marco’s voice shouted behind me, but I was already sprinting down the flagstone pathway that led toward the historic stone carriage house.

The snow was ankle-deep, untouched except for a jagged, erratic trail of footprints and a smear of crimson that looked violently bright under the amber perimeter floodlights.

*Follow the red.*

Every breath burned in my throat. Four years of silence. Four years of drinking myself to sleep in hotel penthouses, wondering what I had done wrong, wondering why the gentle, brilliant woman who used to fall asleep with her fingers curled into my palm had suddenly abandoned everything we built. I had believed she hated me. I had believed she realized I was stained by the blood of my family and couldn't bear the sight of me.

All of it had been an orchestrated, calculated lie.

"Sophia!" I roared into the blizzard, the wind tearing the sound from my lungs. "Sophia!"

Near the rusted cast-iron doors of the generator shed, half-buried under a drift of white, lay a bundle of dark blue wool.

My knees hit the frozen ground so hard the impact vibrated through my spine.

I reached down and turned her over with trembling hands.

Her face was as pale as porcelain, lips tinged with blue, dark lashes frosted over with delicate needles of ice. She had a deep, jagged gash along her hairline, blood drying black against her ivory skin. Her hands were raw, red, clutching a sodden, broken burner phone to her chest.

"Sophia," I choked out, pulling her into my arms, tucking her freezing head against my neck. Her skin was ice. Deathly cold. "Sophia, look at me. Look at me, damn it!"

Her eyelashes fluttered. A shallow, rattling breath hitched in her chest. For a terrifying second, her eyes rolled back, and then those hazel irises—the ones that had haunted every waking hour of my existence—focused on my face.

She didn't scream. She didn't flinch away.

Her cracked lips parted, and a single tear, instantly freezing against her cheek, slipped free.

"Dominic..." she whispered, her voice like dry leaves scraping across concrete. "Lily... did she... did she make it inside?"

"She’s safe," I said fiercely, gathering her entire trembling body into my lap, ripping off my tuxedo jacket—which Enzo had sprinted up to hand me—and wrapping it tightly around her shivering shoulders. "She’s inside, Sophia. She’s sitting beneath the stairs. She’s safe. Nobody is going to touch her."

Sophia’s breath caught on a sob, a tiny, fractured sound that broke something fundamental inside my chest. "They came to the house... two nights ago. Men with guns. They told me... they told me if I didn't give her up, they'd make sure neither of us saw the New Year. I ran. I drove until the car ran out of gas three miles down the shoreline... I carried her through the woods..."

"Who came to your house?" I demanded, lifting her effortlessly into my arms as I stood up against the howling gale. Enzo was already beside me, his sidearm unholstered, scanning the dark tree line with predatory precision.

"They said... they worked for the bride," Sophia gasped, her fingers clutching my shirt, her grip surprisingly desperate for someone on the brink of hypothermia. "They said Isabella Vitale doesn't share her throne. Dominic... she knows. She’s known the whole time."

I looked down at the woman in my arms. Her head lolled against my chest, her body going limp as exhaustion and shock dragged her back under the surface of consciousness.

"Enzo," I said, my voice dead, flat, carrying the cold weight of a grave stone.

"Boss?"

"Lock down the estate," I commanded, walking toward the private side entrance of the west wing. "Nobody leaves this property. Not a senator, not a priest, and especially not Antonio Vitale or his daughter. Cut the cellular jammers on. Surround the perimeter with every soldier we have on payroll."

"And your mother?" Enzo asked quietly.

I stepped through the heavy steel doors into the warmth of the private corridors, looking down at Sophia's bruised, frozen face.