I CALMED A MAFIA DON’S SCREAMING SON AND TOLD HIM THE BOY NEEDED A MOTHER — THEN HE OPENED A FILE WITH MY NAME ON IT

The Moretti mansion was a fortress of limestone, steel, and shadow. But to three-year-old Leo, it was just a giant, terrifying box.

Ever since the night at the ballroom, the security on the estate had tripled. Armed guards walked the perimeter with Belgian Malinois hounds, and heavy iron shutters were drawn across the windows at sunset.

Despite the tension suffocating the adults, Leo was thriving.

He sat on the plush carpet of the nursery, giggling as I stacked colorful wooden blocks into a tower. His dark curls—identical to his father’s—bounced as he clapped his small hands together.

"More, Clara! Build high!" Leo cheered, his tiny voice light and clear.

Six weeks ago, this child hadn't spoken a word. He had communicated only through blood-curdling screams born of trauma from the night his biological mother had died in a drive-by shooting aimed at Ricardo. The doctors had called it selective mutism.

I called it heartbreak.

"Only if you eat your apple slices first," I smiled, bopping his nose gently.

He popped a fruit slice into his mouth, chewing happily. As I watched him, a fierce, protective ache bloomed in my chest. I wasn't his mother. I was a paid fake fiancée living on borrowed time. But every morning when he ran into my room to wake me up, and every evening when Ricardo sat at the head of the dining table watching us with a unreadable expression, the boundary lines of our fake agreement blurred a little more.

At eight o'clock, Leo fell asleep, his little hand clutched tightly around my pinky finger. I carefully untangled myself, tucked the blanket around his shoulders, and stepped out into the quiet hallway.

The house was eerily silent.

Ricardo was in his ground-floor office holding an emergency meeting with his capos. I could hear the muffled, angry murmurs of grown men discussing war. Victor Vance was pressing the borders of the Moretti territory, executing hit-and-run attacks on Ricardo’s shipping docks.

Instead of returning to my bedroom, my eyes drifted down the long, dimly lit corridor toward the forbidden area: The West Wing.

Never enter the west wing, Ricardo had warned me on my first night.

Curiosity, combined with the suffocating weight of my own secrets, pushed my feet forward. The thick carpet absorbed my footsteps as I walked down the wing. The air grew cooler here, smelling faintly of old paper, dried flowers, and expensive perfume.

At the end of the hall stood a heavy mahogany double door. It wasn't locked.

I pushed it open gently.

The room was a master suite frozen in time. A massive four-poster bed was made with pristine white silk. On the vanity sat crystal perfume bottles, untouched beneath a light layer of dust.

It was his late wife’s room.

I stepped inside, feeling like an intruder. On the bedside table sat a framed photograph. I picked it up. A beautiful, blonde woman smiled back at me, holding a newborn baby in her arms. She looked refined, aristocratic, and completely out of place in Ricardo's dark world.

Beside the frame lay a small, black velvet journal.

I shouldn't have opened it. But as I flipped to the last entry, dated three days before her death, the handwriting made my heart freeze.

“Ricardo thinks he is protecting us from the street,” the entry read. “He doesn't realize the threat isn't outside the gates. It’s inside. His most trusted lieutenant, Marcus, has been taking money from Victor Vance. If anything happens to me, tell Ricardo to look at the shipping manifests for Dock 4.”

My breath hitched. Marcus.

Marcus was Ricardo’s right-hand man—the chief of security who slept in the room across from Leo's nursery, the man who held the master keys to the entire estate.

"I told you never to come here."

The deep, gravelly voice sliced through the silence.

I gasped, dropping the journal onto the bed as I whirled around.

Ricardo stood in the doorway. He had stripped off his suit jacket, his white shirt unbuttoned at the collar, revealing the dark ink of family tattoos stretching across his chest. His eyes burned with an absolute, terrifying rage.

He closed the distance between us in two long strides, grabbing my wrist and pinning me back against the mahogany vanity.

"What are you doing in this room, Clara?" he growled, his body pressing close, radiating heat and lethal energy.

"Ricardo, listen to me—" I stammered, my heart slamming against my ribs.

"You violated the one rule I gave you!" he barked, his jaw clenching so hard a pulse throbbed in his temple. "This room is sacred! My wife died because I failed to protect her! I will not have a stranger digging through her grave!"

"She wasn't killed by an enemy outside!" I yelled back, tears springing to my eyes as I slapped my hand against his broad chest. "She was betrayed! Marcus is working for Victor Vance!"

Ricardo froze. The rage in his eyes flickered, replaced by a sudden, chilling stillness.

"What did you say?" he whispered.

"Read the journal!" I pleaded, pointing at the bed. "She wrote it before she died! Marcus is selling your shipping routes! That’s how Victor knew where to find me five years ago, and that’s how he knows every move you make now!"

Ricardo slowly released my wrist. He picked up the black journal, his large hands trembling slightly as his eyes scanned his dead wife's final words.

For three agonizing minutes, no one spoke.

When Ricardo finally closed the journal, the man standing before me was no longer just angry. He was a commander preparing for an execution.