“Make my daughter speak again, and I’ll give you everything,” the billionaire Mafia Boss begged. But when my four-year-old pointed at the swan music box and whispered, “He doesn’t want her to open it,” the man Vincent trusted most suddenly went pale.

The night air outside was freezing, smelling heavily of spent gunpowder and burnt rubber.

A battered grey delivery van sat idling in the rear service driveway, its headlights completely turned off. The bodies of two rival gunmen lay motionless near the iron gate, which had been rammed open by a heavy truck.

Luca shoved us into the back of the van, where there were no seats—only wooden crates and moving blankets.

“Get down on the floor and stay beneath the window line!” Luca yelled, slamming the sliding side door shut before climbing into the driver’s seat.

The van roared to life, tires screeching against the wet pavement as Luca tore out of the estate, weaving through the quiet suburban streets of Lake Forest.

I pulled Isabella and Ellie beneath a heavy wool blanket in the corner of the floor. Ellie was crying quietly now, her small hands holding onto Isabella’s fingers.

“Where are we going, Luca?!” I shouted over the roar of the engine. “Where is Vincent? Is he alive?!”

“I don't know!” Luca yelled back, his eyes darting frantically to the rearview mirror as he blew through a red light. “The Cicero warehouse was an ambush! Vincent’s convoy got boxed in by four trucks. He radioed us to execute Contingency Delta right before the signal went dead!”

“What is Contingency Delta?!” I cried out.

“The safe house in Winnetka!” Luca shouted. “Sofia’s old family cottage near the lake! It’s off the registry—none of the Commission families know about it!”

Winnetka.

The name hit my mind like a physical blow.

“Three days after her mother died in a car accident on a rain-soaked road outside Winnetka...”

I looked down at Isabella. The little girl’s eyes were wide in the darkness, staring at the ceiling of the van, her small jaw tightly set.

“Isabella,” I whispered, leaning close to her ear. “That cottage... did you go there with your mother before the accident?”

Isabella turned her head slowly to look at me. In the dim light of passing streetlamps filtering through the tinted windows, her eyes held a chilling, mature clarity.