# THE MAFIA BOSS SAW HIS MAID SERVING DINNER WITH ONE ARM HIDDEN BEHIND HER BACK—THEN HIS FIANCÉE ORDERED HER NOT TO SHOW HIM

The room erupted in voices, but Luca heard only one sentence.

The login belonged to him.

“That’s impossible,” he said.

The technician shook his head. “The account was created with your credentials, but that doesn’t prove you accessed it. Someone may have cloned your authentication token.”

“Who had access?”

“Anyone who handled your devices or had access to the estate’s secure network.”

Luca’s gaze drifted to the hospital’s security officer, then to his own guards. He had built his life around control. The idea that someone could move through his private systems wearing his name made him feel suddenly exposed.

Hannah sat beside Ethan, who had been discharged to a secure private room after the doctors confirmed he had no internal injuries. His face was bruised, and his left wrist was wrapped, but he was alive. Hannah kept checking that he was really there, touching his shoulder as if he might vanish between one breath and the next.

“You should rest,” she told him.

“I will when I know who tried to kill Sofia.”

“Ethan—”

“I’m serious, Han. I saw the SUV push her car toward the barrier. Then a man got out. He wasn’t Richard.”

Luca turned from the monitor. “You saw his face?”

“Not clearly. He wore a cap, but I recognized his walk. He limped slightly.”

Luca exchanged a look with his oldest driver, Marco, who stood near the door.

“Does that mean anything to you?” Luca asked.

Marco’s expression changed. “Nicholas had a limp after his skiing accident. He still does when it rains.”

The name fell into the room like a dropped blade.

Nicholas Moretti had been living abroad since Antonio’s death, supposedly managing a shipping venture in Europe. He returned to Chicago only for major family events, and he had missed Luca’s engagement party, claiming a health issue. Luca had always interpreted the absences as indifference.

Now they looked like careful distance.

Sofia joined them by secure video. Her face was tired, a fresh cut visible near her hairline. She was in a motel room under a false name, with a police officer stationed outside.

“I found Nicholas’s travel records,” she said. “He was in Chicago the night Dad died. He used a private airfield and entered the city under a different passport.”

“Why didn’t we know?” Luca asked.

“Because Richard controlled the family’s legal records. And because Nicholas was the person who told me Dad had been cremated.”

Luca frowned. “He wasn’t cremated. I buried him.”

Sofia’s mouth tightened. “You buried a sealed casket. You never saw the body.”

The silence that followed was absolute.

Luca remembered the funeral director’s apology, the claim that Antonio’s face had been too damaged by medical procedures for viewing. He remembered signing forms he had barely read. He had trusted his uncle to handle the arrangements while he dealt with the family business and Sofia’s disappearance.

“Where is Dad’s body?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Sofia said. “But I found a payment to a private crematorium. The transaction was made two days after the funeral.”

Luca’s hands curled into fists. “Then whose body did we bury?”

Sofia didn’t answer.

The police obtained a warrant for Nicholas’s last known Chicago residence. The house was empty, but the basement contained a locked cabinet filled with medical supplies, burner phones, and copies of Antonio’s prescriptions. A handwritten note on the inside of the cabinet door read: If Elena returns, do not let her reach Luca.

Below it was a list of names. One belonged to Daniel Bell. Another belonged to Richard Sterling. The third was simply marked M.

Hannah studied the photograph the police had taken of the list. “Could M be Marcus?”

“Possibly,” Luca said. “Or someone else.”

Ethan shifted in his chair. “The man who grabbed me at the hospital called somebody ‘Uncle.’ He said, ‘Uncle wants the drive before the police arrive.’”

Luca’s expression hardened. “Nicholas.”

“Maybe,” Ethan replied. “But he sounded scared of the person he was talking to.”

That detail unsettled Luca more than the rest. Nicholas was ruthless, but he had never been a man who frightened easily.

The technician called from the lab. He had opened the second encrypted file. It contained a digital copy of Antonio’s original medical chart, an audio recording, and a bank transfer schedule. The recording began with Antonio’s weak voice.

“Nick, you can still stop this.”

Another man replied, “It’s already done.”

Antonio coughed. “You’re my brother.”

“And you were going to hand the whole family to the police.”

“No. I was going to save it.”

A chair scraped. Then a woman’s voice spoke from near the bed.

“Please. He’s not breathing right.”

Luca’s head snapped up.

It was Vanessa.

The recording continued. Nicholas ordered her to leave. She refused. Then a third voice, older and colder, said, “If he survives the night, none of us survives the year.”

The voice was not Nicholas’s.

The technician isolated the audio and ran it through the available comparison database. The result was not conclusive, but it matched a recording of a retired judge who had presided over several cases involving the Moretti family.

Judge Arthur Kessler.

The same judge who had sealed the investigation into Antonio’s death.

Luca stared at the screen. His uncle, Richard, Daniel, Vanessa, and now a judge. This was no longer a family secret. It was a network.

Sofia’s voice came through the speaker. “There’s one more thing. Mom said the original file proves who gave the order. But she said it can only be understood with a second document.”

“What document?”

“A list of names written in Dad’s own hand. He hid it before he died.”

Luca looked at the photograph of the hidden chamber in the mausoleum.

The metal box had contained one letter, bank records, and a brass key. But there had been an empty slot in the velvet lining, shaped like a thin notebook.