Three gold coins lay on the marble table when I told my maid’s three-year-old daughter she could have any three wishes she wanted. Ellie ignored every toy around her and asked only one question: “Why does Mommy have to say sorry when she didn’t do it?” The moment she said it, I stopped looking at the child and looked at my brother Dante.

Ellie looked at the shining metal token in my hand. Her tiny fingers reached out, touching the cold surface before she snatched it into her palm, tucking it beside her stuffed bear.

"Ellie..." Clara sobbed softly, dropping to her knees on the parquet floor beside her daughter. "Mr. Moretti, please... I beg you. Don't do this. He’ll... he’ll destroy us."

"Who will destroy you, Clara?" I asked, keeping my gaze fixed on her trembling face. "My brother?"

Clara looked up at me, her brown eyes wide, bloodshot, and hollow with exhaustion. She looked at Dante, who was standing now, his jacket pulled back just far enough to reveal the leather harness of his concealed holster.

"Vince, this is ridiculous," Dante said, taking a step toward the head of the table. "You're acting unhinged because of the anniversary. Let me handle Clara. I'll give her a severance package and she can be out of the gatehouse by morning."

"Touch her," I said without looking at him, "and you won't walk out of this room."

Two of my personal bodyguards—Gino and Marco, men who had served my father before me—stepped silently into the dining room from the terrace doors. They didn't look at Dante with respect. They looked at him as a target. Dante’s jaw clenched, his hands freezing at his sides.

I turned back to Ellie. "Your second wish, Ellie. Tell me."

Ellie pointed her tiny finger toward the heavy oak door leading to the west wing of the manor—the wing where Dante kept his private offices and residence.

"I want Mommy's red book back," Ellie said. "The one Uncle Dante locked in his big iron box. Mommy cries at night because she can't go home without it."

"Red book?" I murmured.

Clara buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking violently as tears spilled through her thin fingers. "My passport," she choked out through her sobs. "My passport and Ellie's birth certificate. And my sister's medical files..."

The puzzle pieces began to slam together with terrifying clarity.

Clara Romano hadn't arrived at my estate through an agency eight months ago by chance. She was an immigrant from southern Italy whose family had been tied to our logistics network in Naples. Her sister had been sick.

Dante hadn't hired her to clean my house. He had brought her here to control her.

"Why, Dante?" I asked, standing up slowly, turning to face my brother. "Why would you confiscate a maid's passport?"

Dante let out a harsh, bitter laugh, dropping the facade of the dutiful younger brother. He poured himself another shot of scotch with a hand that was remarkably steady.

"Because her late husband was Antonio Rossi, Vince," Dante said, his eyes turning cold and cynical. "Does that name ring a bell?"

My mind flashed back three years—to a massive shipment of pharmaceuticals that had gone missing from our docks in Newark, triggering a war with the Genovese family that had cost us twelve men and twenty million dollars. Antonio Rossi had been our chief auditor at the port. He had died in a 'car accident' two weeks after the shipment vanished.

"Antonio didn't die in a car crash, did he?" I asked softly.

"Antonio was a rat," Dante spat, slamming his glass down so hard the glass cracked. "He kept a secondary ledger. A record of every offshore account, every bribe, every stolen container. Before he died, he gave that ledger to his sweet little wife."

Dante pointed a finger at Clara, who cowered on the floor.

"She thought she could hide in Milan!" Dante sneered. "I tracked her down. I brought her here under the guise of a domestic job so I could keep her under my thumb until she handed over the encryption keys to Antonio's drive! She’s been lying to you for eight months, Vince! Sitting in your house, eating your food, while hiding the very evidence that could put our whole family in federal prison!"

The room was silent save for Clara’s quiet, broken weeping.

I looked down at Clara. "Is this true, Clara? Do you have Antonio's ledger?"

Clara looked up, her face pale, her lips trembling. "My husband... Antonio didn't want to steal from you, Mr. Moretti! He found out that someone inside your company was selling weapons to the cartels using your ships! He was going to bring the ledger to you! But Dante found out first! Dante had him killed!"

She reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a small, silver flash drive attached to a broken red ribbon.

"Antonio told me... if anything happened to him, I should only trust Vincent Moretti," Clara whispered, holding the drive up toward me. "But when I got here... Dante took my papers. He told me if I ever said a word to you, he would make sure Ellie vanished into the foster system and never came back."

I took the small silver drive from Clara's trembling fingers.

The weight of it felt no heavier than a feather, but it contained the truth behind three years of blood, death, and treason within my organization.

Dante hadn't just bullied a maid. He had murdered an honest worker, stolen my company's assets, brought a grieving widow and her child into my home as hostages, and used my grief over Sofia as a shield to hide his treachery.

"Vince, listen to me," Dante said, his voice dropping into a desperate pitch as he realized Gino and Marco were moving to flank him. "Antonio was going to ruin us! I did what I had to do to protect the Moretti name! We're brothers! Blood!"

I looked down at Ellie, who was staring up at me, holding her one-eyed bear and Sofia’s two gold coins.

"Ellie," I said, my voice softer than it had been in seven years. "Your second wish is granted."

I looked at Gino. "Take Dante to the wine cellar. Lock the reinforced door. Search his office, find Clara’s passport, and bring it to me."

"Vince! You can't do this!" Dante roared as Gino and Marco slammed him face-first onto the mahogany dining table, stripping his firearm from his holster and pinning his arms behind his back. "I am a Moretti! You're going to side with a housemaid over your own blood?!"

As they dragged Dante out of the dining room, his furious screams echoing down the marble hallway, I remained standing at the head of the table.