“Would you like to be my daughter?” a dying mafia boss asked a homeless girl after doctors gave him one month to live. No one expected the little girl to give Dominic Moretti a reason to fight for his life, least of all his own brother, whose face changed the moment he realized Dominic might actually survive.

The room remained dead silent after Julian spoke.

Marco took a step forward from the door, his hand resting openly on his jacket, but I raised a single finger, stopping him in his tracks.

"A search warrant at Red Hook," I said, my voice steady, stripped of all feverish weakness. "How convenient that the federal marshals knew exactly where to look."

"Jimmy Vance was a loose end, Dom," Julian said smoothly, picking up his briefcase. "You should have handled him months ago. But you were too busy grieving Isabella and Mateo to notice your house was burning down around you."

At the mention of my late wife and son, a icy chill descended over the room.

Lily stepped back toward Marco, her eyes wide as she felt the sudden drop in atmospheric pressure.

"Isabella and Mateo," I repeated softly. "You know, Julian... for three years, I wondered how a drunk driver managed to hit my wife's sedan on a bright, clear Sunday afternoon. The police report said the driver was a fifty-year-old construction worker with three times the legal limit of alcohol in his blood."

Julian didn't blink. "It was a tragedy, Dominic. We buried them. I stood beside you at the gravesite."

"Yes, you did," I said, leaning forward, resting my elbows on my knees. "And three days ago, I wondered why a construction worker who made forty thousand dollars a year had an offshore account in the Cayman Islands registered under an Apex Logistics holding company."

Julian’s hand, resting on the handle of his briefcase, twitched. A microscopic movement, but to a man who had spent twenty years reading faces across negotiation tables, it was as loud as a gunshot.

"What are you implying, Dominic?" Julian asked, his voice turning deadly quiet.

"I'm not implying anything, Julian," I said. "I'm stating a fact. You didn't just want the shipping lines. You wanted the entire crown. But as long as Mateo was alive, the succession line was sealed. You needed my bloodline erased."

"You're delusional," Julian spat, taking a step back toward the door. "The cancer has gone to your brain. You're hallucinating conspiracies because you can't accept that your life fell apart."

He turned to Marco. "Marco, he's unhinged. Secure the room. I'm calling the commission to declare him unfit for leadership."

Marco didn't move an inch. He stood blocking the doorway, his broad shoulders filling the frame, his face cold and unyielding.

"Get out of my way, Marco," Julian ordered, his voice rising in panic.

"I take orders from the Boss, Mr. Julian," Marco said quietly. "And right now, the Boss hasn't told me to let you leave."

"I am the head of this family the moment he dies!" Julian roared, pulling a small silver pistol from his coat pocket.

THWACK!

Before Julian could raise the weapon, Marco stepped forward with terrifying speed, his heavy palm smashing into Julian’s wrist. The silver pistol flew across the room, bouncing off the linoleum floor and sliding under the bed.

Marco caught Julian by the throat, slamming him against the heavy glass observation window. The reinforced glass cracked in a spiderweb pattern behind Julian’s head.

"Marco! Stop!" I commanded.

Marco held Julian pinned against the glass, his thumb pressing hard against Julian’s carotid artery. Julian gasped for air, his face turning red, his eyes wild with terror.

Lily didn't scream. She stepped behind my bed, watching the violence with a cold, intense focus.

"Let him go, Marco," I said, swinging my legs over the side of the hospital bed. I pulled the IV needles out of my arms, ignoring the sharp sting and the blood that welled up on my skin. I stood up, taking a slow, steady breath. My legs shook slightly, but I stood upright, refusing to lean on the bed frame.

"Dominic..." Julian choked out as Marco loosened his grip slightly. "You... you can't prove anything... the feds have the notebook..."

"The notebook Jimmy Vance kept?" I walked over to Julian, stopping inches from his face. "Jimmy Vance wasn't an idiot, Julian. A man who knows he's about to be killed by his employer doesn't leave his real evidence in a warehouse for the feds to find."

I reached into my hospital robe and pulled out the small, crumpled piece of paper Lily had given me earlier—the drawing of the crooked house.

"Show him, Lily," I said gently.

Lily reached into her oversized backpack. She didn't pull out clothes or toys. She pulled out a small, leather-bound black ledger wrapped in thick plastic tape—a ledger she had kept hidden in the lining of her battered backpack for eight months.

Julian’s eyes bulged as he saw the book.

"My dad gave this to me the day he left me on the corner," Lily said, her voice piercing through the quiet room. "He told me to give it to the police if he didn't come back. But the police were working with the man in the shiny watch. So I kept it."

She looked at Julian, her dark eyes filled with absolute disdain.

"You're the man with the shiny watch," she said. "My dad wrote down every meeting he had with you. He wrote down the plate numbers of the black van. And he wrote down how much you paid him to tamper with the brakes on the blue sedan three years ago."

The room seemed to freeze.

Julian’s face went completely ash-white. The last remnant of his arrogant, calculating facade dissolved into raw, pathetic horror. He looked at the nine-year-old girl standing beside my bed, realizing that the child he had dismissed as a street urchin carried the very rope that would hang him.

"Dominic... please..." Julian whimpered, his knees buckling against Marco's grip. "I'm your brother... our father..."

"Our father raised men, Julian," I said, my voice dropping into an icy register that made the room feel like a tomb. "He didn't raise snakes who murder children for a ledger."

I looked at Marco. "Take him to the Red Hook warehouse. Lock him in the basement office."

"Dominic! No! Please!" Julian screamed as Marco dragged him backward out the door, his leather shoes squeaking uselessly against the clean hospital floor. "Dominic! You can't do this! I'm a Moretti!"

The heavy oak doors slammed shut. The hallway went quiet.

I stood in the center of the sterile room, my heart pounding in my chest. The rage that had sustained me for seventy-two hours suddenly washed away, leaving behind a deep, exhausting ache. I stumbled slightly, my hand catching the edge of the bedside table.

A small hand reached up, taking hold of my fingers.

I looked down. Lily was standing beside me, holding the black ledger in her other hand.

"Are you going to throw up?" she asked.