The first time the mafia boss’s baby reached for me, I thought he wanted the silver necklace around my throat.

The aftermath was silent, methodical, and brutal.

By four in the morning, the Bellevue incident had been completely wiped from public record. The Philadelphia police commissioner—a man who owed his house, his career, and his daughter’s Ivy League tuition to the Moretti family—personally oversaw the cleanup. Matteo Castiglione was ruled a suicide following financial ruin. The kidnapped baby was never mentioned.

Back at the Chestnut Hill estate, a team of private physicians checked Leo from head to toe. Aside from a minor scrape on his knee and extreme exhaustion, he was physically unharmed.

He refused to sleep in the nursery.

Instead, he lay between Luca and me in the center of the massive king-sized bed in the master suite, his tiny hand clutched tightly around my index finger, his face buried against his father's bare forearm.

The room was lit only by the faint glow of the fireplace.

Luca lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, his jaw tight. The dark tattoos on his chest and arms seemed to writhe in the dancing firelight. He hadn't slept a wink.

"There was an inside man," I said quietly, breaking the heavy silence.

Luca turned his head toward me. "What makes you say that?"

"Matteo knew exactly which suite Rosa took Leo to," I whispered, keeping my voice low so as not to wake the boy. "The twelfth floor was reserved under a shell company. Only six people in your organization knew the room number."

Luca’s eyes hardened into black ice. "Seven."

"Who?"

"Marco Bellini," Luca said softly. "My head of logistics. Elena’s brother."

My breath caught. "Leo’s uncle?"

"Marco never forgave me for Elena’s death," Luca said, his voice hollow with an old, rotting grief. "He blamed my lifestyle. He believed that if Elena had married a legitimate businessman instead of the heir to the Moretti family, she would still be alive. He thought... he thought if Leo was raised by the Castigliones, the boy would be spared this life."

"He helped Matteo kidnap his own nephew?" I asked, sickening disgust rising in my throat.

"He thought Matteo was going to send Leo to an adoptive family in Sicily," Luca murmured. "Marco is a fool. He didn't understand that to Matteo, Leo wasn't a child. He was leverage. A trophy to be discarded."

Luca sat up slowly, swinging his long legs over the side of the bed. He pulled on a dark shirt, his movements cold, deliberate, and terrifyingly calm.

"Where are you going?" I asked, sitting up, my hand instinctively checking on Leo.

Luca walked around to my side of the bed. He crouched down beside me, taking my face in his large, warm hands. The rough calluses of his thumbs brushed across my cheekbones with infinite tenderness.

"I have to end this, Avery," he said softly. "All of it. If I leave a single ember burning, it will catch fire again. And next time, it might take you."

"Luca, please. Don't do something that takes you away from him."

"Everything I am about to do," he whispered, leaning in to press a fierce, lingering kiss against my forehead, "is so that I can come back to this room and never pick up a gun again."

He looked down at Leo, who let out a soft, contented snore in his sleep.

"I made a promise to Elena on her deathbed that I would protect him," Luca said, his voice cracking with emotion. "I broke that promise tonight. But you... you kept it. You jumped into the fire for him."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, velvet box, setting it on the nightstand beside me.

"What is that?" I asked.

"My future," Luca said. "Open it when the sun comes up."