The crystal glass had not stopped trembling when Sophia Moretti pointed her finger at the child and screamed that she did not belong. The little girl in the plain blue dress said nothing. She did not cry. She did not step back. She only waited — until the room went quiet enough to hear the mafia boss's chair scrape the marble. Then she raised one small hand and pointed. Not at Sophia. Not at the guards. At something behind her. Don Marco Duca saw Sophia's face change, and in ten years of blood he had never once seen her afraid. She was afraid now. And the child still had not spoken a word.

Marco and Victor escaped the vault through an emergency corridor twenty minutes later.

Daniel had been grazed by a fragment of metal, but he was alive. Isabella refused to leave until they recovered the cassette recorder and the remaining documents.

When they returned to the vehicle, Lily was drawing furiously in her notebook.

She handed Marco a picture.

It showed Richard standing beside a woman with dark hair.

The woman wore a ring shaped like a wolf's head.

Marco recognized it from his mother's jewelry collection.

"Eleanor," he whispered.

Lily shook her head.

She pointed at the woman.

Then she wrote:

NOT GRANDMA.

Marco studied the drawing again.

The woman's face resembled Eleanor's, but the hair was longer and the jaw narrower.

Isabella looked at the picture.

"That's Catherine Vale."

Victor contacted his investigators.

Within an hour, they discovered that Catherine had purchased a townhouse in Brooklyn under a false identity. The property was protected by private security and had been visited repeatedly by Richard.

Marco decided to go himself.

He arrived at the townhouse shortly before sunrise. The front door stood open.

Inside, the furniture had been removed. A single photograph lay on the floor.

Thomas Vale.

Beside it was a note.

Your father killed mine. Your mother buried the truth. Now you will pay what they owe.

Marco heard movement upstairs.

He climbed the staircase and found Catherine standing in a bedroom with a pistol in her hand.

She was in her late thirties, elegant and composed, with eyes that seemed to measure every weakness in the room.

"You came alone," she said.

"No."

She glanced toward the hallway.

Victor appeared behind him.

Catherine lowered the weapon slightly.

"I don't want to kill you, Marco."

"Then put it down."

"You don't understand what your family took from mine."

"My father killed yours."

"Your father ordered it. Your mother planned it. And you inherited everything they stole."

"I didn't know."

"That doesn't return twenty years of my life."

Catherine explained that her father had discovered the hidden financial accounts and threatened to expose them. Richard had ordered his murder, while Eleanor manipulated the investigation to make the death look like a robbery.

Catherine had spent years gathering evidence.

She had also infiltrated Northstar Holdings and gained control of several assets that Eleanor believed were still hers.

"Why involve Lily?" Marco asked.

Catherine's expression softened for the first time.

"I didn't. Eleanor did."

"Then why is your name connected to the guardianship payments?"

"Because I was paid to keep Lily safe."

Marco stared at her.

"By whom?"

"Your father."

Catherine admitted that Richard had arranged for Lily to live with a retired nurse after the clinic fire. When the nurse died, Catherine received instructions to move the child to another safe house.

But before she could do so, Eleanor's people found Lily.

"I never intended for her to end up at the summer house," Catherine said.

"Where is my father now?"

"With Eleanor."

"Why did he shoot at us?"

"Because he knows what the final document proves."

Catherine reached into a drawer and removed a folded letter.

"Your mother didn't simply arrange Thomas's murder. She arranged the deaths of everyone who helped him investigate her accounts."

Marco read the list.

At the bottom was a name that made him stop breathing.

Isabella Duca.

Catherine watched his face.