Mara stared at the computer screen.
"No."
Nicholas's security chief, Thomas Reed, tried the flash drive again.
Nothing.
No documents.
No folders.
No hidden files.
Empty.
"That's impossible," Mara said.
"I saw files on it."
Nicholas sat across the room with his wounded shoulder bandaged.
After refusing hospitalization, he had allowed a private physician to treat him in one of the surviving guest rooms.
His expression was grim.
"Someone switched it."
Mara reached into her pocket.
"I never let it go."
"At the fire?"
She remembered.
Smoke.
Daniel.
Nicholas trapped.
Dozens of people grabbing her.
Blankets placed around her shoulders.
Police.
Security.
Adrian.
Someone could have switched it.
"But who knew I had it?"
Nicholas looked at Thomas.
"Very few people."
That was the problem.
Someone inside the mansion had betrayed them.
The documents recovered from the storage unit still helped.
But without the digital records, they lacked the full financial trail connecting Adrian to murders, weapons trafficking, and offshore accounts.
Police issued a warrant for Adrian.
He disappeared.
Three days passed.
Nicholas moved Mara to a secure guesthouse on the estate.
She refused at first.
"I can go home."
"No."
"That's not your decision."
"Adrian threatened you."
"My apartment has locks."
Nicholas stared at her.
"So does a cereal box."
She almost laughed.
Instead she folded her arms.
"My brother is alone."
"I moved security to his rehabilitation center."
Mara's anger vanished.
"You what?"
"Two men. Quietly."
"You didn't ask."
"Would you have agreed?"
"No."
"That's why."
She threw a pillow at him.
He caught it with his good arm.
"Violence from household staff. Standards are declining."
Despite everything, Mara smiled.
Then immediately hated herself for smiling.
Nicholas noticed.
His expression softened.
The relationship between them had changed since the fire.
Neither discussed it.
But something existed now.
Something dangerous.
When Mara had thought Nicholas was dead beneath the beam, terror had cut deeper than it should have.
And when Adrian pointed a gun at her, Nicholas had offered his own life without hesitation.
They could no longer pretend they were employer and housekeeper.
That night Mara found Nicholas on the guesthouse porch.
His prosthetic leg was off.
A blanket covered his lap.
He stared toward the burned mansion.
"Can't sleep?" she asked.
"Pain."
Mara sat beside him.
She started tapping.
Nicholas caught her hand.
"Not tonight."
She looked at him.
"Why?"
"I don't want the pain to stop."
"That's ridiculous."
"I need to remember."
"Remember what?"
His jaw tightened.
"That I trusted Adrian."
Mara understood.
"You were a kid when your father trusted him."
"I was thirty."
"Still his nephew."
Nicholas looked away.
"My father warned me once. He said ambition without loyalty turns men into animals."
Mara leaned against the chair.
"My father apparently knew that too."
Nicholas looked at her.
"I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"For not protecting him."
"You couldn't save everyone."
His eyes moved toward his missing leg.
"Apparently not."
Mara reached for his hand.
He let her take it.
"You saved Daniel."
"Because you came back for me."
"I couldn't leave you."
Nicholas became very still.
Mara realized what she had said.
Neither moved.
Then he whispered, "Why?"
She could have lied.
Instead she said, "You know why."
Nicholas leaned closer.
His hand touched her cheek.
Mara's heart raced.
Then his phone rang.
He closed his eyes.
"Of course."
She laughed softly.
He answered.
The voice on the other end changed everything.
Thomas had found Victor Sanz.
Alive.
Victor wanted protection.
In exchange, he would testify against Adrian.
They arranged a meeting the next morning at an abandoned church owned by an attorney Nicholas trusted.
Mara demanded to go.
Nicholas refused.
They argued for twenty minutes.
Mara won.
"You are the most exhausting woman I've ever met," Nicholas muttered.
"You're welcome."
Victor arrived terrified.
He looked nothing like the man in the photographs.
Thin.
Unshaven.
Constantly looking toward doors.
"I didn't know Adrian would kill people," Victor said.
Nicholas's expression showed no sympathy.
"You helped plant the bomb."
"I was told you'd survive."
Nicholas laughed coldly.
"That's comforting."
Victor wiped sweat from his face.
"Adrian wanted you injured. Weak. He thought the family would remove you."
"My driver?"
"Alive. Adrian paid him."
"Where?"
"South America."
Nicholas's jaw tightened.
Mara asked, "What about my father?"
Victor looked at her.
"Carlo Bellini?"
"Yes."
Victor looked away.
"Adrian ordered it."
Pain punched through Mara.
Even though she knew.
Hearing it from another person made it real again.
"Why?"
"Your father copied shipping records."
"Where are they?"
Victor hesitated.
"In a safety-deposit box."
Nicholas leaned forward.
"Which bank?"
Victor shook his head.
"Not a bank."
Before he could explain, the church doors opened.
Thomas entered.
Nicholas relaxed.
Then Mara noticed Victor's face.
Pure terror.
He looked at Thomas.
"No."
Nicholas turned.
Thomas pulled a gun.
Everything happened instantly.
Nicholas shoved Mara behind a pew.
Thomas fired.
Victor collapsed.
Nicholas returned fire.
Thomas ducked.
"Why?" Nicholas shouted.
Thomas laughed.
"Twenty years working for your family and I'm still treated like staff."
"You are staff!"
"Adrian promised partnership."
"You burned my house."
"I helped."
Mara crawled toward Victor.
Blood spread across his chest.
He grabbed her wrist.
"Music..."
"What?"
"Your father..."
His breathing failed.
"Music box."
Then Victor died.
Thomas ran through a side door.
Nicholas pursued him.
Mara shouted, "Nicholas!"
A gunshot sounded outside.
Then silence.
Mara ran.
Nicholas stood beside the wall.
Thomas lay wounded on the ground, alive but unable to move.
Police sirens approached.
Nicholas looked at Mara.
"What did Victor say?"
"Music box."
Mara's thoughts raced.
Then she remembered.
Her mother had owned a wooden music box.
Her father gave it to her on their twentieth anniversary.
After her mother died, Mara had packed it away.
Storage unit.
Again.
They drove there with police the next day.
The music box sat beneath an old quilt.
Mara opened it.
The lullaby began playing.
Four notes.
Pause.
Four notes.
Nicholas stared at her.
"Your song."
"My mother's song."
Mara turned the box over.
Beneath the velvet lining was a small brass key.
Attached to it was a tag.
314.
Nicholas frowned.
"Locker?"
Mara looked at the sheet music printed inside the lid.
Certain notes had been circled.
She wrote them down.
Letters emerged.
C-E-N-T-R-A-L.
"Central Station."
At the city's old Central Station, locker 314 opened with the key.
Inside was a metal case.
Mara lifted the lid.
Files.
Ledgers.
Photographs.
And a recorded statement from Carlo Bellini.
Her father's voice filled the small security office.
"If something happens to me, Adrian Valenti is responsible."
Mara covered her mouth.
Nicholas closed his eyes.
Carlo continued.
"He is moving weapons, stealing from the family, and planning to kill Antonio Valenti."
Nicholas's father.
Then came the final words.
"Nicholas does not know. He tried to help me leave. Do not blame him."
Mara looked at Nicholas.
Tears stood in his eyes.
For eight years he had carried guilt that did not belong to him.
Mara squeezed his hand.
"We have him."
Nicholas looked at the evidence.
"No."
He looked toward the station exit.
"Now we have a reason for him to come after us."
His phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
A photograph appeared.
Luca.
Bound to a chair.
Alive.
Beneath it, a message.
BRING THE EVIDENCE.
MIDNIGHT.
COME ALONE, MARA.
OR YOUR BROTHER DIES.
---