A poor little girl was never supposed to enter the Moretti mansion, but when she found the Mafia boss struggling to breathe, she risked everything to save him—and her innocent question revealed a secret that made his most trusted lieutenant go pale.

"You," Lucas breathed, the word vibrating with a fury so profound it seemed to suck the oxygen right back out of the room. "You were the one who leaked our routes. You were the one who betrayed us."

Victor’s hand remained resting on the grip of his Glock beneath his jacket, his eyes darting toward the open door and the guards gathering in the corridor.

"I didn't just betray the warehouses, Lucas," Victor spat, a twisted sense of pride distorting his handsome features. "Do you remember the rainy night in March, three years ago? The night Isabella and little Daniel's car went off the bridge into the freezing river?"

Lucas’s heart stopped. The room spun violently. For three years, that night had been an open wound, an unsolved tragedy that haunted his every waking moment.

"What did you say?" Lucas whispered, taking a slow, dangerous step around the edge of the mahogany desk.

"The police called it brake failure," Victor laughed darkly, stepping back toward the doorway while keeping his eyes locked on Lucas's hands. "A tragic accident. But brakes don't magically snap unless someone cuts the lines, Lucas. I arranged it. I cut the lines. Because as long as Isabella and that boy were whispering in your ear, you were never going to take the throne fully. You were going to walk away from the syndicate and leave me doing all the dirty work while you played suburban father."

Clara, still huddled on the floor with Lily, let out a muffled sob, her eyes wide with horror as she stared at Victor.

Lucas didn't scream. He didn't roar. The rage inside him condensed into something infinitely colder, sharper, and deadlier than any blade. Every muscle in his tall frame coiled like a spring.

"You killed my wife," Lucas said, his voice dropping to a terrifying, deathly whisper. "You killed my five-year-old son."

"I secured the future of the Moretti family," Victor fired back, desperation finally bleeding into his tone as he realized Lucas wasn't cowering. "And now, I’m going to secure my own."

With lightning speed, Victor whipped his pistol out of his holster, aiming directly at Lucas’s chest.

But Victor had underestimated two things: Lucas’s survival instinct, and six-year-old Lily.

Just as Victor’s finger tightened on the trigger, little Lily—terrified by the shouting and fueled by a child’s instinctive desire to protect the man who had been kind to her—scrambled forward from her mother’s arms and hurled her worn pink stuffed rabbit directly at Victor’s face.

The stuffed toy hit Victor squarely in the eyes. Startled by the sudden impact, Victor flinched instinctively, his hand jerking upward.

*Bang!*

The gunshot roared through the study, shattering a priceless stained-glass window behind the desk, the bullet embedding harmlessly into the oak paneling.