Avery looked at her. "We finally found her file." Lark's pulse thundered in her ears. "She changes everything." The room fell silent as every pair of eyes turned toward the screen because whatever Isabella Santos had discovered before she disappearedwas important enough that someone had spent twenty-five years killing to keep it buried.
The room disappeared, and Lark couldn't hear Avery anymore. She couldn't hear the agents whispering around the conference table. She couldn't even hear her own breathing. The only thing she saw was the name at the top of the screen.Isabella Santos—her mother.For twenty-six years, she'd believed two things: the first was that her mother had died, and the second was that Rafael Santos never lied to family. Now she knew neither had been true.
"Lark." Rocco's voice sounded far away.
She blinked. "What?"
"You look like you're about to pass out."
She shook her head. "I'm fine." The words tasted hollow.
Dante quietly stepped beside her. "No, you're not." She appreciated that neither man pretended otherwise.
Avery clicked to the next page. "This file was recovered from one of Keller's encrypted servers." A photograph appeared of a younger woman smiling at the camera. She had dark hair, warm green eyes, and a soft smile that somehow felt familiar.
Lark's breath caught. "That's—” She couldn't finish. She didn’t have pictures of her mother anymore. Not one, because her father had destroyed every photograph in the mansion. Every painting, every memory was gone, yet somehow, looking at the woman on the screen was like looking into the future. They had the same eyes, the same smile, and the same stubborn chin.
Tears blurred her vision. "I look like her."
Dante answered quietly. "Yes, you do, honey.”
Avery enlarged the image. "Isabella Santos was an accountant before she married Rafael."
Lark frowned because she didn’t know that. "An accountant?"
Rocco nodded. "Financial crimes." Avery clicked again, and spreadsheets filled the screen with wire transfers, offshore accounts, and shipping manifests.
"What am I looking at?" Lark asked.
Rocco folded his arms over his chest. "Proof."
"Proof of what?" Lark asked.
"That your father wasn't the one in charge,” Avery said.
Lark looked back at the monitor. "I don't understand."
Avery pointed to several highlighted transactions. "Your mother discovered someone was buying children."
The room fell silent, and Lark felt sick. "What?"
"Not kidnapping." Rocco's voice was tight with anger. "Buying."
She stared at him. "No."
Rocco nodded. "Families who owed money sold their children to get out of debt. They were runaways, missing foster children, and even refugees. Keller had built an empire on people that no one came looking for.”
Lark covered her mouth. "My God.”
Avery changed slides again. "This is where your mother became dangerous." A handwritten note filled the screen. The ink had faded with age, but Lark immediately recognized the handwriting. She'd seen birthday cards written by Rafael's lawyers and old labels tucked inside forgotten books. It wasn't her father's handwriting. It was feminine.
Lark stepped closer. "Can I—” Avery nodded, and Lark read slowly. "If anything happens to me, Rafael knows where I hid the ledger. He won't destroy it because he doesn't know how valuable it is. One day, someone honest will find it."
Lark's heart hammered. "The ledger?"
Rocco looked at Avery. "We've spent the past five years trying to find it."
Lark looked between them. "My father has it?"
