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Sergei stopped moving, and I looked from the woman to his face.

“Is that Mila?”

His eyes closed once.

“Yeah. That’s her.”

His voice sounded pained.

“What did she mean to you?” I asked softly.

“I cannot open that part of my life to you, at least not yet, sweet girl,” he spoke in a rough voice.

“You don’t have to,” I replied.

His gaze lifted to mine, grief glinting in his eyes.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I added. “You can tell me when you’re ready.”

Something shifted behind his eyes. Maybe, for the first time, he understood that I knew the difference between being shut out and giving someone time to open the door on his own.

He hesitated before replacing the frame facedown. After a moment of hesitation, he turned it face up.

We secured the ledger, lease, and surveillance photograph inside the steel box. Matteo sealed the evidence sleeve and spent another ten minutes arguing with Sergei about whether the original ledger should remain at the townhouse or move to the Iron Wolf vault. Sergei won. Mostly because the townhouse was his and the box was already locked inside it.

After Matteo left, Sergei completed another perimeter check while I returned to the dining table. My phone rang before Sergei returned. It was Ivan. I put him on speaker.

“The old vehicle lease and the current weapons orders carry the same Veles fingerprint,” Ivan said without greeting.

“Same key?” Sergei asked.

“Same access. We can’t tell whether the device is the original or a clone.”

The same hidden system that had paid for the Volkov sedan used around Mila’s murder was financing the people hunting us now.

Somehow, everything was connected.

CHAPTER 14

Alessia

A few days later…

The problem with discovering I owned part of a criminal empire was that everyone immediately wanted to explain it to me as though I were twelve.

Maxim’s library had been converted into something halfway between a war room and a particularly intimidating law office. Heavy curtains covered the tall windows. A narrow black device on the table blocked outside signals, while another encrypted the call glowing across the screen built into the far wall. Three folders sat in front of me, each thick enough to contain at least one felony and labeled in the perfectly neat handwriting I had already learned belonged to Sergei. He stood beside my chair rather than taking the empty one.

Raffaele appeared on the screen from Sicily, silver hair immaculate, dark suit perfectly fitted, his face carefully composed, despite it being afternoon in Boston and well past dinner in Palermo. Matteo had returned to Sicily the day before and now sat beside him. A severe-looking woman in black occupied the other side of the table, a pair of red-framed glasses resting low on her nose.

“This is Giulia Ferraro,” Raffaele said. “She oversees the Bellandi trusts and American holding structure.”

Giulia inclined her head. “Miss Caruso.”

“Alessia,” I corrected with a smile.

Raffaele folded his hands over the desk. “Before we begin, the evidence Matteo brought changes things. You will come to Sicily until this is resolved.”

I leaned back in my chair and lifted my chin. “I will not.”