I heard scraping outside my front door and expected to find an animal—then I saw my six-year-old nephew dragging his injured body toward my porch.

Then two.

Darren’s fingers curled around the edge.

My body reacted before thought arrived. I passed Leo back to Isabella, grabbed the iron garden hook hanging beside the storage shelves, and stepped beneath the opening.

Darren lowered his face toward the gap.

He smiled when he saw me.

Not surprised.

Pleased.

“There you are,” he whispered. “You always were easy to find.”

The last time he had stood above me, I had been at the bottom of a staircase with blood between my legs and my daughter silent inside me.

This time, I swung first.

The iron hook struck his hand.

He screamed and dropped the trapdoor.

Above us, Serafina shouted his name.

Matteo gasped. Isabella grabbed my arm, her eyes wide not with fear but approval.

Darren cursed, pounding once against the floor. “You stupid—”

A gunshot cracked above.

Not aimed at us.

A warning.

Serafina’s voice turned deadly. “Control yourself.”

“He broke my hand!”

“She,” Serafina corrected coldly, “broke your hand.”

For one shining second, despite everything, I almost smiled.

Then the trapdoor shook again, harder this time.

Isabella shoved a heavy crate across it. I pushed beside her. Matteo, pale and sweating, added his shoulder with a little groan. The crate wedged under the frame.

“They’ll find another way,” Isabella said. “There are three entrances.”

“Where’s the nearest exit?”

“Old delivery tunnel. But we cannot use it with Leo.”

“Why?”

Her face tightened. “It passes near the dog kennels. Serafina replaced Lorenzo’s handlers last month. The dogs don’t know me anymore.”

Above us, men began moving quickly.

Serafina had lost patience.

Isabella looked down at Leo. He was awake now, his lips moving weakly, searching. Her face twisted with helplessness.

“I can’t feed him,” she whispered.

The confession was full of shame, though it had no reason to be.

“They drugged me after the birth,” she said. “Kept me barely awake for weeks. My milk dried. They told me it was punishment for trying to leave.”

A low, ugly rage moved through me.

I had hated my body for making milk after Lily died.

Now that same unwanted ache had kept Leo alive.

Maybe grief had not made me useless.

Maybe it had armed me.

“He can eat again,” I said.

Isabella looked at me.

The question in her eyes was too painful.

I nodded.

She turned away to give me privacy, though the world had long since stripped us of such things. I took Leo beneath the blanket again. He latched more quickly this time. His suck was weak, but determined. The monitor from the nursery was gone, but I didn’t need it to hear the change. His breathing slowed. His fists softened.

Isabella watched with tears running silently down her face.

“I hated you for one second,” she whispered.

“I know.”

“Then I loved you for the next.”

I looked down at Leo. “I’m not trying to take him.”

“I believe you.”

No one had believed me when I said Darren pushed me. Not at first. He told police I slipped. He told the hospital I had been unstable. He told my landlord I was making trouble because I wanted money. He had smiled through all of it.

Those three words from Isabella did something dangerous to my heart.

They made it want to live.

A muffled shout came from far above.

Then another gunshot.

Matteo jerked. “Mr. Rossi.”

Isabella’s face changed at the sound of her husband’s name.

“You still love him,” I said.

Her eyes flashed. “I have survived seven months in a locked room beneath my own house because I knew the man I married would burn this world down if he learned I breathed.”

“Seven months?”

She nodded.

“But Leo is two months old.”

Her mouth trembled.

“I gave birth in captivity.”

The greenhouse seemed to tilt.

“They told Lorenzo you died pregnant?”

“They told him I died after an emergency delivery at a private clinic. They gave him Leo and a coffin he never should have opened.”

“He didn’t?”

“No. Serafina told him the fire had damaged me too badly.” Isabella swallowed. “She said his last memory of me should be beautiful.”

Above us, something heavy dragged across the greenhouse floor.

They were moving shelves.

Searching.

Isabella wiped her face with the back of her hand. “We have to move.”

I adjusted Leo’s blanket and stood.

Matteo led us to a low door behind stacked pots. It opened into a brick tunnel barely wide enough for one person. Isabella went first with the candle relit and shielded by her palm. Matteo followed. I came last with Leo.

We moved quickly.

The tunnel sloped toward the sound of rainwater. Somewhere outside, a storm had started, tapping against the greenhouse glass like nervous fingers.

Halfway through, Matteo stopped.

“What is it?” I whispered.

He pointed.

Fresh cigarette smoke curled in the dark ahead.

Someone waited near the exit.

Isabella blew out the candle.

We crouched in the black.

A man’s voice hummed softly beyond the corner.

Not Darren.

Not Lorenzo.

I heard the flick of a lighter, then a weary sigh.

“Nico?” Isabella whispered.

The humming stopped.

A gun cocked.

“Who’s there?”

Isabella stepped forward before I could stop her. “It’s me.”

Silence.

Then the man laughed once, broken and disbelieving.

“No.”

“Nico.”

A flashlight snapped on.

The beam hit Isabella’s face.

The man holding it dropped to his knees.

“Madonna santa,” he breathed. “Mrs. Rossi.”

Nico was older than the other guards, broad-shouldered, with a gray beard and eyes that filled so fast he looked ashamed of them. I remembered him from the kitchen entrance. He was one of the few guards who said thank you when maids held doors.

He crossed himself with trembling fingers.

“You’re alive.”

“For now,” Isabella said. “Where is Lorenzo?”

Nico’s grief hardened instantly into duty. “Trying to reach the south wing. Serafina’s men sealed the main stairs. Half the house thinks he’s gone mad and kidnapped his own son.”

“She’s framing him,” I said.

Nico looked at me for the first time, then at Leo in my arms. His expression shifted.

“You’re the maid.”

“My name is Mara.”

He nodded once. Respect, quick but real. “Then we move.”

“Where?”

“Not outside. Roads are blocked. We go to the old security room.”

Isabella shook her head. “Serafina controls the cameras.”

Nico’s mouth tightened. “Not all of them.”

He led us through the tunnel to a narrow steel ladder. Above it was a hatch. Rain leaked around the edges.

Before he opened it, he turned to me.

“Once we leave this tunnel, there is no hiding what you’ve done.”