Three weeks after burying my stillborn daughter, I broke the mafia boss’s strictest rule to save his starving newborn—and someone locked us inside the nursery.

I did not see him arrive.

I heard the shouting first.

Then the dogs.

Then Massimo came into the sitting room with a face like bad weather and said, “You need to identify someone.”

I knew before he finished.

Grief has instincts.

So does fear.

Lorenzo did not want me near the front gate, but I refused to stay behind. Leo had been moved to a secure medical suite two doors from Lorenzo’s private office. Dr. Rowe stayed with him. For the first time, leaving him did not feel like leaving him to die.

It still hurt.

Everything in me had begun listening for his breathing.

When I stepped outside, the August heat hit me like a wall.

Travis knelt on the gravel between two guards. His face was bruised. His brown hair was matted with sweat. One eye was swollen almost shut. He looked smaller than I remembered.

That made me angry.

Monsters should look like monsters.

They should not look like men who once bought you gas station flowers and promised they were trying.

His good eye found me.

“Clara,” he rasped. “Tell them I know you.”

I stopped several feet away.

“I know him.”

Lorenzo stood beside me. “This is the man who killed your daughter?”

Travis flinched. “I didn’t kill her.”

My hands curled into fists.

“You shoved me down twelve stairs.”

“You were yelling.”

“I was begging you to leave.”

His mouth opened, closed.

Lorenzo looked at Massimo. “Why is he here?”

Massimo held up a phone sealed in plastic. “He came to the gate screaming that he had information about Dr. Hale.”

Lorenzo stepped forward.

Travis recoiled so hard one guard had to hold him upright.

“Talk,” Lorenzo said.

“I want protection.”

“You’re alive. That is protection.”

Travis swallowed. “Marcone’s people are looking for me.”

“Not my problem.”

“It is if they’re working with your uncle.”

Everything stilled.

Lorenzo’s expression did not change, but Massimo shifted beside him.

Travis saw he had our attention and started talking fast.

“I owed money. A lot. I was supposed to run errands, make drops. Nothing serious.”

I almost laughed.

Nothing serious.

That was always how men like Travis described the road to hell.

“Then this doctor’s guy contacted me,” he continued. “Said they knew about Clara. Said they could clear part of what I owed if I gave them her address, schedule, medical paperwork, anything from the hospital.”

My breath stopped.

“You sold my records?”

Travis would not look at me.

“I was desperate.”

“You sold our daughter.”

He flinched harder.

Lorenzo’s voice cut through the air. “Who contacted you?”

“I don’t know his real name. He called himself Ellis. Expensive suit. Scar on his thumb.”

Massimo said, “Hale’s assistant is named Aaron Ellis.”

Travis nodded wildly. “That’s him. He said Clara was useful.”

Useful.

The word hit me harder than a slap.

Lorenzo stepped closer to Travis. “Useful how?”

Travis’s face crumpled. “I thought they wanted to blackmail you with her. I swear. A maid with a dead baby, milk coming in, working for a man with a sick baby. It sounded like some twisted setup.”

My stomach turned.

“You knew I was hired here?”

“Not at first. Later.”

“When?” Lorenzo asked.

Travis stared at the gravel.

I knew.

The answer was in his silence.

“Before I started,” I whispered.

He said nothing.

I stepped toward him, but Massimo caught my arm gently. Not to restrain me. To steady me.

“You knew,” I said. “You knew someone had arranged for me to come here.”

Travis’s eyes filled with tears.

“I tried to warn you.”

“You never warned anyone in your life unless it helped you.”

His tears stopped.

For one second, the old Travis looked through the bruises.

Cruel. Defensive. Small.

“You think you’re special because that rich baby sucked on you?” he snapped. “You’re not his mother.”

The world went quiet.

Lorenzo moved so fast I barely saw him.

He grabbed Travis by the front of his shirt and lifted him off his knees.

“Speak to her like that again,” Lorenzo said calmly, “and you will pray Marcone finds you first.”

Travis went white.

I should have felt satisfied.

I didn’t.

Because all I could think was that Travis had been given my life like a file to sell. My pain had been passed from hand to hand until it landed inside Lorenzo Rossi’s nursery.

“Who pushed me?” I asked.

Travis blinked. “What?”

“That night. The stairs. You shoved me because you were angry. But before that, you came home furious. You said someone told you I was hiding money.”

His face changed.

There it was.

The memory.

“Who told you?” I demanded.

He shook his head.

Lorenzo leaned close. “Answer her.”

Travis’s voice dropped. “Ellis.”

I couldn’t breathe.

“He called me that afternoon,” Travis whispered. “Said Clara had money from some women’s shelter account. Said she was going to disappear and leave me with the debt.”

My legs nearly folded.

There had been no money.

No account.

No escape plan.

Just a lie.

A lie placed like a match in gasoline.

“You killed Lily because someone pointed you at me,” I said.

Travis began sobbing. “I didn’t know she’d fall like that.”

I backed away before I did something I could never undo.

Lorenzo watched me, and for once, he did not speak.

Massimo’s phone buzzed. He answered, listened, then looked at Lorenzo.

“Boss. We intercepted a call from Hale’s office.”