“If your brother is dead, then you’ll pay his debt.” The gray-haired man said it while standing between a bucket of white roses and the cash register in my flower shop.

For three days after the incident in the bathroom, I stayed off my feet, resting on the velvet sofa in the second-floor library. My foot was bandaged securely, the cuts healing cleanly thanks to Rosa’s herbal salves and Nicholas's careful intervention.

During those three days, Nicholas didn't leave the house. He moved his meetings from Hanover Street to the library, conducting quiet, low-toned discussions with his lieutenants while I sat near the window, pretending to read old leather-bound books.

I watched him.

I watched the way he commanded respect without ever raising his voice. I watched the way his men looked at him—not with the terrified obedience Corsetti’s thugs displayed, but with an intense, unyielding loyalty born of trust.

On Friday afternoon, while Nicholas was downstairs reviewing shipping manifests with Dominic, I finally made my decision.

I limped up to my third-floor room, lifted the loose floorboard beneath my bed, and pulled out Sam’s green ledger.

I brought it down to the library, setting it down squarely in the center of Nicholas's large mahogany desk, right on top of his shipping documents.

When Nicholas walked into the room twenty minutes later, carrying a silver tray with two mugs of fresh coffee, he stopped dead in his tracks. His dark eyes locked onto the green leather book sitting on his desk.

He set the coffee tray down on a side table, walking slowly toward the desk. He didn't touch the book immediately. He looked at it, then looked at me, sitting across the desk in a plush armchair.

"What is this, Clara?" he asked softly.

"The truth," I said simply. "Or at least, the part of it Sam left behind."

Nicholas sat down in his leather chair, his long fingers extending to touch the worn green leather cover. He opened it, flipping through the neat, cramped handwriting of my dead brother—pages upon pages of numbers, dates, container IDs, and monetary figures.

"Why are you giving this to me now?" Nicholas asked, his tone devoid of triumph, holding only a quiet, searching curiosity.

"Because a man who kneels in broken glass to wash blood off my feet isn't the man who ordered my brother's car off Route 2," I said, my voice steady, unshakeable. "I spent nine months believing you were the monster who killed Sam. I was wrong."

Nicholas closed his eyes for a brief moment, letting out a long, slow breath through his nose. When he opened them, the cold mask of the waterfront boss had vanished completely, leaving only a man weighed down by heavy, unseen burdens.

"I didn't kill your brother, Clara," Nicholas said quietly, looking directly into my eyes. "Sam came to me four weeks before he died. He realized he had been tricked."

I leaned forward, my heart hammering against my ribs. "Tricked by who?"

"By someone inside Corsetti’s inner circle," Nicholas explained, turning the ledger to a page near the middle, where a series of complex shipping wire transfers were logged. "Sam thought he was helping Corsetti skim money from my shipping contracts. But he wasn't skimming money for Corsetti. He was being used as a blind cut-out to siphon funds into a private offshore account registered in Panama."

"Who owned the account?"

Nicholas didn't answer right away. He reached into his pocket, pulling out a small silver pen, and tapped the paper directly beneath a coded column marked M-14.

"Look at the ledger entry for October twelfth," Nicholas said. "The day before Sam died."

I leaned over the desk, reading Sam’s handwriting: Transfer 140k. Approved by M. Verified at North End estate.

"M," I murmured, my brow furrowing deep. "Corsetti's consigliere is Frank Miller. But who is M?"

"Not Miller," Nicholas said softly, his jaw muscle flexing. "The North End estate listed in that entry doesn't belong to Corsetti. It belongs to Marco Rossi."

I gasped, my breath catching violently in my throat.

Marco Rossi was Nicholas's senior lieutenant—his most trusted advisor, the man who sat at his right hand during every legal and illegal negotiation on the waterfront, the man who had been eating dinner at the Louisburg Square dining table twice a week since I arrived.

"Marco?" I whispered in sheer disbelief. "Marco is the one who was stealing from both you and Corsetti?"

"Marco built the bridge between Sam and Corsetti’s bookkeepers," Nicholas explained, his voice chillingly cold. "He knew Sam was desperate for money to pay your mother's medical bills. He fed Sam modified manifests, telling him it was legitimate off-the-books accounting. When Sam realized the numbers didn't add up—when he realized he was being set up as the fall guy for a three-million-dollar embezzlement scheme—he tried to run."

"And Marco killed him," I choked out, tears of hot, furious rage spilling over my eyelashes. "Marco ran Sam's car off Route 2 in Concord!"

Nicholas stood up, his tall frame blocking out the warm afternoon light streaming through the library windows. His face was set in stone, his dark eyes burning with a terrifying, apocalyptic fury that made the air in the room feel dense, suffocating.

"Marco thought Sam took the green ledger with him to the bottom of the ravine," Nicholas said, his voice dropping into a register so dark it sent a shiver straight down my spine. "He thought the proof was buried forever. That's why he pushed Corsetti to go after you. He wanted Corsetti's men to kill you before you could read what Sam wrote."

I sat in the armchair, trembling from head to toe, realizing how close I had come to death, how every piece of this horrific puzzle had been manipulated by a man who smiled at me across the dinner table and complimented Rosa's cooking.

"What are you going to do?" I asked, looking up at Nicholas.

Nicholas reached down, gently picking up the green ledger, closing it with a soft, decisive snap.

"Tonight is the annual waterfront harbor gala at the Boston Marriott," Nicholas said, his voice smooth, cold, and terrifyingly precise. "Every major family in the Northeast will be there. Anthony Corsetti. Frank Miller. And Marco Rossi."