Six hours before anyone expected me home, I walked into my Long Island mansion with a loaded gun under my coat

The sunroom sat on the east wing of the mansion, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling glass that looked out over the dormant winter gardens and the distant grey shoreline of the Long Island Sound.

When I entered, Olivia and Sophie were sitting on a plush velvet sofa, drawing with colored pencils on a wide pad. Nora was curled up in Grace’s lap, her tiny fingers tracing the floral pattern on Grace’s blouse.

I pulled a low wooden chair opposite them, sitting down slowly so as not to startle them.

"Grace," I said, keeping my voice low. "Tell me everything they've said to you."

Grace adjusted Nora in her arms. "It didn't happen all at once, Mr. Romano. When I started two months ago, they wouldn't even make eye contact. But I didn't push them to talk. I just stayed in the room. I read to them. I baked cookies. I let them be quiet."

"And when did they start speaking?"

"Three weeks ago," Grace whispered. "Nora spoke first. She asked for a glass of milk in the middle of the night. She was crying because she had a nightmare."

I flinched. Three weeks ago, I had been in a warehouse in Brooklyn, breaking the fingers of a Moretti captain, demanding names that didn't matter. My baby girl had been crying for milk, and a stranger had been the one to answer her.

"What was the nightmare?" I asked, my knuckles turning white against my knees.

"She saw a man standing at the foot of her bed," Grace said, her voice trembling slightly. "A man with a silver ring shaped like a snake. She said he put his finger to his lips and told her that if she ever spoke to her father, he would come back and finish what he started at the preschool."

My heart stopped beating.

A silver ring shaped like a snake.

Not a Moretti symbol. The Morettis wore gold bands stamped with their family crest.

The snake ring belonged to someone else entirely. It belonged to the Sindicato—a shadow syndicate of rogue law enforcement officers, corrupt politicians, and high-level fixers who handled the dirty work for the city's highest bidders.

And there was only one man in my entire inner circle who wore that specific ring. A gift from a corrupt judge five years ago.

"Prescott," I breathed, the blood draining from my face.

Grace watched my reaction carefully. "You know who it is."

"Prescott has been my head of security since before Olivia was born," I said, the words feeling like glass in my throat. "He was with me when I buried my father. He was standing outside the preschool when Isabelle..."

I stopped. The pieces began clicking together with horrifying precision.

The day Isabelle was killed, Prescott had been two blocks away, claiming his car had suffered a sudden tire blowout. He had arrived at the scene three minutes after the shooter vanished. I had trusted his report. I had trusted his security perimeter.

He hadn't been late because of a tire. He had been setting up the kill zone.

"Is divine intervention the reason you came home early today, Mr. Romano?" Grace asked softly.

"No," I whispered. "I came home early because my informant in Queens told me someone inside my house was leaking our logistics to the federal prosecutors."

I looked up at my daughters. Olivia was watching me, her brown eyes—Isabelle’s eyes—filled with an ancient, unbearable sadness. She set her green pencil down, slid off the sofa, and took three hesitant steps toward me.

My breath caught in my throat.

She stopped two feet away. Slowly, her small, trembling hand reached out and touched the gold signet ring on my pinky finger.

"Daddy," Olivia whispered, her voice raspy from fourteen months of silence. "Don't let the bad man hurt Miss Grace."

Tears, hot and blinding, spilled down my cheeks. I dropped to both knees, pulling Olivia into my arms, burying my face in her hair. She wrapped her small arms around my neck, holding on with a desperate, terrifying strength.

A second later, Sophie and Nora scrambled off the couch, throwing their arms around us both.

For the first time in over a year, my daughters were crying out loud—long, agonizing wails of released terror that shook their tiny frames. And I held them, weeping openly, promising them over and over that no one would ever touch them again.

Over Olivia’s shoulder, I looked at Grace. She was wiping tears from her own eyes, offered me a small, sad smile of hope.