The dog bowl was still warm from the kitchen when I set it down in front of her. Leftover eggs. Torn pieces of toast. Something that had once been bacon, floating in cold grease.

The contents of the safe were laid out on the unsoiled half of the table.

Geno snapped latex gloves onto his hands and opened the first envelope. "Financial transfers. Small ones at first—five thousand here, ten thousand there—spread across six off-shore accounts in the Cayman Islands. Total amount withdrawn over the past year: two point four million dollars."

Bianca didn't speak. She was trembling so violently her knees were knocking together against the floor.

"And the second envelope?" I asked.

Geno pulled out a stack of medical documents bearing the logo of Saint Jude’s Memorial Hospital. He skimmed the front page, his eyes narrowing. "This isn't for Emma. These are medical records for Clara... from the week before she passed away."

My heart stopped beating for a fraction of a second.

Clara had died of sudden heart failure following labor complications. That was what the doctors told me. That was what the death certificate said. I had been out at sea managing the dock strikes when it happened, arriving at the hospital three hours too late to say goodbye.

"Read it," I commanded. My voice wasn't low anymore. It was an icy rasp.

"Toxicology report," Geno read aloud, his voice dropping an octave. "Elevated levels of potassium chloride found in the post-mortem blood draw. Marked as 'inconclusive' by Dr. Aris... who received a real estate gift deed signed by Bianca’s family trust two weeks later."

I looked down at Bianca.

She shrank back as if I had struck her, covering her face with her manicured hands. "No... no, Vittorio, that wasn't me! I didn't even know you back then! I didn't know Clara!"

"Your father did," I realized, the pieces of a puzzle I had been too heartbroken to assemble two years ago suddenly locking together with terrifying clarity. "Your father was the chief investor in the dock expansion. He lost forty million when Clara and I refused his buy-out. Three months later, Clara was pregnant. Four months later, she was dead."

"My father acted alone!" Bianca screamed. "I didn't know! I only found out after we got married! Marcus found the papers in my father's desk and blackmailed me! He made me steal the money from your accounts!"

"You put Marcus in my house," I said. "You asked me to hire him as the estate manager. You brought Clara's killer's accomplice into the same room where her daughter slept."

Emma shifted in my arms, pressing her tiny hand against my cheek. "Daddy... cold," she whispered.

I wrapped my coat around her, kissing her forehead. "I know, baby. Daddy’s here. It’s almost over."

I looked at Geno. "Call the state police. Call District Attorney Vance. Tell him Vittorio Vance is holding three suspects in a homicide investigation."