THE MAFIA BOSS FIRED EVERY NANNY—UNTIL ONE WOMAN MADE HIS TWINS LAUGH AND EXPOSED THE SECRET THAT KILLED HIS WIFE

I left the dance floor without explanation. Elise followed me into the corridor, where Nico met us with his phone held low. In the photograph, Grant Keene was unmistakable: close-cropped hair, a pale scar across his chin, and the black sedan I'd approved for his use six months earlier.

"He's supposed to be at the estate," I said.

"He told dispatch he was checking a perimeter alarm," Nico replied. "He's been gone forty minutes."

I could feel the old instinct taking over. Find him. Corner him. Demand an answer. Let fear finish the work. But Serena's voice from the recording cut through my anger: He wants you angry.

"Send it to Foster," I ordered. "Nobody confronts him without police present."

Nico nodded, surprised. So was I.

We brought the gala to an early end, at least for our party. Dominic caught me at the exit, clapping a heavy hand on my shoulder.

"You've embarrassed yourself tonight," he said quietly. "The whole room saw you defend that girl. Think about what Serena would say."

I turned slowly. "Don't use my wife's name to tell me how to live."

His eyes hardened. Then he smiled again. "You're not thinking clearly. Grief will do that."

I walked away before he could offer another piece of advice.

Outside, rain was beginning to fall. Elise pulled her coat tighter. "I can take a separate car if it makes things easier."

"It doesn't."

"Luca, we don't have to pretend the ballroom meant anything."

I looked at her under the hotel awning. "What if it did?"

Her expression changed, but Nico approached before she could reply. "The route's been checked. We go now."

We left in two vehicles, mine in the center. Ten minutes later, traffic stopped behind a roadworks barrier on a narrow street. The detour looked legitimate: orange cones, a blinking sign, construction fencing. Except there were no workers.

Nico's voice snapped over the radio. "Back up. Now."

Before the driver could shift gears, a van slammed into the car behind us. Metal folded. Glass exploded. A masked man stepped out with a weapon drawn.

I pushed Elise down behind the seat as our driver accelerated onto the sidewalk. One bullet struck the rear window; another shattered a side mirror. Nico's vehicle swung across the lane, blocking the van. I heard tires scream and a burst of gunfire behind us, then the driver turned a corner and raced toward a police station.

"Are you hurt?" I asked.

Elise shook her head. Her hands were trembling so badly she couldn't fasten her seat belt again. I checked her for injuries while she fought to catch her breath. A thin cut marked her forearm where glass had scraped the skin. I pressed a clean cloth against it.

"The girls," she whispered.

"They're safe. Nico had another team at the house."

"Call. Please."

I called. The twins were awake, irritated, and unharmed. A recorded giggle from Maisie played through the speaker when the guard put the phone near her. Elise closed her eyes with relief.

We spent three hours at the police station giving statements. Foster joined us in a fluorescent-lit interview room, her coat wet from the storm. Keene had disappeared. The van's license plates were stolen. One injured attacker had been arrested and was refusing to speak.

"This isn't a neighborhood feud," Foster told me. "Somebody planned this. The burglary at your house, the planted bracelet, now the ambush. They want you frightened or reckless enough to lose control."

"I've spent my adult life giving people reasons to want me dead," I said. "That narrows nothing."

"It narrows the motive when we connect it to the foundation records," she answered. "And that is what we're working on."

At four in the morning, Nico drove us to a small guarded guesthouse on the estate. The main mansion was being swept room by room. I wanted Elise to stay behind a locked door with a guard outside. She wanted to see the girls. We compromised, as we were beginning to do, by arranging to move the twins into the guesthouse once the approach road was secured.

Elise sat on the edge of the bed while I cleaned the cut on her arm. She winced when the antiseptic touched it.

"You can stop being brave now," I said.

"I wasn't being brave. I was terrified."

"You kept asking about the girls."

"So did you."

I wrapped the bandage and set the supplies aside. A portable lamp cast a weak circle of light across the room. In the distance, the mansion's emergency lights flickered as electricians tested the system.

"My first instinct was to go after the man with the gun," I confessed. "Not get you to safety. Not call the police. Hurt him. I liked that instinct for years."

"Did you go after him?"

"No."

"Then you've changed something."

I laughed without humor. "It's not enough."

"It may never feel like enough. That doesn't make it nothing."

She looked toward the window. The rain had stopped. Reflections of red emergency lights moved across the wet glass.

"My brother used to tell me I was too trusting," she said. "He thought I believed everybody had a good heart. I didn't. I just thought a bad decision didn't have to be a person's final one."

"And what do you think of me?"

She faced me. "I think you frighten people because it's easier than admitting you're frightened. I think you love your daughters more than you've learned how to show. And I think you're trying to figure out what kind of man you want them to remember."

No one had ever spoken to me with such frightening accuracy. I wanted to cross the space between us. Instead, I stayed where I was.

"There's something I should say," I began. "I'm their father. I'm your employer. Whatever happened on that dance floor, I don't want you to think you owe me anything."

"I don't," she said.

"Good."

"But I was there too, Luca. I chose to dance with you."

I met her gaze. "And now?"

She rose, came close enough that I could see the gold flecks in her brown eyes, and laid her uninjured hand against my cheek. She paused, waiting. I had time to move away. I didn't.

Our kiss was brief, gentle, and more devastating than anything I'd imagined. There was no victory in it, no claim. Just two people who had lost so much discovering that they still had the capacity to reach for something good.

Elise drew back first. "We should be careful."

"Yes."

"Not because of what people say. Because the girls matter, and Serena matters, and you and I haven't figured any of this out."

"I know."

I wanted to kiss her again. I didn't. We sat apart until dawn, talking instead about Gabriels and Serenas, about the strange work of surviving, and about how love wasn't a single room that locked forever when somebody left it.

Before sunrise, Elise spoke about the boundary between gratitude and affection. She said she didn't want to become the solution to my loneliness simply because she was already inside the house. She wanted me to know her when the crisis was over, when she could disagree with me without wondering if it would cost her job.

"Then we'll change the arrangement when we're safe," I said. "The girls can have another caregiver. You'll get to decide what you want without me holding a paycheck."

"You make that sound easy."

"I know it isn't."

She leaned back against the pillow, careful of her bandaged arm. "I want to finish my nursing training someday. I stopped when my brother died. I couldn't make myself go back."

"You should."

"I don't want it because you can buy it for me."

"Then I won't try to buy it."

That earned me a searching look. I was learning that generosity could also be a way of taking control, if I wasn't careful. What she needed was freedom to choose, even if she ultimately chose a life that didn't include me.

I thought about that possibility and hated it. Then I told myself that wanting her to stay and giving her room to leave were not opposites. Perhaps real love required both.

Just after sunrise, our phones rang at the same time. Nico's number appeared on mine. His voice was raw.

"Luca, Grant has sent a forged evacuation order to the main house. The night supervisor believed it came from me. They're preparing to move the girls."

My heart stopped.