Alessandro Moretti moved with the quiet lethality of a man who owned the air everyone else was breathing. The marble beneath his handmade Italian leather shoes did not echo; it surrendered. Three hundred elites of New York's underworld held their collective breath, watching the undisputed don of the Five Families bypass his striking fiancée, Vivien Romano, as if she were nothing more than a painted shadow.

"Speak clearly, Corretti, or you won't leave this driveway alive," Alessandro threatened, his arm shifting slightly, ready to draw his weapon at the first sign of betrayal.

Don Corretti didn't flinch. He leaned harder on his cane, his scarred face grim. "Twenty-four years ago, your father, Matteo Moretti, uncovered a global trafficking network operating out of the Port of New York. It wasn't just mob business, Alessandro. It involved European oligarchs, foreign intelligence directors, and syndicate bosses from four continents."

My stomach turned. "My father was trying to stop them?"

"Your father was going to expose them all," Corretti said, turning his piercing gray eyes to me. "So the Syndicate Council ordered his entire bloodline erased. Arthur Romano was just the local butcher hired to do the dirty work. He was ordered to kill you, Clara. But Arthur was greedy—he kept you alive as leverage against Matteo, hoping to control the New York shipping lines for himself."

Alessandro took a step closer to the old man, his jaw clenched tight. "And why are you telling us this now, Vito? You were on the Syndicate Council back then."

"Because I am dying, Alessandro," Corretti confessed quietly, tapping his chest where a faint tremor was visible. "I have six months left. And the man who authorized the hit on your family—the man who funded Arthur Romano’s rise—just landed at JFK Airport."

"Who is he?" I demanded, stepping out from behind Alessandro, my voice echoing with a fierce resolve I didn't know I possessed.

Corretti looked at me with a mixture of respect and pity. "His name is Victor Vance. The former Director of International Operations for the Department of Justice... and the father of FBI Agent Harrison Vance."

I gasped, clutching my neck. Agent Vance. The very man who had tried to arrest Alessandro in the penthouse three months ago!

"Harrison Vance wasn't trying to enforce the law when he raided your penthouse," Alessandro realized, his dark eyes flashing with sudden, blinding clarity. "He was trying to secure Arthur Romano’s ledgers before we could find his father's name inside them!"

"Precisely," Corretti nodded. "Victor Vance built an empire behind the shield of federal immunity. Now that Arthur Romano is dead and Vivien is gone, Victor has come to eliminate the last two people who can connect his family to twenty-four years of high treason and murder."

"Where is he?" Alessandro asked, his tone dropping to a whisper that promised unimaginable violence.

"He's currently at the St. Regis Hotel, meeting with the heads of the Russian and Sicilian families," Corretti replied. "He's offering them complete federal protection in exchange for tearing down the Moretti family by midnight."

Corretti reached into his pocket and pulled out a encrypted flash drive, tossing it to Alessandro, who caught it effortlessly.

"That contains the full roster of Victor Vance's private security force and his offshore accounts," Corretti said, turning back toward his SUV. "Clear your father's name, Moretti. Clean the poison out of this country."

"Why help us, Vito?" Alessandro called out as the old man reached his car door.

Corretti paused, looking back over his shoulder with a shadowy, sorrowful smile. "Because your father was the only honest man I ever met in this business. And a three-year-old girl shouldn't have to wear a six-dollar dress because of our sins."

Without another word, the old man got into his car, and the three black SUVs sped out of the gates, disappearing into the afternoon heat.

Alessandro turned to me, plugging the flash drive into his handheld military terminal. Data began scrolling rapidly across the screen—names, bank accounts, satellite coordinates, and tactical blueprints.

"Marco!" Alessandro barked.

"Sir!" Marco appeared at his side instantly.

"Lock down the estate with level-five protocol. Bring in two extra tactical squads from Brooklyn. No one leaves, no one enters."

"Understood, Don Moretti!"

Alessandro turned to me, his face set in stone. "Clara, you and Emma are going to the underground panic room beneath the estate. It was built during the Cold War. It can withstand a nuclear blast."

"No," I said firmly.

Alessandro stopped, blinking in surprise. "Clara—"

"I spent twenty-four years running and hiding, Alessandro!" I said, stepping up to him, looking him dead in the eye. "I cleaned their floors. I took their insults. I let them make me feel like trash while my daughter wore secondhand clothes! I am not hiding in a hole while the man who destroyed our parents walks free!"

Alessandro stared at me for three long seconds, seeing the fierce, unyielding fire of the Moretti bloodline burning in my eyes. A slow, dark smile carved its way across his face.