THE MAFIA BOSS WATCHED ME UNTIE A HOUSEMAID'S APRON FROM HIS ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER IN THE MIDDLE OF HIS ENGAGEMENT DINNER—THEN HIS FIANCÉE SAID, “

"To me?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. "Why would Marcus leave a letter for me?"

Luca walked over to his desk, unlocked the top drawer, and pulled out a folded piece of cheap prison stationery. It had been faxed over by a contact inside the precinct.

"I don't know," Luca said, handing it to me. "I haven't read it. It’s yours."

My hands shook as I took the paper. I unfolded it under the warm glow of the desk lamp. The handwriting was jagged and hurried, nothing like Marcus's usual polished script. The ink was smudged, as if he had written it in a state of absolute panic.

Claire,

If you’re reading this, they got to me. I know they're coming. The guards turned a blind eye twenty minutes ago. I’m dead meat.

I hate you for what you did in that basement. But you’re the only person in that house who actually cares about the kid.

Luca thinks he knows everything. He doesn't.

Vanessa didn't come to the house three years ago to seduce Luca. She came to the house because I owed her money. A lot of it. She was the one laundering the cartel cash for me. When I lost three million at the tables in Vegas, she threatened to tell the cartel unless I married her and gave her half the Moretti estate.

Caroline finding out wasn't an accident. Vanessa wanted her to find out. She planted that watch. She wanted Caroline to confront me so she could push her. Vanessa murdered her, Claire. I just stood there and let it happen.

Tell Luca I’m sorry. I was a coward. Tell Emily I never meant for her mother to die.

Watch your back, Claire. The cartel doesn't know you exist yet. Keep it that way.

— Marcus

I finished reading and slowly lowered the paper. The air in the study felt heavy, thick with the ghosts of the past three years.

"What does it say?" Luca asked quietly.

I looked up at him. The man had lost his wife to a murder he thought was an accident, his fiancée to greed, and now his brother to the very monster his brother had fed.

I couldn't give him any more pain tonight. He didn't need to know that Marcus had been extorted, or that Vanessa was the sole architect of Caroline's murder. He just needed to heal.

"He apologized," I said softly, folding the letter.

Luca studied my face. "To you?"

"He told me to tell you he's sorry. That he was a coward. And that he never meant for Caroline to die."

Luca’s expression didn't change, but a microscopic fraction of tension left his shoulders. He nodded slowly.

"I'll burn it," I said, walking over to the small stone fireplace in the corner of the study.

I tossed the letter onto the dying embers. The paper caught instantly, curling into ash and floating up the chimney.

With that fire, the last of Vanessa and Marcus's poison left the house.

"Claire," Luca said.

I turned around.

He crossed the room and stopped right in front of me. The warmth from the fire chased away the shadows on his face.

"I don't want you to watch your back," he said, and I realized he must have guessed the tone of Marcus's warning. "I want you to look forward."

He reached into his pocket.

For a wild, panicked second, I thought he was going to pull out a ring. It was too soon. It was way too soon.

But he didn't.

He pulled out a small, worn silver locket.

It was the same locket I had found in the cedar box. The one Caroline had kept.

Luca popped the clasp open. Inside wasn't a picture of Luca or Emily.

It was a tiny, folded piece of paper.

"Caroline bought this locket a month before she died," Luca explained softly. "She told me she put her greatest wish inside it. I never opened it. I couldn't bear it."

He handed the locket to me.

"Open the paper."

My fingers trembled as I unfolded the tiny square.

In Caroline's beautiful, looping handwriting, there was only one sentence.

‘I wish for my family to be whole again, even when I am gone.’

I looked up at Luca. My vision was blurry with tears.

"She wanted this," Luca whispered, his voice thick. "She wanted us to survive her."

He reached out and gently took the locket from my hands. He stepped behind me, lifting my hair, and clasped the silver chain around my neck. The cool metal rested against my collarbone, right next to my pounding heart.

"You're not a maid anymore, Claire," Luca whispered, his lips brushing against my ear, sending a shiver down my spine. "You're the woman who saved us."

I turned around to face him.

And this time, the phone didn't ring.

Luca leaned in and pressed his lips to mine. It wasn't a rushed, desperate kiss. It was slow, deep, and incredibly gentle—a promise of safety, of protection, of a future that didn't have to hurt anymore.

When he finally pulled away, we were both breathless.

"Tomorrow," Luca said softly, resting his forehead against mine, "we're going to pick up your mother and bring her here for dinner. Emily wants to show her the frog."