A billionaire mob chief threatened to fire his maid for playing with his daughters, right until his mute child uttered a terrifying accusation.

Dominic unlocked his phone screen with his thumbprint, keying in a direct, high-level priority code to his personal head of security, Marco, who was stationed at the estate's outer security gatehouse.

The line connected on the first ring.

"Boss?" Marco's deep, disciplined voice came through the speaker. "We saw your SUV arrive. Do you need us inside?"

Dominic stood beside the heavy granite kitchen island, staring at the flour-dusted floor and the small dough balls left behind by his daughters. His face was a mask of cold, lethal calculation.

"Marco," Dominic said, his voice smooth as silk and cold as grave dirt. "Where were you fourteen months ago on the night Isabella was taken?"

A long, agonizing pause stretched over the line. The quiet hum of static filled the speaker for three full seconds before Marco answered.

"I was leading the reaction team from the Manhattan office, boss," Marco replied, his voice measured, precise, and unhurried. "You know that. We arrived twenty minutes after the perimeter was breached."

Dominic’s dark eyes narrowed into two slits of liquid fire. He remembered the security logs from that night. He remembered who had provided the security codes to the Westchester estate, who had cleared the CCTV cameras for 'routine maintenance' two hours before the attack, and who had insisted that Dominic remain in Manhattan for an urgent meeting that turned out to be a dead end.

Lucia hadn't meant that Dominic himself had physically pulled the trigger. To a traumatized four-year-old child who saw the world through simple, absolute truths, the man who ordered the hit, or the man who wore her father's authority and carried her father's guns inside their home, was "Daddy's man"—or a betrayal born directly from her father's inner circle.