A mafia don let a little girl boss him around until she recited the three private rules his late mother only whispered behind locked doors.

Sofia backed until her spine hit the heavy wood of the locked door. Her breath came in shallow, ragged gasps, her hands trembling as she held Lily against her chest. She looked at Vincent—tall, muscular, scarred, the undisputed ruler of the city—standing alone with her in the nursery.

"Why are you doing this?" Sofia sobbed, her voice breaking. "What do you want from us?"

Vincent did not answer with threats. He did not draw a weapon.

Slowly, deliberately, Vincent set his mother’s leather journal down onto the low mahogany tea table, placing it gently beside Lily’s porcelain teacups. He set the payroll photograph beside it, aligning the edges with mechanical precision.

He reached up to his own neck.

His calloused, ink-stained fingers slipped beneath the open collar of his white dress shirt. He unclasped a heavy platinum chain from around his throat.

Suspended from the chain was a platinum medallion—an imperial eagle perched atop an anvil, the metal worn smooth by twenty years of resting against his skin.

He held it out in his open palm.

The morning sunlight struck the platinum, casting a sharp, brilliant reflection across the pale pink walls of the room.

Sofia’s eyes drifted to his hand.

Her breathing stopped.

The frantic panic in her face froze, replaced by a sudden, disorienting shock that parted her lips. Her gaze locked onto the eagle, onto the anvil, onto the three hand-carved Roman numerals framing the perimeter.

Her hands began to shake so violently that Lily slipped an inch in her grip before Sofia tightened her arms.

"That..." Sofia whispered, her voice barely an audible breath. "Where did you get that?"

"It belonged to my mother," Vincent said, his voice dropping into that deep, gravelly register that held no anger, only an infinite, aching gravity. "Maria Marquetti. There were only three cast in nineteen-seventy-five."

Sofia slowly lowered Lily to the floor.

The four-year-old girl stood on the parquet, sensing the profound, sacred shift in the room, her small hand reaching out to hold the hem of her mother’s apron.

Sofia reached down with trembling fingers, taking the hem of her own dark navy uniform dress. She turned the heavy cotton hem inside out, revealing a small, hand-stitched pocket sewn into the interior lining near her hip—a hidden pocket stitched with heavy black thread, reinforced against the wear and tear of three years of domestic labor.

With fingers that rattled like dry leaves, Sofia pulled a small object from the lining.

It was wrapped in a piece of faded yellow silk.

She unfolded the silk.

Resting in her calloused, work-roughened palm was a second platinum medallion.

Identical in weight. Identical in diameter. Bearing the exact same imperial eagle, the exact same anvil, and the exact same three Roman numerals.