As the four-year-old refuses to survive another day, a stranger with nothing left to lose steps into the penthouse and sings a melody that changes everything."

Three days later, the city was a powder keg waiting for a spark.

Moretti had taken control of Pier 42, cutting off Gabriel’s primary shipping lines and choking the harbor’s supply chain. In retaliation, Gabriel had ordered Lily and Claire moved out of the city to his fortified coastal estate in the Hamptons—a sprawling stone fortress perched on a sheer rocky bluff overlooking the gray Atlantic.

The estate was surrounded by high iron fences, thermal cameras, and twenty veteran guards who answered only to Dominic.

For the first forty-eight hours, it felt like an uneasy paradise.

Lily was thriving. Her color had returned, her cheeks had filled out, and for the first time in six months, her laughter echoed through the vaulted ceilings of the oceanfront mansion. She followed Claire everywhere, holding her hand, begging for stories, and singing the Breton lullaby in her sweet, childish voice.

On the third evening, the storm struck the eastern end of Long Island.

Gale-force winds whipped the sea into a frothing fury, hurling waves against the cliffs fifty feet below the terrace.

Claire was tucking Lily into bed in the second-floor nursery when the estate’s landline phone rang. The cellular towers had been knocked out an hour earlier by the gale.

Claire walked to the wall phone in the hallway and lifted the receiver. “Hello?”

“Claire.”

It was Gabriel’s voice, but it was breaking up through heavy static. Gunfire rattled in the background, sharp and rhythmic.

“Gabriel!” Claire gasped, pressing the phone to her ear. “Where are you? What’s happening?”

“...ambush... at the rail yard...” Gabriel’s voice cut in and out. “...Dominic is hit... Moretti knew we were coming... Claire, listen to me... the perimeter at the house... someone cut the...”

The line went dead with a loud, sickening pop.

Claire’s heart leaped into her throat.

She turned toward the grand staircase. Down in the marble foyer, the estate’s head of security, an imposing man named Miller, was standing near the front doors with three other guards.

Claire hurried down the stairs. “Miller! Gabriel just called—the rail yard was an ambush! We need to lock the blast shutters!”

Miller slowly turned around.

He wasn't reaching for his radio. He was holding a suppressed automatic pistol, resting casually against his thigh.

Beside him, the other three guards were already lying motionless in pools of blood on the white marble floor.

“I know about the ambush, Miss Donnelly,” Miller said calmly, his voice flat and professional. “I’m the one who gave Moretti Gabriel’s route.”

Claire froze on the fourth step from the bottom, her breath seizing.

“Gabriel paid you a fortune,” Claire whispered, her mind racing. “He trusted you with his daughter.”

“Moretti offered ten times that,” Miller replied, stepping toward the stairs. “And Moretti is going to win this war. Where is the girl?”

Behind Miller, the heavy double doors of the mansion were kicked open.

Six men in black rain gear strode in, led by Marco Moretti himself. Moretti was fifty, built like a silver-haired bull, wearing a soaked trench coat, his eyes bright with the manic triumph of a man who believed he had just checkmated a king.

“Miller,” Moretti barked, wiping rain from his brow. “Is the child secured?”

“Upstairs, Mr. Moretti,” Miller said.

Upstairs, a tiny voice called out: “Claire?”

Lily appeared at the top of the grand staircase, wearing her pink flannel pajamas, clutching the frayed cardigan Claire had given her.

Moretti’s head snapped up. A predatory grin stretched across his weathered face.

“Well, well,” Moretti purred, drawing a chrome-plated revolver from his coat. “Laura’s little ghost. Come down here, little bird. Let’s see if your father can bargain for your life from the bottom of the Hudson.”

“Run, Lily!” Claire screamed.