Six hours of screaming had pushed Dominic Moretti to the edge,

The third-floor nursery of the Moretti estate looked less like a room in a mafia stronghold and more like a wing of a children's hospital.

It was a massive, vaulted space painted in soft cream and pale gray, lined with built-in bookshelves filled with classic literature, musical mobiles dangling from the mahogany beams, and a state-of-the-art medical oxygen monitor humming quietly in the corner.

In the center of the room sat a custom mahogany crib draped in Swiss cotton lace.

Little Leo was lying on his back, his tiny chest rising and falling in shallow, rapid hitches. A thin clear tube rested gently in his nostril, delivering humidified oxygen to his recovering lungs. His little face was flushed pink, and his hands were curled into tight fists near his ears.

I kicked off my wet boots by the door, washed my hands at the private en-suite sink with antiseptic soap, and walked quietly to the edge of the crib.

Dr. Mercer packed his stethoscope into his leather bag, gave me an encouraging nod, and walked toward the door.

"I'll be in the guest suite on the second floor if you need my vitals sheet," the doctor whispered to Dominic, who stood like an armed sentinel at the foot of the crib. "She's got this, Mr. Moretti. Trust her."

The door clicked shut, leaving just the three of us in the vast, warm room.

"Do you want me to take him?" Dominic asked, his deep voice cracking slightly as he looked down at his son. His hands hovered over the crib rails, twitching with the unnatural hesitation of a man who was used to holding heavy iron firearms but felt entirely unqualified to touch something so fragile.

"No," I said gently, reaching into the crib and sliding my arms beneath Leo’s warm, small body. "Just lift the side rail all the way down for me."

Dominic unlatched the heavy brass mechanism, dropping the side rail with a silent glide.

I scooped Leo up against my chest. The baby stirred, let out a tiny, high-pitched whimper, and pressed his damp forehead directly against my collarbone. His tiny fingers instinctively twined around the fabric of my sweater.

My heart twisted. It was the exact weight. The exact desperate grip.

"Shh, baby. I've got you," I whispered, swaying gently from side to side, the rhythm ingrained in my muscle memory from a thousand sleepless nights that had ended in tragedy.

Behind me, I heard the soft creak of leather.

I turned to find that Dominic hadn't left the room. He had pulled an oversized cream-colored velvet armchair closer to the fireplace, sitting down with his long legs stretched out, his eyes locked onto me with an intense, unblinking focus.

"Sit," he instructed quietly, gesturing to the chair.

"I can stand," I said, pacing slowly near the window. "Walking helps keep them settled."

"Sit, Claire," he repeated, his tone shifting into that low, velvet command that brooked no argument. "You've been on your feet since four this afternoon. You're pregnant with exhaustion."

I stopped pacing.

I looked at him, startled. "How did you know—"

"I own half the restaurants in the city, and I employ men who read background checks before people even finish filling out their tax forms," Dominic said, a faint, dry shadow crossing his face. "I know you work six days a week at Bellavita. I know your rent went up twelve percent in August. And I know you haven't slept more than three hours a night since your son passed away."

The air left my lungs.

For an instant, I felt exposed, stripped down to my barest bones in front of a man who held the power of life and death over half the Midwest.

"You spied on me," I whispered, anger suddenly flaring through my fatigue.

"I protected my son's caretaker," Dominic corrected, his gray eyes hardening into cold stone. "In my world, ignorance is a fatal liability. When you brought him down from that colic attack, I had my people verify your entire life before the dinner plates were cleared. I needed to know if you were an insurance plant, a federal informant, or someone sent by the Genovese family."

"And what did you find?" I challenged, holding Leo tighter against my chest, staring right back at him. "Did you find a cartel connection in my grocery receipts? Did you find a weapons cache in my linen closet?"

Dominic stood up from the armchair.

He didn't tower over me in anger. He crossed the room with slow, deliberate steps, stopping two feet away. Up close, I could see the fine lines of exhaustion carved around his eyes—the physical toll of a man fighting a multi-front war to protect a baby who couldn't even hold his own head up.

"I found a woman who gave her last twenty dollars to a pharmacy clerk in Cicero to pay for an elderly woman's heart medication two months ago," Dominic said softly.

My breath caught.

"I found a nurse who lost her license because she refused to let an un-insured patient die in a hallway while the administrators argued over billing codes," he continued, his voice dropping into a register that made the hairs on my arms stand up. "And I found a mother who loved a little boy so fiercely that her heart broke when his stopped."

He reached out.

His large, scarred hand hovered inches from my cheek, trembling slightly, before his knuckles gently brushed the stray lock of hair away from my forehead.