A Little Girl Made Me Laugh for the First Time Since My Wife Died—Then She Pointed at the Locked Room and Said, “The Pretty Lady Told Me.”

The cold-storage warehouse at Pier 42 loomed out of the harbor fog like a rusted iron beast. Heavy rain drummed against the corrugated metal roof.

Dante and six heavily armed men breached the side entrance, moving in tactical silence through rows of decommissioned meat hooks and frozen storage lockers.

In the center of the vast concrete floor, beneath a single hanging halogen lamp, stood Marco Falcone.

He wasn't running. He was waiting.

He had laid his guns on an overturned wooden crate. His hands were tucked inside the pockets of his dark jacket.

Dante stepped into the cone of light, his weapon leveled directly at his cousin's forehead. Salvatore and the enforcers fanned out, covering every exit.

"Hands out of your pockets, Marco," Dante said coldly.

Marco slowly pulled his empty hands out, raising them to shoulder height. His face was battered, his hair soaked from the rain.

"You brought enough men, Dante," Marco said, his voice echoing in the hollow warehouse. "Are you going to shoot your own cousin like Vieri wanted you to?"

"You stole the key from the vault," Dante stated, stepping closer. "You moved Carmela’s photo. You let Sophia into that room."

"I did," Marco admitted without hesitation. "Because it was the only way to crack that stone wall around your heart! For eighteen months, you sat in that mansion like a dead man, letting Vieri and the council rob this family blind! I had to wake you up!"

"By using my dead wife?" Dante roared. "By terrorizing a little girl?"

"I never touched that little girl!" Marco spat back. "And I didn't murder Carmela! Vieri tried to poison her, Dante. When Carmela figured it out, she came to me. Not to you—because she knew you would start a bloody war that would tear Chicago apart! She begged me to help her disappear!"

"And you put her in a car and blew it up?"

"No!" Marco yelled, stepping forward until Dante's gun barrel pressed against his forehead. "Julian Rossi was supposed to drive her to Canada! But Vieri's hitmen ambushed the car on Lake Shore Drive! Julian jumped before the crash. But Carmela wasn't in that car, Dante!"

Dante’s finger tightened on the trigger. "Then where is she, Marco?"