I Followed a Little Girl Into My Late Wife’s Abandoned Garden—Then One Sentence About the Day She Died Changed Everything.

"No!" Sofia cried out, her voice breaking. "Julian loved this family! He risked his life for your syndicate!"

Dominic grabbed her by the shoulders—not roughly, but with an iron grip that anchored her in place. "Then why did your three-year-old daughter just tell an empty garden that Elena knew who killed her?"

Sofia gasped, turning deathly pale. "Emma... Emma doesn't know anything! She's just a child!"

"She knows a name, Sofia," Dominic growled, his face inches from hers. He could smell the faint scent of lavender and faint dish soap on her skin, mixed with the raw scent of her panic. "Or someone taught her to say it. Which is it?"

"I swear to you on my daughter's life, I didn't tell her anything!" Tears welled in Sofia’s expressive eyes, spilling over her pale cheeks. "Julian died in a car accident two weeks after your wife passed! He left us with nothing! If he knew something, he took it to his grave!"

Dominic searched her face. As the city’s most brutal crime boss, he was a master at detecting lies. But in Sofia’s terrified, tear-filled eyes, he saw only raw, desperate truth. She didn't know about the stamp.

He slowly released her shoulders. "If you are lying to me, Sofia..."

"I'm not," she sobbed, wiping her face with the sleeve of her maid uniform. "I swear I'm not."

"Get out," Dominic said coldly, turning back toward the window. "And keep your daughter away from the west wing."

Sofia didn't wait. She turned and practically ran out of the study, pulling the heavy doors shut behind her.

Dominic stood in the silence of his office, his chest tight. He pulled the photograph back out. There was something else. Stamped under the date in microscopic print was a grid coordinate.

Meanwhile, downstairs in the pantry, Rosa Bellini, the estate's old cook, was sneaking Emma a small piece of warm bread.

"Here you go, little angel," Rosa whispered, looking around nervously.

Sofia hurried into the pantry, her face flushed and tear-streaked. She grabbed Emma's hand. "We're going home. Right now."

"Sofia, child, what happened?" Rosa asked, concern etching deep lines into her maternal face. "Did the Don—"

"I need to check Julian's things," Sofia whispered wildly, her voice shaking. "Rosa, watch my back for five minutes while I grab our coats."

An hour later, back in their cramped, freezing off-site apartment in the South Side, Sofia locked the front door with three deadbolts. She dropped to her knees in the cramped bedroom and pulled back a frayed area rug.

Using a butter knife, she pried up a loose floorboard. Beneath it lay a rusted metal tin box—the only thing Julian had instructed her to hide if anything ever happened to him.

Sofia opened the box with trembling fingers. Inside was a small leather-bound notebook and a dark-stained handkerchief.

She flipped open the notebook. On the very first page, written in Julian’s hurried handwriting, was a short list of names under a chilling title:

*THE REAL MORETTI Syndicate BOARD.*

Sofia scanned the names. The first name on the list was not a rival Mafia boss.

It was Charles Bennett.