I Wrapped an Abandoned Baby in My Own Coat—Then One Lion-and-Dagger Symbol Told Me Exactly Who Her Father Was.

Two hours later, Elena sat in a sterile, concrete interrogation room at the federal detention center. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting a sickly green hue over the stainless-steel table.

Clara sat across from her, her wrists cuffed to the welded metal loop on the table. A fresh bruise darkened Clara's cheekbone from the ambush rollover, and her designer clothes were rumpled and stained. Yet despite her ruin, a venomous smirk played on her lips.

"Look at you," Clara sneered, leaning back in the metal chair. "The little gutter rat who thought she was just saving a baby in an alley."

Elena kept her hands folded on the table. "You wanted to see me, Clara. Talk."

"Did you find the picture?" Clara asked, her voice dropping to a teasing whisper. "Did you look at that pretty little face and figure out why your whole miserable life felt like an empty room?"

"Who put that file in your safe?" Elena countered coldly. "Who is *Il Notaio*?"

Clara chuckled, the sound dry and rattling. "You think you're clever, Elena. You think Lorenzo is your savior. But the man who ordered the bomb on that villa in Palermo... the man who paid me five million dollars to make sure baby Sofia ended up dead in that frozen alley so the Moretti lineage would end..."

Clara leaned forward, the chains clinking against the steel.

"It wasn't an outsider," Clara whispered. "It was the person who helped Lorenzo build his empire from the ashes. The person who handles every trust, every offshore account, every property deed."

Elena's mind raced. *Notary. The trusts. The property deeds.*

"Dominic Moretti," Elena whispered, remembering Lorenzo's words in the car. *My brother Dominic told me there was nothing left to bury.*

Clara’s smirk widened, but she didn't confirm or deny it. Instead, she leaned in closer, her eyes flashing with malice.

"Check the original deed for the Palermo estate, little girl," Clara hissed. "The deed was signed two days *after* the bombing. By a man who was supposed to be in New York."