By the time I dropped a fork in front of Dominic Vance, half the restaurant had already decided I was dead. At Leon’s on the Magnificent Mile, everyone knew the rule. Serve Chicago’s most feared mafia boss quietly.

The safehouse in Lincoln Park was an impenetrable modern fortress.

By 2:00 AM, my mother was sedated under the care of a private physician, and Noah’s cuts had been stitched and bandaged. He was asleep in a secure guest bedroom with an armed guard at the door.

In the lower level of the safehouse, Dominic and I sat across from each other in a dimly lit conference room. On the steel table between us lay a rusted metal box—the only item my father had left in his old lockbox at First National Bank.

I had retrieved it with Mateo thirty minutes prior.

"Open it, Daisy," Dominic said gently.

With trembling fingers, I entered my birthdate into the combination dial. The latch clicked.

Inside was no mountain of cash or gold. There was only a leather-bound journal filled with handwritten financial columns, and a high-capacity encrypted USB drive sealed in anti-static plastic.

Dominic plugged the drive into his secure terminal. Within seconds, lines of decrypted data cascaded across the wall monitors.

"Your father wasn't just a junior accountant," Dominic said, his eyes scanning the ledger entries. "He was Victor Rossi's chief auditor. Ten years ago, your father discovered that Rossi was trafficking illicit pharmaceuticals through public school supply chains and skimming from city pension funds."

"He was a whistleblower," I breathed, realization washing over me like a tidal wave. "He didn't steal money. He gathered evidence."

"Rossi didn't just let him walk away," Dominic explained grimly. "Your father's 'stroke' was an induced potassium chloride injection. Rossi spent the last six years searching for this drive because it contains enough federal RICO evidence to send Rossi and twelve corrupt judges to federal prison for the rest of their natural lives."

"And Marcone was Rossi's hound," I said, fists clenching.

"Marcone is currently holding sixty men at the old rail yard on 22nd Street," Dominic said, closing the laptop. "Rossi ordered him to eliminate your entire family the second the drive was recovered."