“You are far past first aid.”

Claire pushed the medication into the IV line.

“Yes.”

Dominic waited.

She did not explain.

Gunfire cracked somewhere above them, closer now.

Harper flinched.

Emma pressed her face into Claire’s side.

Dominic crouched in front of both younger girls.

“Listen to me. I need you to stay in this room with your sister. Nico is outside that door. No one comes in unless I say so.”

Harper’s chin lifted.

“Are you going to kill Victor?”

Ava opened her eyes.

Dominic looked from one daughter to the other.

A year ago, he would have lied. He would have said everything was fine and left them to imagine worse.

Tonight, with Ava’s blood on his shirt and Emma’s voice finally cracked open by fear, the old lies tasted rotten.

“I am going to stop him,” Dominic said. “Then I am going to find out who helped him.”

Harper studied him like she had never heard him speak honestly before.

“Okay,” she whispered.

Claire stepped close.

“You cannot just stop Victor. You have to find what he came for.”

Dominic turned.

“He came for my daughters.”

“No,” Claire said. “He used your daughters because Ava heard him. But this began in Juliana’s study.”

The sound of his wife’s name in Claire’s mouth struck him harder than it should have.

Dominic’s eyes narrowed.

“You called her Juliana.”

Claire went still.

For the first time all night, her composure cracked.

“Most people did.”

“Not in this house.”

Claire said nothing.

Dominic stepped toward her slowly.

“Who are you?”

Harper looked between them.

Claire touched the girl’s shoulder.

“It’s all right.”

“No,” Dominic said. “It is not. You know my house, my hidden doors, my emergency supplies, my wife’s name, and enough combat medicine to save a girl from bleeding out. You have sixty seconds before I decide you are part of this.”

Claire’s face hardened.

“I saved your daughter.”

“And I am grateful. That is why you get sixty seconds instead of six.”

For a moment, the only sound was Ava’s monitor beeping.

Then Claire reached beneath the collar of her gray uniform and pulled out a thin chain.

A gold wedding band hung from it.

Dominic knew that ring.

He had placed it on Juliana’s finger in a small church on the North Side before he had a mansion, before men called him sir, before blood money turned their life into a palace with locked doors.

The ring had not been recovered from the burned car.

Dominic’s voice changed.

“Where did you get that?”

Claire’s eyes shone, but no tears fell.

“From your wife.”

The room seemed to tilt.

Dominic grabbed the edge of a metal cabinet.

“Do not lie to me.”

“I am not.”

“She died in the explosion.”

“No,” Claire said quietly. “She died eighteen minutes later.”

The words hit him like a blade slipped between the ribs.

For three years, Dominic had imagined Juliana dying instantly. He had needed to imagine it that way. Anything else would have destroyed him.

Claire continued before his silence could become rage.

“I was driving behind her that night.”

“Why?”

“Because she asked me to.”

Dominic stared.

Claire took a slow breath.

“My name is not Claire Whitman. It is Mara Ellison. I was a trauma surgeon with the Army before I worked with a federal task force tracking medical supply chains used to move weapons, narcotics, and people. Juliana found one of those chains running through charities, clinics, and shell companies connected to your organization.”

Dominic’s face darkened.

“My wife knew nothing about my organization.”

“She knew more than you allowed yourself to see.”

He took a step toward her.

Claire did not retreat.

“She was not naïve, Dominic. She knew what you were. She also knew what lines you claimed you never crossed. Children. Human trafficking. Forced labor. Those were lines you told yourself separated you from monsters.”

“They do.”

“Then ask yourself why your security chief tried to move your daughters tonight.”

Dominic went cold.

The implication filled the room like smoke.

Claire lowered her voice.

“Juliana contacted me because she had found proof that someone under your name was using your shipping routes and protection network to move girls through the Midwest. She did not know who. She only knew it was close to you. The night she died, she was bringing me the ledger.”

Ava whispered, “Mom knew?”

Claire looked at her gently.

“She was trying to protect you.”

Dominic’s throat tightened.

“What happened?”

“The bomb went off near the river. I got her out of the car, but the blast had done too much damage. She knew she was dying. She gave me the ring and made me promise two things.”

Dominic could barely speak.

“What things?”

“That if I survived, I would find the ledger and keep her daughters alive. And that one day, when it would not get you killed or make you kill the wrong person, I would tell you she never stopped loving you.”

Dominic turned away.

He had faced gunmen without flinching. He had buried friends, enemies, brothers-in-arms, and the woman who had once made him believe he could still become decent.

But that sentence nearly put him on his knees.

A tiny hand touched his coat.

Emma stood beside him, looking up.

“Mommy wasn’t alone?”

Dominic closed his eyes.

Claire knelt before the child.

“No, baby. She was not alone.”

Emma’s face crumpled.

Dominic reached for her, uncertain, afraid she would pull away like she often did.

She didn’t.

She stepped into his arms.

For the first time in three years, Dominic held his youngest daughter while she cried with sound.

Not the silent trembling that used to haunt the halls.

Real sobs. Living grief.

The gunfire above them stopped.

The sudden silence was almost worse.

Nico’s voice came through the earpiece.

“Boss, we have Victor contained near the west gallery. He’s not alone. We took two alive. One says there are more coming through the garden tunnel.”

Dominic’s eyes opened.

The father vanished.

The strategist returned.

“Hold him. Do not kill Victor. I need him able to talk.”

“Copy.”

Claire stood.

“He is after the ledger.”

Dominic looked toward the ceiling as if he could see through four floors to Juliana’s locked study.

“Where is it?”

“If I knew, I would not have spent six weeks cleaning your house and counting camera rotations.”

“You broke into my wife’s study?”

“No. I tried. The lock was changed before I arrived.”

“Victor changed it.”

“Probably.”

Dominic looked at Ava.

“What did you hear before he saw you?”

Ava frowned through the medication haze.

“He said the girl heard enough. Then he said… ‘Find the blue book before Vale does.’”

Dominic’s heart punched once.

Blue book.

Juliana had kept dozens of journals. Black leather, red cloth, cream linen, green travel notebooks.

But one blue book had been Emma’s favorite. Juliana used to draw flowers in it when Emma sat on her lap.

After the funeral, Dominic had boxed Juliana’s belongings but never opened the study again.

“Her sketchbook,” he said.

Claire nodded.

“Then we need it before Victor’s people do.”

Dominic turned to Nico, who stood at the medical room door with a rifle and a bleeding cut above his eyebrow.

“Stay with my daughters.”

“No,” Ava said weakly.

Dominic looked back.

She reached for Claire’s hand.

“Don’t let her go alone.”

Claire gave a sad smile.

“I have been alone for a long time, sweetheart.”

Ava squeezed.

“Then stop.”

Those two words landed somewhere deeper than Claire expected.