Dante’s thumb brushed the worn canvas frame, his mind racing through the mathematical impossible: if the girls were six years old, Elena had been carrying his children the very night her car went over the embankment on Interstate 93.

The eldest girl, whose name was Clara, squeezed the massive stack of hundred-dollar bills to her chest. Her green eyes—so strikingly identical to Elena’s—narrowed with a instinctual caution that no six-year-old should possess. "Mom said never to bring men home," Clara said firmly. "Especially men in expensive suits. She said they bring bad weather."

"I don't want to hurt her," Dante said, his voice dropping into a tone softer than any his bodyguards had ever heard him use. "I used to know her. A long time ago."

The quietest sister, Mia, pulled at Clara's sleeve. "Clara, he bought the picture. We can buy the inhaler now. Mom’s coughing won't stop."

The third sister, Lily, picked up the canvas and held it out to him. Her lips quivered. "Are you going to take her face away?"

Dante knelt further until his knees touched the freezing damp pavement. "No. You keep the painting. Just take me to her."

Behind him, Nico stepped forward, his hand resting instinctively near his holster. "Boss, the meeting in the North End. Don Corvo has been waiting for twenty minutes. If we ditch this, he’ll think it’s an act of war."

"Let him burn the North End down," Dante rasped, not looking back. "Get the car."

Five minutes later, the three girls were buckled into the heated leather backseat of Dante’s armored Maybach, clutching hot chocolates Nico had hastily bought from a nearby cafe. The contrast between Dante’s lethal aura and the tiny girls sipping foam made even his hardened security team tense. Dante sat in the passenger seat, staring through the rear-view mirror at Clara.

"She lives in East Boston," Clara said, giving directions. "Near the shipyard. The place with the yellow door that doesn't shut all the way."

As the vehicle glided through the Callahan Tunnel, Dante pulled out his phone and dialed his private investigator, Vance. "I need every record from the Cambridge morgue from seven years ago," Dante commanded silently. "The dental records for Elena Ward. The police officers on duty. The medical examiner who signed the death certificate. Someone played me, Vance. And I want a name before midnight."

The Maybach pulled up to a decaying three-story tenement overlooking the rusted cranes of the old docks. Salt spray and cold Atlantic wind whistled through the broken streetlights. Dante instructed Nico and his men to hold a perimeter down the street to avoid drawing attention.

He walked up the creaking wooden stairs behind the three small girls. Clara unlocked the rickety lock of Apartment 3B. The air inside smelled of damp winter wood, peppermint tea, and cheap rubbing alcohol.

"Mom?" Clara called out, her voice echoing off thin walls. "We bought the medicine. A man bought the picture."

From the small back room came a low, racking cough, followed by the soft rustle of sheets. "Clara? I told you not to stay out past dark... the wind..."

A woman stepped into the dim light of the hallway. She wore a faded oversized sweater, her frame frail and thin, her dark-blond hair pinned up loosely. She stopped dead in her tracks. The glass of water in her hand shattered against the linoleum floor.