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.

"You're dead," Dante said, though every cell in his body roared that she was breathing right in front of him. He stepped across the threshold, his boots stepping on the damp carpet, oblivious to the broken glass. "I held your funeral. I put flowers on a vault in Cambridge."

Elena backed away until her spine hit the peeling wallpaper of her kitchen. Her eyes darted toward the children. "Girls... go to your bedroom. Right now."

"But Mom—" Clara began.

"Bedroom. Lock the door," Elena snapped with an urgency that startled the girls. They scurried into the side room, the latch clicking into place.

Once they were alone, Elena slid down against the wall, covering her face with her hands. Her shoulders shook with deep, silent sobs. "You weren't supposed to find us. Boston was supposed to be big enough to hide in."

Dante crouched in front of her, his hands hovering over her shoulders, terrifyingly afraid that if he touched her, she would evaporate into mist. "Who took you, Elena? Who put another body in that car?"

She looked up at him, tears streaking through the light layer of dirt and tiredness on her cheeks. "Your uncle. Victor."

Dante froze. Victor Russo was the consigliere of the family—the man who had held Dante when he cried at Elena's closed casket seven years ago.

"The night of the crash," Elena whispered, her voice trembling, "Victor's men intercepted my car before the highway. They dragged me out. Victor told me that if I ever touched you again, if I ever let you know I was alive, he would release the evidence framing your father for the hit on the Corvo family. He said it would start a war that would execute you and rip the Russo empire apart."

"He lied," Dante growled, his jaw tightening so hard his teeth clicked. "My father died of a heart attack."

"Victor showed me documents, Dante! He had pictures of sniper scope targets trained on your head while you were leaving your office!" Elena cried out. "I was three weeks pregnant. I didn't know it was triplets yet. I was terrified. They staged the crash using a body from a city morgue, torched the vehicle, and shoved me onto a bus to Maine with five thousand dollars and a warning: stay dead, or Dante dies."

Dante reached out and cupped her face. His thumb stroked her cheekbone, feeling the warmth of her flesh, the real, impossible reality of her. "I spent seven years turning the city into a fortress so no one could ever hurt you again. And all this time, the snake was sitting at my dinner table."