"“Don’t Sign It Yet!”

“Don’t sign it yet,” the little girl said. “You need to hear what the dead lady said first.”

The silver pen stopped less than an inch above Vincent Moretti’s signature line.

For three long seconds, nobody in the grand ballroom of the Moretti estate moved.

Not Isabella Romano, the elegant woman in the ivory dress waiting to become Vincent’s wife.

Not Dominic Moretti, Vincent’s younger cousin and most trusted business lieutenant.

Not Charles Bellamy, the family attorney who had arranged the papers with the careful precision of a surgeon preparing an incision.

And certainly not Grace Carter, the housekeeper standing near the service entrance with a tray trembling between her hands.

Everyone was looking at Grace’s eight-year-old daughter.

Emily Carter stood beneath a chandelier worth more than the small house her mother had grown up in, wearing a faded blue sweater with one repaired elbow and holding a cracked old phone in both hands.

Vincent slowly lowered the pen.

“What did you say?”

Grace went white.

“Emily,” she whispered. “Come here.”

But Charles Bellamy moved first.

His smile appeared too quickly.

“Mr. Moretti, this is clearly a misunderstanding. The child found an old device in the staff quarters. There is absolutely no reason to interrupt—”

Emily pressed Play.

Static scraped through the ballroom.

Then came breathing.

A woman’s breathing.

Thin. Frightened.

Alive.

Vincent’s face changed before the first full sentence reached him.

“Vince, if Bellamy is in the room, don’t say another word.”

The pen slipped from his fingers and struck the marble table.

Isabella’s hand flew to the silver pendant resting against her throat.

Dominic stopped breathing.

Charles stared at the phone.

And Vincent Moretti, the man who had spent twenty years becoming the most feared name in the Hudson Valley, looked as though someone had just opened a grave beneath his feet.

Because he knew that voice.

“Sofia,” he whispered.

His wife had been missing for three years.

And the entire world had told him she had abandoned him.

Before the recording could continue, the phone screen died completely.

The battery had finally run out.

Vincent stood up so quickly that his heavy mahogany chair scraped violently against the floor.

He walked past Isabella without a single glance and approached little Emily.

He dropped to one knee, bringing himself down to her eye level.

“Where did you get this phone, Emily?” Vincent asked, his voice shaking with restrained emotion.

Emily looked nervously at her mother.

Grace stepped forward, stepping protectively in front of her daughter.