"A three-year-old girl stopped a Mafia heir from taking his first bite of birthday cake, but when the frosting tested positive for something deadly, everyone wondered how a child had seen what trained security missed.

The name hung in the damp air of the hallway like a death sentence.

"Vincent Moretti?" Anna asked, narrowing her eyes. "Your cousin?"

"He has spent the last five years trying to prove to the commission that I am too soft to run the family holdings," Dominic said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, glacial register. "He wanted Ethan gone because an heir secures my legacy. Without Ethan, the leadership defaults back to the council—back to Vincent."

"And he used a terrified nineteen-year-old housemaid to do his dirty work," Anna said, her voice dripping with quiet contempt.

"Vincent always preferred other people's hands for dirty jobs," Dominic replied coldly. He turned his head down the hallway toward the grand staircase. "Marco is securing the perimeter, but Vincent knows every hidden passage and dead drop built into this estate. My grandfather designed these walls during prohibition."

Anna stepped fully out of the room, pulling the door clicked shut behind her to ensure Lily remained undisturbed. She looked up at Dominic, the submissive housekeeper vanishing completely, replaced by a woman who knew how to handle tactical threats.

"If he knows the architecture of the house, locking the front doors won't stop him," Anna said firmly. "He’s coming back to finish what he started. Either to silence Emily permanently or to complete the job on Ethan."

Dominic stared at her, genuinely surprised by the fierce, tactical clarity in her voice. For a fleeting second, he saw something in her eyes that reminded him of the operatives he used to hire for high-level security extractions.

"What do you suggest, Mrs. Carter?" Dominic asked, testing her.

"Don't wait for him to breach the inner sanctum," Anna answered without hesitation. "Set a perimeter trap in the west wing. Give him an open vector that looks unguarded, let him walk right into the kill zone, and take him alive before he knows what hit him."

A slow, grim smile touched the corner of Dominic’s lips. "You have a remarkable imagination for a head housekeeper."