Her face was pale under the fluorescent lights, but her hands were steady.

“We are tracing their signal,” she whispered to Marcus. “Keep them talking.”

I swallowed the dry lump in my throat and forced myself to speak.

“They are three-year-old children,” I said into the phone. “They have nothing to do with your empire.”

“They have everything to do with it,” Richard said.

He took a slow sip of his drink and smiled.

“Their blood makes them a threat to the transition,” he added.

“Once we eliminate the loose ends, the Hart and Vale merger is complete,” Richard said.

“And Adrian?” I asked. “What about his father? Did you eliminate him too?”

Salvatore laughed, a dry, raspy sound that made my skin crawl.

“My son was weak,” Salvatore said. “He wanted to dismantle what took me fifty years to build.”

“So you had him killed,” Isabella said, raising her voice so the microphone on the desk would pick it up.

Salvatore did not deny it; he simply smiled, his gray eyes cold and dead.

“A necessary restructuring,” Salvatore said.