I held my breath, my gaze locked on the name Carina.
When we'd chosen her name, Dante had insisted on weaving in a piece of my mother's name to prove his devotion to the Montecarlo line. But when the birth record was filed, the name had been altered. A different spelling. A different root.
He'd laughed it off. "Sounds the same. Doesn't change what it means."
Carina. Serafina.
I laughed.
He was right. It didn't change what it meant.
Because his devotion had always been to another woman.
I closed the screen and, through a contact outside the Family's usual network, hired an elite private investigator at top dollar. Someone with no ties to any of the allied families. Someone who owed me nothing and therefore couldn't be bought off by anyone who owed me everything.
By that evening, Serafina Conti's entire history, from childhood to the present, was on my phone. Minor connections to the Conti clan. No real power. No real name. Just enough proximity to this world to know how to move through it without being noticed.
I was reading the last page when I heard voices at the front door. Dante's low murmur. Carina's high, bright laugh cutting through the marble foyer.
"Daddy, I hid a dead fly inside the cake for the ugly monster. She won't find it, right?"
"The fly's buried in the blueberry jam. She's too stupid to notice."
The words had barely left her mouth when I appeared in the doorway.
Father and daughter exchanged a quick glance.
Carina was the first to move, grabbing the blueberry cake and running toward me.
"Mommy, Carina picked out your favorite blueberry cake just for you! I'm sorry I threw away the hair clip you bought me. Daddy already scolded me. Can you forgive me, Mommy?"
The girl stood before me with her head lowered, but her eyes kept darting up to gauge my reaction. Calculating little glances, testing the waters.
It wasn't as though I'd never had my doubts. She looked nothing like me, and nothing like Dante either. And it wasn't just her appearance. Her preferences, her allergies. Every single one was the exact opposite of mine.
Now I knew who she took after.
Those eyes, barely able to contain their eagerness to watch me bite into that doctored cake. They were identical to Serafina Conti's, whose photo I'd been staring at on my phone ten minutes ago.