Chapter 3 — The Don Has a Problem

"I want every contact we have," Dante said. He was standing at the head of the long table in his war room, while Luna slept in a bassinet that had been awkwardly wedged between a stack of ledgers and a laptop. "Checking hospitals, adoption agencies, every private clinic within two hundred miles. I want to know who gave birth to a girl her age in the last year. I want to know who's gone missing. Give me a name by the end of the week."

Six of his top guys sat around the table, but not one of them was looking at him. They were all staring at the baby.

"Boss," Salvatore said, choosing his words carefully, "are we sure that's the priority right now?"

"She's not staying here forever, Salvatore. Of course it is."

"It's just—" Salvatore looked at the others, waiting for a nod of agreement before continuing, "—we've got a shipment coming through the docks Thursday that needs eyes on it. The Bratva want to renegotiate the north side territory. And Marco's spent the last six hours arguing with Enzo about whether room-temperature milk is a war crime."

"It's not room temperature," Enzo muttered. "It's close to room temperature. There's a difference—"

"There is no acceptable difference, Enzo, that's the whole point of a thermometer—"

"Enough," Dante snapped. The table went silent, though Enzo and Marco kept glaring at each other with the kind of simmering annoyance that suggested they'd been having this same argument since sunrise. "The organization can run itself for a week. I've built systems so I don't have to hover over every single shipment. Use them."

"With all respect, boss," Salvatore tried again, "the organization runs because people are afraid of you. If word gets out that the Don of the Moretti family is spending his week chasing pediatric records instead of running the territory—"

"Then word doesn't get out," Dante said, his voice flat and final. "This stays in this room. Anyone who mentions it outside these walls answers to me."

That did the trick. Nobody at the table needed a reminder of what "answering to Dante Moretti" looked like.

"Understood, boss," Salvatore said.

"Good. Now—"

Luna woke up.

It happened without warning, the way it always did—a small hiccup that escalated in seconds into a full, indignant scream. The sound echoed off the hard walls of the war room, making two of Dante's toughest lieutenants actually flinch.

Six men, who had just been discussing international shipping and territory wars, went dead silent. They all looked at Dante with an expression he was starting to recognize: total, helpless defeat in the face of something under fifteen pounds.

Dante picked her up mid-sentence, adjusting her against one arm while gesturing with the other at the map on the table. "As I was saying—the north side isn't negotiable, not after what happened last spring, and I want Salvatore handling the Bratva directly instead of—"

Luna grabbed a fistful of his shirt and yanked, hard. She had the single-minded focus of someone who had decided, quite suddenly, that she required his undivided attention.

"—instead of delegating it to someone who doesn't have the standing to—"

She yanked again, harder, making a little triumphant sound when the fabric gave way slightly.

Dante stopped talking. He looked down at the girl—not his daughter, he reminded himself, just a girl who lived in his house and had no other name—and felt the tension in the room shift into something that felt dangerously like warmth.

"She's got your attitude, boss," Enzo said, before he could stop himself. "Doesn't care whose meeting she's interrupting."

"Careful, Enzo."

"Just an observation."

Marco, who had developed a quiet fondness for the baby over the last day despite his best efforts, cleared his throat. "For what it's worth, boss, the guys aren't horrified because we don't want her here. We're horrified because none of us know what we're doing, and none of us want to be the reason something goes wrong."

Dante looked around the table. These were men who had built their lives on being ruthless, yet here they were, mentally rearranging shipping schedules around a baby's nap times without being asked.

"Nobody said you weren't allowed to like her," Dante said, his voice softer than he intended. He settled Luna against his shoulder as her grip on his shirt finally relaxed. "I said find out where she belongs."

"And if we don't?" Salvatore asked. "If there's no trail, boss. If whoever left her made sure there wasn't one."

Dante didn't have an answer for that. He looked down at Luna, who had stopped attacking his shirt and was now examining his hand with intense focus, her tiny fingers wrapping around one of his with a grip that felt absurdly strong.

"Then we deal with that when we get there," he said. It wasn't a plan, and everyone knew it, but nobody pushed him. The alternative—asking Dante Moretti to actually admit what he wanted to happen—was a conversation none of them were ready for.

***

That evening, alone in his study with shipment reports he hadn't touched and Luna finally asleep in the bassinet by his desk, Dante let himself actually think about the situation.

If they found her family—a desperate mother, a father who didn't know she existed, some relative—he would hand her over. That was the right thing to do. That's what any normal person would do.

He stared at the ceiling for a long time, trying to find the part of himself that actually wanted that.

He couldn't find it.

Watching her small chest rise and fall in the dim light of the lamp, he realized this was going to be a problem far more dangerous than any rival family. He knew how to handle enemies. But this—the strange, unfamiliar ache of not wanting to lose something he'd never asked for—was new. And Dante Moretti had never liked being on ground he didn't already control.