“UNCLE TEDDY… DON’T OPEN THE DOOR. GRANDPA HAS A SECOND FACE.”

I stopped with my hand on the doorknob.

Daisy was sitting against my chest, wrapped in a little yellow blanket, her enormous brown eyes fixed on the dark hallway ahead.

It was nearly midnight.

We had returned to the Romano family mansion for the first time in eleven years.

The place where my childhood ended.

The place where my father supposedly died.

And the place my missing sister had somehow directed us to through a two-year-old child.

“Sweetheart,” I whispered, “what do you mean, a second face?”

Daisy pressed her small fingers against my mouth.

“Shhh. Grandpa smiles when he’s mad.”

I felt something cold settle in my stomach.

My father, Vittorio Romano, had always smiled before delivering bad news.

It was a habit I remembered too well.

Antonio and four trusted guards were positioned outside the mansion.

Although the mysterious caller had demanded I come alone, I had no intention of handing over Daisy or walking blindly into a trap.

I had already sent the hotel’s security footage to an investigator outside my organization.

If anything happened to me, the truth would not disappear with us.

But there was one person I had deliberately left behind.

Marcus Bell.

He remained locked inside a secure room at the Grand Imperial Hotel.

And the last thing he had shouted before I left was:

“THE GIRL DOESN’T KNOW WHO HER REAL FATHER IS!”

I had ignored him.

Until now.

Daisy suddenly pointed toward a dusty portrait hanging in the hallway.

“Mister Teddy, look! Mommy!”

It was a painting of Emily and me as children.

She was thirteen.

I was eight.

We were standing beside a giant brown stuffed bear.

But something was different.

Someone had scratched a small star into the painting’s wooden frame.

I moved closer.

Beneath the frame, barely visible, were four numbers.

1-7-0-6.

June seventeenth.

Emily’s birthday.

I pressed the numbers into an old electronic lock beside the staircase.

A hidden panel clicked open.

Inside was a narrow metal box.

And sitting within it was Sleepy Bear.

The giant stuffed teddy bear from our childhood.

Daisy squealed.

“BIG TEDDYYYY!”

She reached for it, but I noticed something unusual.

One of its button eyes had been replaced with a tiny metal circle.

A camera lens.

I examined the bear carefully.

A memory card was hidden inside its stuffing.

My hands shook as I inserted it into the small reader Antonio had supplied.

A video appeared.

The date was eleven years earlier.

I recognized my father’s private office.

Emily stood near the desk, crying.

Our father was facing her.

But he wasn’t alone.

Beside him stood a younger Marcus Bell.

And a woman I recognized immediately.

My mother.

Isabella Romano.

The woman who had supposedly abandoned us when I was seven.

My chest tightened.

In the video, Emily was shouting.

“You cannot sell the family to them! Dominic is still a child!”

My father laughed.

“He will inherit whatever I allow him to inherit.”

Then my mother stepped forward.

“Vittorio, enough. The children have nothing to do with this.”

He turned toward her.

“They have everything to do with this.”

The video suddenly became distorted.

Then Emily’s voice came through clearly.

“If anything happens to us, Dominic will know!”

The recording ended.

I stared at the screen.

My father had betrayed the family.

My mother had been there.

And Marcus had known everything.

But that wasn’t the most disturbing discovery.

Behind the teddy bear’s second eye was a folded document.

A hospital birth certificate.

The name written under MOTHER was Emily Romano.

The name under CHILD was Daisy Romano.

But the space marked FATHER contained a name I had never expected.

Adrian Moretti.

I knew Adrian.

He was thirty-two, the leader of a powerful organization in New York.

For years, the Romano and Moretti families had been bitter enemies.

Three years earlier, Adrian had almost been killed during a failed peace negotiation.

And I had personally ordered my men to keep him away from Chicago.

If Adrian was Daisy’s father, everything I believed about Emily’s disappearance was wrong.

Suddenly, Daisy grabbed the birth certificate.

“Daddy!”

I stared at her.

“You know your daddy?”

She nodded excitedly.

“Daddy has dragon!”

“A dragon?”

She pulled a crumpled photograph from her little shoe.

It showed a tall, dark-haired man holding Daisy beside a lake.

A black dragon tattoo covered his wrist.

Adrian Moretti.

He was smiling.

Not the cold, calculating smile I remembered.

A real smile.

The kind a man gives when he’s holding the most precious thing in his world.

Then I noticed the date on the photograph.

It had been taken three weeks earlier.

Adrian had been with Daisy recently.

He knew Emily was alive.

Why hadn’t he told me?

Before I could think further, a slow clap echoed from the staircase.

“Very good, Dominic.”

I turned.

A tall man stepped from the shadows.

Silver hair.

A familiar smile.

A face I had buried eleven years earlier.

Vittorio Romano.

My father.

“You’re looking well, son.”

I instinctively stepped in front of Daisy.

My father smiled wider.

“Don’t be dramatic. I’ve waited a long time to meet my granddaughter.”

Daisy immediately shook her head.

“No hugs! Bad Grandpa!”

His smile faltered.

Then he looked at me.

“Hand over the child, Dominic.”

I stared into his eyes.

“Where is Emily?”

He gave a quiet laugh.

“Your sister has always been difficult.”

He reached into his coat.

“But you are about to understand why she had to disappear.”

I held Daisy tighter.

“What do you want?”

My father looked almost amused.

“The Romano empire, of course.”

Then he said something that changed the meaning of everything.

“But first, you need to understand one thing.”

He pointed toward Daisy.

“That little girl isn’t the only child Emily has been hiding.”

My heart began pounding.

“What?”

From somewhere beneath the mansion, a child started crying.

Not Daisy.

Another child.

And then a familiar woman’s voice screamed:

“DOMINIC! DON’T BELIEVE HIM!”

Emily.

Alive.

Somewhere beneath our feet.

My father slowly turned toward the basement stairs.

“Well,” he whispered, “I suppose our family reunion has officially begun.”