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“You don’t know that,” I argued, desperate for anything to prove they were wrong.

“We searched his home,” Uncle Sal said. “Duncan, Cian, and I went through everything looking for something that explained what happened in Louisiana.”

“What did you find?”

Uncle Sal’s gaze shifted briefly toward the papers spread across his desk. “Proof that Louisiana wasn’t the beginning.”

The air caught somewhere inside my lungs.

“How far back?”

Mom closed her eyes while Dad’s hand tightened upon her shoulder. Duncan turned away from the screen, but not before I saw rage drag across his face.

“What?”

“Mac’s mother was part of the Society,” Uncle Sal said. “Sylvia planted Mac in our organization. I don’t think even Eamon knew who he was.”

My gaze dropped to Salvatore’s file beneath my hands.

“He and Tyran were working together.” It wasn’t a question; it was a revelation to just how deep this went. “When?”

“Decades ago,” Uncle Sal said. “Long before Valentinetti. Long before you.”

The answer severed something inside me.

Tyran had been Uncle Sal’s best friend. They had grown up together, as close as brothers. Mac had taught me to shuffle cards and pretended not to notice when I stole money from his pile during family games.

They had both been uncles to me.

They had been family.

All that time, they carried another allegiance inside our home.

“You’re wrong.”

“I wish we were,” Uncle Sal said.

“What did the records show?”

His silence lasted long enough for Duncan to answer instead. “Names. Meetings. Decisions made inside the family that had no business leaving the room.”

“He worked both sides,” Uncle Sal added. “He gave Eamon and later me enough loyalty to become indispensable. At the same time, he maintained his connection to Sylvia. We’re still trying to determine what he gave her, what he kept from her, and how many times he steered this family toward something the Society wanted.”

I stared at my uncle on the screen and tried to fit decades around what he had just told me. Mac had not been recruited after Salvatore died. Sylvia had not found a weakness and turned him. He had been tied to her before I was born, before I became someone he protected.

Before any of us mistook his presence for love.

“Did Salvatore know?”

“No,” Dad said quietly. “No one did.”

I looked down at the open file. Salvatore had died trying to understand a Society that had been inside my family long before he met me. Tyran had stood beside Uncle Sal. Mac had remained after him. Both had carried their allegiance to Sylvia through doors no outsider could have opened.

“What did Mac tell Sylvia about me?”

“We don’t know yet,” Uncle Sal said. “Some of what we found is incomplete. Some of it was written to be understood only by the people involved.”

“He knew I was alive.”