“Can You Buy This Painting?” Billionaire Mafia froze because He Thought the Woman in the Painting Was Dead—Until Three Starving Triplets Asked Him to Save Their Mother

The name dropped into the freezing room like a detonating charge.

Dante’s expression darkened instantly, the warmth of finding her vanishing beneath a sudden, glacial fury. "My mother."

"Victoria," Elena whispered, coughing into a thin, stained handkerchief that came away spotted with dark blood. "The morning after the accident... before the police report was even finalized... her head of security intercepted me at the hospital. He told me that a mob heir could never be tied to an artist from the docks, that you were destined to take over the syndicate, and that if I didn't disappear—if I let you know I survived—my unborn children would be born orphans."

Dante stood up so fast his chair scraped violently against the floorboards. The temperature in the room seemed to drop below freezing.

"She told you that," Dante said, his voice terrifyingly quiet, vibrating with a rage that could tear concrete apart. "She looked you in the eye while you were pregnant with my children, and she threatened you."

"She staged the car fire, Dante," Elena cried out, gripping his jacket sleeve. "The body in that car... it was a homeless woman they pulled from a shelter to cover up the hit. They put my purse, my ring inside. They told me if I stayed in Boston, they’d hunt me down. So I ran. I changed my name, I hid in shelters across three states, and I raised our daughters in the dark."

Outside the bedroom door, Nico stepped into the frame, his face grim. "Boss. The medical transport is here. And... I’ve already sent two men to secure your mother’s private estate in Beacon Hill."

Dante looked down at Elena. The woman he loved—the woman his own flesh and blood had tried to erase from the earth—was shivering on a cot, fighting for every breath.

"Nico," Dante said, his voice dropping into a register that made even his hardened chief of security flinch. "Get her and the girls into the armored van. Take them to the private penthouse on Commonwealth Avenue. Call Dr. Harrison and tell him if he doesn't have Elena stable within the hour, I'll throw him off the Longfellow Bridge."

"And your mother?" Nico asked.