Page 91 of Surprise Twins for the Mafia Prince
Probably.
I put the phone on speaker and enter the address he gives me into the GPS. My hands are steady, but inside, I feel a tremor building.
He keeps talking to me as I drive, his voice low and soothing. I find comfort in the sound. How many times have I wished that my father was still around?
How many nights did I cry wishing this was possible? How many times did I imagine this exact moment?
And now I’m speeding toward it.
The road leads me to a small house on the edge of the desert. Wood siding, rock garden, no other homes in sight.
The kind of place you go to escape or to hide something you don’t want found.
I pull up to the curb and stare.
“I’m here,” I say, my voice small. Far away.
Dad lets out a relieved sigh, and the front door of the house opens.
I get out of the car, still holding the phone.
He looks older, as expected. His hair’s mostly gone, what’s left streaked with gray. His frame is softer. The lines on his face are deeper than they should be for a man in his fifties.
But it’s him.
My dad. Alive. Standing right in front of me.
It feels like a miracle. A second chance I never thought I’d get.
I’m frozen in place, blinking through the tears as he steps toward me.
Then, without a word, he takes the phone from my hand.
“What are you doing?”
His smile shifts—subtle, but unmistakable. It goes cold.
Too cold.
Before I can react, he hurls the phone to the ground and stomps on it. The crunch of shattering plastic and glass rings in my ears.
Something inside me breaks with it.
The warmth I saw, the reunion I imagined—it was all a projection. A desperate hope I clung to because Ineededit to be real.
But it’s not.
Oh god.
What have I done?
35
DARIO
I hold up my fist,silencing the men behind me without a word. The rundown bar in south LA looms before us like a cancer that needs to be cut out—headquarters of the street gang that’s been fucking with the Irish.
“Fucking with” is putting it mildly. Three men are in body bags because of these assholes. It started with them trashing protected businesses, then graduated to intercepting drug shipments. Bad for their business, worse for their reputation. Unacceptable doesn’t begin to cover it.
