Page 104 of Broken Mafia Bride
All that’s missing now is my daughter.
With the men no longer at each other’s throats—and the tension between Raffaele and me starting to settle—we can finally work together to find her. For the first time since this nightmare began, I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel. I have three powerful men in my corner now.
“If you’re not the most perfect, loving grandfather to Noemi,” I warn, pulling away slightly, “I’ll never forgive you. I can deal with you messing me up, but I won’t let you do the same to her.Capisci?”
My father nods. “Your mother would have been so proud of you. So would Valentina.”
A sob catches in my throat, and I’m pulled into his arms again. I cry until my chest aches and my throat is raw—and he never lets go.
It’s what I’ve always wanted.
32
RAFFAELE
“There’s something you need to see,” Matteo says as soon as I pick up the call.
“Can it wait?” I ask, turning the car right into my father’s private driveway. “I’m on my way to my father’s house.”
“Good,” he tells me. “I’m right outside. This can’t wait. Trust me.”
I tap the screen on my dashboard to hang up the call, and barely a minute later, I pull up to the wrought iron gates of my father’s estate and spot Matteo’s Ford Ranger parked off to the side. He’s leaning against the car, muscled arms crossed over his chest.
As soon as I pull to a stop, he straightens, giving me a serious look.
“This had better be good,” I warn him, stepping out of the car.
Raising an eyebrow in a look I can’t misinterpret, he climbs into the driver’s seat of his car. I go around and join him in the passenger seat.
“Well?” I ask impatiently. “What the hell is going on?”
I’m already exhausted, and it’s not even noon. In the short time I’ve spent in Sardegna, my father has managed to mess everything up. As if the business wasn’t already on shaky ground with the war zone Chicago has become, he just had to go and make alliances with a street gang.
It turned out exactly how I’d expect inviting snakes into your home to turn out—the gang cleaned out most of our warehouses and killed a few of our men.
Since I got back to Chicago three days ago, I’ve been running around paying respects to the families of the dead men, trying to locate the gang members and recover the stolen cargo. I almost wish I hadn’t set foot out of Sardegna. Even though the atmosphere there has been somber since Isabella’s death—and it’s all starting to make my skin crawl—at least there’s a level of peace now that Giulia and I are no longer on opposite teams.
I came back to chase a lead on Noemi’s disappearance, but I’ve spent the whole time cleaning up my father’s mess. It shouldn’t surprise me anymore. I should be used to cleaning up his fucking messes by now, but his timing is just horrible. I’m beginning to think he does shit like this just to get me riled up.
Matteo reaches behind for his customized laptop on the back seat and opens it. There’s silence in the car as he navigates through the software, fingers flying over the keyboard too fast for me to follow. I doubt anyone but Matteo himself could operate the futuristic box he calls a computer.
“Here,” he finally breaks the silence, turning the screen to face me.
I narrow my eyes at the display. It looks like some kind of chart.
“What am I looking at?” I ask, scanning it in confusion.
He lets out a huff of disbelief and stabs his finger at a point on the screen, then shifts it to the other side. “This one is the plane arrangement Lucio gave you. This is a seating chart fromone of the planes that left Sardegna for America within two weeks of Noemi’s kidnapping.”
“And?”
“He gave you this seating chart to show that all the seats were accounted for, and that none belonged to a woman matching Martina’s description,” he explains. “I had some misgivings and decided to do my own digging. Turns out the window seat I marked in yellow wasn’t unoccupied, after all.”
I raise my head and meet his eyes. “What exactly are you saying?”
“I’m saying someone is lying. Either Lucio or whoever gave him that bogus chart. Someone was in that seat—so why the fuck did he say it was empty? My guess is Martina was on that plane and someone is covering her tracks.”
“You think it’s La Rete Rossi?”
