Page 81 of Second Chance Daddy
The kind that hollows you from the inside out.
“No,” she whispers, voice wrecked. “Please, no. Not my baby.”
I keep one arm around her, the other calling my head of security.
“Boss?”
“Aria’s been taken. Don’t ask questions, but that’s my fucking kid,” I tell our head of security. “There was a security breach at the house, and she was taken right off our lawn. Rally the family, now.”
There’s no hesitation on the other end. Just orders being relayed in rapid-fire Russian. “The team from Chicago’s already been told to get en route,” my guy confirms. “Your cousins will have men at every port, airport, and train station within a hundred-mile radius. No one moves with a child matching her description without us knowing.”
“I want helicopters. I want roadblocks. And I want Gino Esposito found.”
“Already on it, boss. We’ll find him.”
I end the call, already calling my sister.
“Dante? I’m fucking hungover and —”
“Aria’s been taken.” The words scrape raw across my tongue. “I need you at the house. Cassie needs you.”
I hear her sharp inhale, the shockedwhat the fuck. “I’m on my way. Ten minutes.”
When I hang up, my gaze falls on Cassie. She has tears streaming unchecked down her cheeks. “Cassie, look at me.”
She doesn’t move. Just stares, lost in a nightmare no parent should have to face.
“Cassie.” I take her face in my hands, forcing her gaze to mine. “I will find her. I will bring her back.”
Her hands fist my shirt, knuckles white, tears streaming. Her voice cracks like glass when she speaks. “Don’t come backwithout her…” She chokes, swallows, eyes blazing through the tears. “Or don’t come back at all.”
24
CASSIE
The world stops spinning the moment Dante walks away. I stand there, frozen, my body hollowed out, my soul scraped raw.
My baby.
My Aria.
Gone.
I’m bleeding dry from the inside out, and no one can see. I failed at the one job that mattered: keeping my daughter safe.
“Cassie.” Tina’s hands find my shoulders. “Let’s get you inside.”
My feet might as well be cemented to the ground.
The guard is being loaded into an ambulance. There’s activity all around me—men in dark clothes, radios crackling, urgent voices—but it’s all underwater. Distant. Happening to someone else.
“She was just playing,” I whisper. “She was just?—”
My knees buckle, and Tina catches me before I hit the ground. Her arms wrap around me tightly, keeping me upright.
“I’ve got you,” she says, fierce and sure. “Come on. One step at a time.”
Somehow, we make it inside.
