Page 16 of His Enemy's Daughter
“He’s the newest variable in an equation that’s been stable for years,” I say instead, arranging my expression into something professionally curious rather than desperately fascinated. “Understanding him helps us understand potential threats.”
“Understanding him could also get you killed.” Giordano leans forward. “Regina, whatever you’re thinking—”
“I’m thinking that Father expects me to be married within days or weeks.” The admission comes out sharper than intended. “I’m thinking that my window for having any agency in my own life is closing rapidly. And I’m thinking that maybe—just maybe—this conflict between families represents an opportunity.”
“An opportunity for what?”
For escape. For freedom. For becoming something other than Sabino Picarelli’s perfectly controlled daughter.
But I can’t say that out loud, not even to Giordano, who’s been more father to me than the man whose name I carry.
“An opportunity to prove my value beyond marriage prospects,” I lie, and we both know it’s a lie, but he’s kind enough not to call me on it.
“Be careful.” He stands, moves toward the door with the careful grace of someone who’s spent years navigating dangerous spaces. “Men like Mauricio Barone don’t make safe allies. They make explosive ones.”
“Noted.”
He pauses at the threshold, looking back with an expression I can’t quite read. “Your father’s meeting runs late tonight. You should be gone before he returns.”
It’s both a warning and a gift. I nod, caught between grateful and guilty.
After he leaves, I dive back into the files. Mauricio Barone’s prison record tells a story: disciplinary actions for fighting in the early years, then a deliberate shift to model behavior. Educational courses. A business degree through correspondence. Russian language proficiency. Every detail speaks to someone who refused to waste his captivity.
This isn’t a man who wasted his time inside. This is someone who prepared, who planned, who emerged from fifteen years of confinement more dangerous than he went in.
The surveillance photos show him at Simeone Codella’s estate and at various business locations, always moving with the careful awareness of someone who has learned to assess threats automatically. In every image, his expression carries the same calculated neutrality—giving nothing away while missing nothing.
Except one photo. Taken at a distance, grainy but clear enough to see. He’s standing at a window, and his guard is down just enough to show something raw beneath the armor. Grief or rage or longing—maybe all three.
I study that image longer than tactical necessity requires, tracing the line of his jaw, the set of his shoulders, the way he holds himself like a weapon waiting to be deployed.
My phone buzzes with a reminder I set earlier. The coffee shop near Father’s warehouse property. The one where Mauricio Barone has been spotted twice in the past week, always alone, always during the mid-morning lull.
It’s stupid. Reckless. The kind of decision that could unravel everything if Father discovers it.
I gather the files, return them to their precise locations, and erase any trace of my presence with the efficiency of someone who’s spent years covering her tracks.
The coffee shop is exactly the kind of place that tries too hard to be trendy—exposed brick, reclaimed wood tables, a chalkboard menu listing drinks with names that sound more like chemical formulas than beverages. It’s busy enough to provide cover but not so crowded that I can’t find a corner table with good sight lines.
I order something with too many words in its name and settle in with my laptop, playing the role of young professional grabbing coffee between meetings. My hands shake slightly as I open a spreadsheet that has nothing to do with Father’slegitimate business interests and everything to do with creating a convincing cover.
He arrives exactly twenty-three minutes later, and I know it’s him before I look up—something in the way the atmosphere shifts, the way conversations quiet just slightly as people unconsciously register danger walking among them.
Mauricio Barone enters like a shift in air pressure, there is really no fanfare, just the quiet authority of someone who’s learned to own space through presence alone. Silver hair catches the afternoon light. Those storm-gray eyes map the room in seconds: exits, threats, opportunities, cataloged and dismissed before most people would finish their first scan.
When his gaze lands on me, I feel it like a physical touch—assessing, calculating, recognizing something that makes his expression shift almost imperceptibly.
He knows who I am.
Of course he does. Men like him don’t survive by being careless.
The question is whether he’ll acknowledge it.
I return my attention to my laptop, my fingers moving across the keys in meaningless patterns, while my entire body tenses with awareness of his presence. He orders coffee—something simple, black, no unnecessary complications—and then does something I don’t expect.
He walks directly to my table.
“This seat taken?”
