Page 20 of His Enemy's Daughter
She’s traded designer suits for dark jeans and a leather jacket that makes her look less like Sabino’s perfect daughter and more like someone who’s learned to move through dangerous spaces. Her hair falls loose around her shoulders instead of pulled back in those elaborate styles, and without the armor of expensive clothes and practiced smiles, she’s devastating in ways the surveillance footage never captured.
“You came alone.” Her voice carries across the empty church, steady but laced with tension. “Either you’re very brave or very stupid.”
“I’ve been called both.” I move deeper into the space, cataloging exits and potential threats out of habit. “Though right now, I’m leaning toward stupid.”
“That makes two of us.” She doesn’t move from her position, but I catch how her hand rests near her jacket pocket—armed, then. Smart. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
“I wasn’t sure I’d survive if I did.” I stop about ten feet away, close enough to read her expression but far enough to react if this goes sideways. “So let’s skip the pleasantries and get to why I’m risking my neck in an abandoned church.”
“Direct. I appreciate that.”
“Prison teaches you not to waste time on bullshit.” I lean against a pew that probably won’t hold my weight but looks sturdy enough. “You said you thought about my offer. I’m assuming that’s why I’m here instead of you reporting our coffee shop conversation to Daddy?”
“Don’t call him that.” The sharpness in her voice catches me off guard. “He’s not my father. Not really. And I’ve spent twenty-eight years pretending otherwise.”
The admission lands heavy in the empty space between us. I study her face, looking for signs of manipulation orperformance, finding only raw honesty that looks painful to voice.
“Explain.”
“I will.” She pushes off from the altar, crossing the space between us with deliberate steps that echo through the empty church. “But first—at the coffee shop, when you said prison taught you to recognize captivity. Was that manipulation, or did you mean it?”
“I meant it.” No point lying when she’s clearly testing me. “Fifteen years teaches you what survival looks like in all its forms. The physical kind—learning when to fight and when to submit. But also the psychological kind. The way people learn to disappear inside themselves when staying visible is too dangerous.”
“And you think that’s what I’ve been doing?” She stops just out of arm’s reach. “Disappearing?”
“I think you’ve been performing a role so convincingly that even you might have forgotten where the performance ends and the real Regina begins.” The words come easier than they should, observation bleeding into something that feels uncomfortably like connection. “I think you’ve spent your entire life being exactly what Sabino Picarelli needed you to be, and somewhere along the way, you started gathering evidence and waiting for an exit.”
Her breath catches—barely noticeable. “How did you—”
“The fact that you were researching me instead of your father’s usual targets. You weren’t looking for intelligence on an enemy. You were looking for an ally.”
“Maybe I was looking for a weapon.” Her chin lifts with challenge that makes something heat in my chest. “Maybe I wanted to understand the man who spent fifteen years in prison protecting someone he loved, so I could figure out if that same loyalty might be useful.”
“Useful.” I test the word like it might bite. “That’s a cold way to frame this.”
“Would you prefer I pretend this is about anything other than mutual benefit?” She steps closer, and suddenly the space between us feels charged with something dangerous. “You want information that helps you protect Simeone’s family and dismantle my father’s operations. I want freedom from a man who’s been grooming me to be a bargaining chip since before I could walk. That’s not romance, Mauricio. That’s strategy. Besides, it was your idea anyway.”
“Strategy with the daughter of the man threatening my family.” I close the remaining distance between us, watching how her pupils dilate slightly as I move into her space. “Strategy with a woman who might be playing me better than I’m playing her. You’re right. It was my idea. But now, I want you to tell me why I should trust anything you’re offering.”
“You shouldn’t.” The honesty in her voice catches me off guard. “Trust would be stupid. But we don’t need trust for this to work—we just need shared goals and overlapping interests.”
“And what are your interests, Regina?” I let her name roll off my tongue, noting how she reacts to the intimacy of it. “Really. What do you want that’s worth betraying the man who raised you?”
“He didn’t raise me.” Her voice drops, carrying venom I haven’t heard before. “He murdered my parents when I was six months old and kept me as insurance. As proof that he’d eliminated his partners completely. As a future asset he could use to forge alliances.”
The words land like punches, each one revealing layers of trauma that no amount of designer clothes and perfect manners could hide.
“How long have you known?”
“Seven years.” She doesn’t look away, meeting my gaze with defiance and pain braided together. “I found files in his office. Police reports he’d suppressed. Photographs of my real parents—their bodies, what he did to them. Evidence he kept like trophies.”
“Christ.” I run a hand through my hair, processing information that changes everything. “And you’ve been living with him, playing the dutiful daughter, while knowing he murdered the people who actually brought you into this world?”
“What choice did I have?” Fire enters her voice now, burning through whatever composure she’s been maintaining. “Tell me, Mauricio—if you’d discovered at twenty-one that everything you believed about your life was a lie, that the man you called father was actually your parents’ killer, what would you have done? Run? He would have found me. Fight? He would have killed me. So, I did what survivors do. I played my role and waited for an opportunity.”
“And I’m that opportunity.”
“You’re a variable that changes the equation.” She corrects. “You’re someone with motivation to destroy Sabino Picarelli, skills to actually accomplish it, and—based on your prison record—enough patience to play a long game.”
