Page 47 of His Enemy's Daughter
She’s right, and I hate that she’s right, and I hate even more that the strategic part of my brain agrees with her reckless courage.
“What do you suggest?” I keep my voice neutral, giving her space to think.
“We hit him where it hurts most—his reputation.” Her eyes are sharp now, calculating. “He’s positioning himself as thereasonable one, the desperate father. So we expose him. Every crime, every murder, every piece of evidence I’ve been gathering for seven years. We dump it all—to the press, to rival families, to law enforcement he doesn’t own.”
“That makes you a permanent target,” Simeone warns through the speaker. “Once that information is public, you can never go back to any semblance of normal life.”
“I was never going back anyway.” Regina’s laugh is bitter, sharp. “Normal was always a lie. At least this way, I’m controlling the narrative instead of letting him write it.”
I look at Simeone’s contact on my phone, then at Regina’s determined face, and make a decision that’s probably going to get us both killed.
“Do it,” I tell her. “But we do it smart. Coordinated release across multiple platforms simultaneously so he can’t suppress it. And we do it from a secure location where his people can’t reach us.”
“The cabin,” Simeone confirms. “It’s fortified, has multiple exits, supplies for a siege if necessary. Get there within the next couple of hours, and I’ll have a team ready to help with the information dump.”
“Thank you,fratello.” The words carry weight of fifteen years.
“Don’t thank me yet.” But there’s warmth in his voice. “Just keep her alive and make Sabino regret every choice that led to this moment.”
He disconnects, leaving us in pre-dawn silence heavy with implications.
Regina turns to face me fully, and the vulnerability beneath her courage nearly breaks something in my chest. “You think I’m crazy.”
“I think you’re brave.” I cup her face between my hands, thumbs brushing across her cheekbones. “I think you’ve spent twenty-eight years being someone else’s pawn, and now you’re finally playing your own game. That’s not crazy—that’s overdue.”
“But you’re worried.”
“Terrified,” I admit. “Because now I have something to lose. Before you showed up bleeding and desperate, this was about revenge and strategy. But now—”
“Now?” She leans into my touch, green eyes searching mine.
“Now it’s about keeping you alive long enough to actually be free.” The admission costs me. “And that makes every decision more complicated because I’m not calculating acceptable losses anymore. I’m calculating how to protect you specifically, even when that contradicts optimal strategy.”
“Is that a problem?” Her voice is small, uncertain.
“It’s a revelation.” I kiss her forehead, her cheeks, the corner of her mouth. “Because I spent years learning not to careabout anything except survival and revenge. But you make me want things I have no right wanting. Safety. Future. Something beyond just burning down what came before.”
Her hands find my chest, fingers splaying over my heart. “What do you want, Mauricio? Really?”
The question hangs between us, dangerous and unavoidable. Outside, dawn breaks in shades of amber and threat. In hours—maybe minutes—every criminal in the city will be hunting us.
But right now, in this moment, there’s just us—two broken people trying to figure out how to be something other than shattered.
“I want you safe.” The honesty comes easier than it should. “I want Sabino destroyed. I want Lorenzo Di Noto to suffer for every threat he made. And I want—” I stop, because saying it makes it real.
“Want what?” She presses closer, and I’m acutely aware of her bare skin against mine, the heat building between us despite the danger closing in.
“I want you. Right now. I want—”
She silences me with a kiss that tastes like hope and desperation braided together.
“I’m yours,” she murmurs against my lips. “For however long we have. So stop calculating risks and start taking what you want.”
I claim her mouth again—deeper, harder, pouring all the fear and possessiveness and hope I’ve been denying into the contact. Her response is immediate, matching my intensity with her own desperate fire.
I pull her on top of me, my cock already hardening as she settles against me with a soft gasp. Her hair creates a curtain around us, blocking out the world and the coming dawn and everything except this.
Thanks to our earlier lovemaking, there are no barriers between us. Only skin against skin. Heat. Need.
