Page 84 of His Nephew's Ex
“No.” The word carries years of accumulated authority. “My wife has been in that place for twenty-three minutes. That’s twenty-three minutes too long.”
Below us, the warehouse complex spreads like a cancer across the industrial landscape—rusted metal and broken dreams where desperate men bring their violent fantasies to life. The perfect place for Flavio to make his final, pathetic stand.
But he’s forgotten one crucial detail: I’ve been fighting wars since before he learned to walk. I’ve turned desperate men into corpses and impossible situations into complete victories. Whatever amateur kidnapping operation he’s mounted will be over before he realizes the Silver Devil has arrived to collect what belongs to him.
The helicopter touches down three blocks away, rotors still spinning as I leap to the ground. My team spreads out like lethal shadows—eight men who’ve bled for me, killed for me, would diefor me without question. Tonight, they’ll do what needs doing to bring my wife home.
“Suppressed weapons only,” I order as we move through the maze of abandoned buildings. “Clean entries, minimal noise. Anyone between me and my wife becomes a memory.”
“Boss,” Tiziano’s voice carries that note of careful diplomacy that usually means he’s about to say something I won’t want to hear. “Flavio is still family—”
“Flavio is a dead man who doesn’t know it yet.” My voice cuts through the night air like a blade through silk. “Family died with the DNA results. What’s waiting in that warehouse is just another threat to eliminate.”
The tracking signal grows stronger as we approach the target building, my phone’s screen painting our destination in digital certainty. She’s there—my wife, my queen, the mother of my heir—trapped in some rat’s nest while a pretender plays games with forces beyond his comprehension.
Through the grimy windows, I catch glimpses of movement. Guards posted like amateurs, their positions predictable and their weapons visible. Flavio has surrounded himself with the kind of desperate men who think guns make them dangerous, who’ve never learned the difference between violence and power.
They’re about to receive an education they won’t survive.
“Thirty seconds,” I whisper into my comms, watching my team take their positions with the fluid grace of apex predators. “Clean sweep, no survivors who threaten my wife.”
We breach hard and fast. Guards fall without firing a shot. The perimeter collapses in seconds.
The signal leads me deeper while chaos erupts behind me. My men handle the cleanup. I handle what matters—getting to my wife before someone pays the ultimate price for taking her.
The warehouse’s main floor opens before me. Industrial equipment draped in shadows, concrete stained with substances that could be rust or blood or both. And there, chained to a metal support beam like some medieval prisoner, is my wife.
Even restrained, even disheveled, she blazes with defiant fury that makes my chest tight with pride and possession. They’ve underestimated her, these weak men who think chains can contain fire.
“Simeone!” Her voice cuts through the warehouse’s industrial decay, sharp with relief and something that might be vindication. “I told them you’d come.”
“Did you doubt it?” I ask, moving toward her with weapons trained on every shadow, every possible threat. “Did you think anything in this world could keep me from what’s mine?”
Behind me, my men secure the building. No witnesses, no loose ends, no evidence except what I choose to leave. The perimeter ismine, the building is mine, and in moments, my wife will be safe in my arms where she belongs.
“Very touching,” a voice calls from the shadows above us. “The great reunion. The powerful man rescuing his precious possession.”
Flavio emerges from behind industrial equipment on the building’s upper level, moving with the careful precision of someone who knows he’s outgunned but isn’t ready to surrender. Desperation has carved new lines around his eyes and hollowed his cheeks. The spoiled boy I raised has been replaced by something lean and feral.
“Hello,zio,” he says, and the bitter mockery in that word makes violence rise in my chest like a tide. “Come to negotiate for your wife’s safe return?”
“No.” I don’t raise my voice, don’t waste energy on theatrical gestures. The quiet authority that’s moved mountains and ended dynasties fills the space between us. “I’ve come to explain why your life ended the moment you touched what belongs to me.”
“My life?” He laughs, the sound echoing off concrete and steel. “You think you can threaten me? You think I’m still some frightened boy who jumps when Uncle Simeone raises his voice?”
“I think you’re a stranger wearing a dead man’s name,” I say quietly, pulling the DNA report from my jacket with deliberateprecision. “I think you’re about to learn what happens when pretenders challenge real power.”
The paper flutters to the concrete between us, landing like a verdict written in scientific certainty.
“Twenty-six years,” I continue, my voice carrying the weight of absolute judgment. “Twenty-six years of believing I owed you something because of blood that was never yours. Twenty-six years of protecting a lie while the truth rotted underneath.”
“What are you talking about?” His voice lacks conviction, and I see the moment comprehension begins to crack his carefully constructed reality.
“Zero percent probability of paternity,” I recite from memory. “Your mother played a beautiful game, bringing her bastard to my brother and claiming Codella blood. But just like blood, DNA doesn’t lie,ragazzo. You never belonged to this family.”
The silence that follows is absolute, suffocating. I watch twenty-six years of identity crumble in real time as Flavio processes what I’ve just destroyed with clinical precision.
“That’s impossible,” he whispers, but the words carry no force. “I’m Ulrico’s son. I’m your nephew. I’m—”
