Page 60 of His Nephew's Ex
The truth between us feels like a death sentence. Twenty years of lies, twenty years of raising another man’s son, twenty years of guilt over a dead brother’s child who had nothing to do with the family legacy.
“Even if that’s true,” he whispers, “you still raised me. I’m still your nephew in every way that matters—”
“You threatened my pregnant woman. You spoke of accidents befalling the mother of my heir.” I stand slowly, reaching for the brass knuckles in my jacket pocket. “Biology or not, that makes you an enemy.”
I work him over with professional efficiency, each blow calculated for maximum teaching value. Twenty years of wrong choices guide my fists toward making one thing right.
I start with his ribs—short, sharp jabs that steal his breath and leave him gasping. The brass knuckles catch the light as they connect with bone, each impact accompanied by the satisfying crack of cartilage giving way. Flavio tries to curl into a defensive position, but I grab his hair and haul him upright.
“This is for every threat you made against her,” I snarl, driving my fist into his solar plexus with enough force to double him over. “For every sleepless night you caused her with your pathetic campaign of terror.”
His attempt to swing back is clumsy, desperate. I catch his wrist and twist until something pops, earning a scream that echoes off the walls of the empty bar. The sound should disturb me—would have disturbed me twenty years ago when I still believed in family loyalty above all else.
Now it just sounds like justice.
“Please,” he wheezes, blood streaming from his nose. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“You meant every word.” I slam him against the wall, my forearm pressed against his throat with just enough pressure to make breathing difficult. “You meant every threat, every insult, every implication that accidents happen to pregnant women.”
His face is turning purple, eyes bulging with panic, but I don’t relent. Twenty years of enabling his cruelties, of making excuses for his behavior because I thought I owed his father’s memory something. Twenty years of letting family blood excuse inexcusable actions.
“Can’t... breathe...”
I release the pressure just enough to let air back into his lungs. “Neither can the people you’ve terrorized. Neither could Loriana when you had your hands around her throat in my own home.”
The next blow catches him across the jaw, splitting his lip and sending him sprawling across the floor. Blood spatters the worn wood like abstract art, and for a moment, I see him clearly—not as family, not as obligation, but as what he truly is: a predator who’s been allowed to hunt under the protection of a name he doesn’t deserve to carry.
When I’m finished, Flavio lies curled on the floor like a broken doll, breathing in shallow gasps through what’s probably a fractured rib.
“Consider this your severance package,” I say, straightening my tie with hands that don’t shake despite the violence I’ve just dispensed. “Any future contact with my family will be considered an act of war.”
I leave him where he belongs—broken on a dirty floor. Outside, the world feels different, like I’ve shed a skin I’d outgrown years ago but never had the courage to discard.
The drive home is silent except for the purr of the engine and the weight of suspicion settling in my chest like lead. Twenty years of unquestioned loyalty to a nephew whose very existence might be built on lies.
My phone sits heavy in my jacket pocket, containing the contact information for the private investigator who confirmed what I’vesuspected for weeks. The timeline doesn’t match. Ulrico was handling operations in Montenegro a few months before and after when Flavio was supposedly conceived—no visits home, no breaks from the operation, no opportunity to father the child his grieving widow claimed was his.
But suspicion isn’t proof. And until I have concrete evidence, I’m trapped between family obligation and growing certainty that everything I believed about Flavio’s parentage is fiction.
As I pull through the estate gates, I make the call I’ve been dreading.
“Dr. Standall? It’s Simeone Codella. I need a DNA test processed. Discretely, and urgently.”
The arrangements are made with clinical efficiency. Hair samples, blood work, and results in forty-eight hours. Forty-eight hours to learn whether twenty years of guilt and obligation have been based on an elaborate deception.
I park in the circular drive, staring up at the mansion where Loriana waits, unaware that everything I thought I knew about family might be built on lies.
Twenty years of sleepless nights, twenty years of making excuses for him, twenty years of believing blood meant something. In forty-eight hours, I’ll discover if the Codella name he carries is his birthright or his disguise.
But the more I think about it, the more the pieces fall into place. The timeline that never quite made sense. Flavio’s increasing desperation as Loriana’s pregnancy threatens his position. His willingness to make threats against a woman carrying what he believes to be his cousin.
If he’s not family, if he has no legitimate claim to the Codella legacy, then his escalating obsession with my pregnant woman takes on an entirely different dimension.
This isn’t succession drama.
This is survival.
He’s built everything on borrowed identity, and when that foundation cracks, men like him don’t just fall—they take everyone down with them.
