Page 86 of Righteous Enforcer
I grip the back of the chair resisting the urge to hurl it across the room. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means I expected this." He tilts his head, almost as if he’s surprised that I expected her to stay. "The moment she was strong enough to run, she would. You were just convenient protection while she healed."
I want to argue, to defend her, but the evidence speaks for itself.
Over four-grand cash is gone.
Mirabella’s stuffed animal is gone. Eva’s bag is gone.
How long did she plan this?
Was fucking me last night a part of her escape plan?
How the fuck did she even get out?
"She played you, Adriano. She played all of us."
I pace the room, unable to stand still with the fury coursing through my veins. "Why? She could have stayed here, been safe. We could have been a family."
"I guess she didn’t want that." Alessandro shrugs. "She's made her choice. You need to let her go."
I slam my fist on his desk. "She took my daughter."
"Yes," Alessandro says, his voice softening slightly. "That's the real crime here."
I run my hands through my hair, tugging at the roots as if the pain might clear my thoughts.
I've killed men for less than what Eva's done to me. Twice now, she's ripped my heart out.
Twice, she's disappeared with my child.
"I have to find her," I growl.
"And then what?" Alessandro asks. "What will you do when you find her?"
What will I do? Part of me wants to punish her for this betrayal, make her feel the pain she's caused me.
But another part, the part that still remembers the softness of her skin, the sound of her laugh, the way Mirabella calls me "Daddy" now, that part just wants them both back safe.
"I'll figure that out when I have them in front of me," I finally say. "But I will find them. And this time, she won't escape me again."
"Let her go, Adriano," Alessandro says, leaning back in his chair with a weary sigh. "At least now you won't grieve for a ghost. You've seen her true colors. The woman you put on a pedestal doesn't exist. She doesn’t deserve you."
Part of me knows he's right.
The Eva I loved, the one I mourned for years, was a fiction. I’ll learn to accept that.
But I won’t have my child taken from me. Not again.
"I have to find her," I insist. "Mirabella?—"
"Are you even sure she's yours?" Alessandro interrupts, his tone casual, as if he hasn't just dropped a grenade into the room.
I shake with anger. “Don’t you fucking dare?—”
“Have you considered that’s why Ivan is after her? That the child could be his, or Maksim’s? I mean, why the fuck are they so interested in the daughter of a low-level associate of the Dante family?”
“That child is mine.” I want to reach across his desk and wring his neck for suggesting otherwise. “One look at her and you know it."
