Page 89 of Twisted Vows

The screen lights up with an alert from one of my father’s emails. My breath stills at the speeding ticket notification.

He’s in Miami.

My heart slams against my ribs.

That patient, toxic past has found me again.

Chapter 18

Enzo

I’m at the table with Sophia.

Breakfast sits untouched, the eggs cooling. The silence is worse. She’s quiet. Not peaceful quiet, but pressure before a crack quiet. It grates deeper than any wound. She fiddles with her fingers, the movement small and anxious. Too small for Sophia. She’s usually the kind of fire that doesn’t care if it burns. Now, she’s more like smoke after rain.

I tap the fork against my plate once. “What’s wrong?” The tone comes out harsher than intended.

She flinches. Dammit.

In the next moment, she breathes in, steadying herself. “A message came through Vincent’s old email that I accessed on your tablet.” Her voice drops. “I found a way to log on to his account, but I didn’t tell you because I didn’t expect anything to come from it…” She stops, looking away.

That name lands like a knife. Vincent. My pulse slows.

She glances up with glossy, uncertain eyes. “He got a speeding ticket in Miami.”

A muscle jumps in my jaw. Her honesty cuts sharper than the actual message. That fragile trust matters more than whatever she’s afraid to show me. “When?”

She bites down on quivering lips before sliding my tablet across the table with shaky hands. I cover those hands with mine for a second, hoping to soothe her.

The action is instinctual, like checking for a weapon before a fight.

Her trembling eases as she leans into the touch.

This traffic violation just happened, but a speeding ticket means the vehicle could’ve been there for days, weeks. No time to spare.

In the study, I load a message into the secure channel.

A half-asleep Marco picks up my encrypted call. “Boss, this better not be another email virus situation. Last time, my laptop got hijacked by Russian bride scammers.”

“Track the metadata,” I growl. “Before it burns.”

He releases a sharp whistle. “You sound like someone’s resurrected a ghost.”

“Something like that.”

The ghost’s name is Vincent Martinelli.

Within an hour, reports trickle in. A contact in Miami’s underbelly drops hints about a new “businessman” using shell companies for real estate and auto repair. Familiar patterns. Vincent always liked clean fronts for dirty work.

Another source provides an address. An auto shop exterior, with off-grid cameras. The kind of place you disappear into, not visit.

Fury licks through every cell of my body. The bastard let his wife rot in chemical fog, left his daughter in the crosshairs, and crawled into another life.

I call Marco again. “Get me confirmation.”

“Already working on it. You owe me Cuban cigars if this one pans out.”

I’m not in the mood for jokes. “You’ll get a coffin if it doesn’t.”