Page 32 of Beautiful Vows

Dante nods, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “Nobody told you?”

“No.” The word hangs in the air, heavy with implied connotations. The great Antonio Conti, surprised, his web of information suddenly revealed as incomplete.

A sardonic smile plays on Dante’s lips. “I’m surprised by that. I thought you’d know every single thing she did.”

Antonio’s gaze drifts back to the screen, to that solitary blue dot in a sea of digital green. “I knew she was pregnant, but...” He pauses. “Follow me.”

As we trail behind him, back through the hallway of Italian marble and Renaissance art, the dynamic has shifted. Antonio’s steps are quicker, but less measured.

He presses his palm against an invisible reader. The wall panel slides across, revealing a hidden room full of computers and a large screen that fills one wall of the room. He presses a button and the map from his office flickers to light on the wall. The blue dot flashing amid the ocean.

The ocean.

I swallow.

Antonio zooms in, and the coordinates appear beside the pulsing dot.

“She’s approximately two hundred nautical miles off the coast of Airlie Beach,” he says. “Moving at a steady speed. Most likely on a private yacht.”

Dante presses his hands on the table in front of the screen and leans in, his eyes locked on that digital beacon. “Whose yacht?”

“Unknown. But given her resources and contacts...” Antonio doesn’t finish the thought. He doesn’t need to. We all know Lia’s network extends far beyond what any of us fully grasp.

I watch Dante, seeing the internal war play out on his face. He straightens, decision made. “Send the coordinates to my phone.”

"I will if you tell me if you killed Eduardo's assassin," Antonio says.

Rafe and I stare at Dante and wait.

"What you should ask is why Eduardo Gallo wants my wife … and your daughter dead." Dante runs his tongue over his teeth as he tries to calm the rage building inside him. "And someone gave the assassin Lia's name just before he was eliminated. Now it's about time you fucking thanked me for protecting your daughter since she was sixteen years old."

Antonio swallows and sighs. His face contorts like he is trying to get the words out but is struggling. "I have something for you."

He opens a drawer, takes out a device and points it at the screen. Another dot flashes, this time it’s red and on land.

Antonio coughs. “Don’t tell her about this one.”

Chapter 11

Lia

A few days later, Milly traveled back to South East Queensland. I dropped her off at the airport, so I can use her car for a few extra days. Much needed time alone that I need to get my head around everything that has transpired.

Milly wanted to get back to the Gold Coast so she could talk to Romeo.

Luckily, she never asked me too many questions about why I was adamant about staying. Which meant I kept my knowledge of our mother from her. To be honest, I’m only just getting my head around it and didn’t want to burden her until I could comfort her.

I will tell her and Amara when I’m ready. Right now, I’m not sure when that’ll be.

Lying on Dominic’s yacht, I relish the comforting sway of the hull beneath me, while the Coral Sea softly whispers in the background. Milly let me in on the secret that Dominic seldom uses it, transforming it into the perfect hideout to rid myself of my turbulent thoughts.

Apart from Milly, nobody knows I’m here. Milly promised to not tell a soul. And as the tracker is now out of my body, by the time anyone realizes I'm missing and searches for me, the tracker will tell them I'm somewhere in the ocean.

Not sure where, I stuffed the tracker inside some tackle and fed it to a larger fish that swam around the boat. Hopefully, the tracker will find its way inside a whale that’s traveling north.

For a moment, I considered flying to my newly acquired Swiss estate, a mountaintop retreat far from this dangerous world.

But reality bites hard; my passport is likely to be flagged the instant I attempt to leave the country.

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