Page 34 of Mafia Don's Secret Baby

“Make it quick,” I demanded.

Marcus, my computer expert, spoke quickly. “I have a track on Vlad’s current location.”

The normalcy and relative ease of the evening faded as I ended the call and met Lilianna’s eyes.

“We got him.”

Chapter Twelve

Lilianna Genovese

The war I fought with myself tore me up on the inside as I watched Callum rush inside the apartment building excitedly. I noticed the armed guards on the outside, Sophie standing between them, and relaxed a bit.

He would be safe there. After what had happened, not a single person would be able to infiltrate that penthouse ever again.

But as we took off again, the feeling in my chest wouldn’t fade—a feeling that I didn’t want to acknowledge. Exhilaration. Excitement. Everything about the news had my heart pounding as I realized how close I was to getting my revenge. If Vlad and Aelita were found, it meant that Matteo and I could avenge my brother. It’s what I had wanted all along.

But I shouldn’t have felt so excited.

The boredom of everyday life had become something of a routine recently, and I wanted to enjoy it. I wanted to thrive in normalcy, but…. there was a part of me that couldn’t be content with it.

A part of me—a part that I’d always tried to ignore—loved the danger in this line of work. I loved finding people who didn’t want to be found. I loved taking them down.

It was why I’d made a career as a private investigator.

Something about me had always been drawn to this part of the mob life. Maybe not the killing or all the illegal shit, but the chase. Knowing that Vlad had been found had my thumbs twiddling in my lap.

“Why do you look like that?” Matteo asked as he turned onto another street.

“Like what?”

“You look like you’re thinking about something unsettling. Are you nervous to find him?”

I didn’t respond right away. Hell, I didn’t even know how to put my thoughts into words. It was normal to be excited about this news, but there was more than that. Knowing that he’d been found felt satisfying. Knowing that we would further track him was something I looked forward to doing.

It didn’t mean anything, though.

It didn’t matter that I enjoyed this part of the mafia life when so many other aspects were unfavorable.

“I’m happy Marcus found him,” I finally replied. Matteo looked at me with raised brows. He knew I was holding something back, but he didn’t ask. He pulled up to a small house with overgrown grass and empty garden beds. He parked on the street, and I got out immediately, looking around the unkept neighborhood.

I followed Matteo to the front door, and he didn’t bother knocking as he strode right through the front door. I stepped over the threshold, chuckling at the clear signs of a bachelor pad. While not “clean”, the house was tidy enough. A few empty beer cans sat on a coffee table. The only decoration in the entire main room was an oversized American flag accentuated by mismatched furniture.

“Marcus!” Matteo shouted.

A loud grunt came from the other room, and Matteo immediately strode toward it, effortlessly stepping over a bear skin rug that didn’t match a single thing in the room. It reminded me of Silas’s college dorm room that I’d only ever visited once. Mismatched, random, and almost comically masculine. “Boss, I have some good fucking news,” Marcus said with a wide grin.

Matteo placed a hand on his friend's shoulder. He sat at the kitchen table, where he had an impressive setup complete with dual monitors and a high-tech laptop.

He grabbed a can of beer at his side and tipped his head back as he took a swig.

“You’re still watching Vlad?” Matteo asked.

“Nah, I lost him,” he said.

Matteo’s face tightened, eyes narrowing. “You lost him?”

“Before you get in a tizzy,” Marcus said, holding up a hand and pointing to the leftmost screen, full of different camera angles. “There’s a hell of a lot more good news than bad. I have the plates for his car, but I lost it when he went through the projects. Not enough security cameras there, but we all know that. I think we’d rather keep it that way with all the shady shit we get into when we—”

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