Page 43 of Mafia King's Surprise Baby

Chapter 12

Leo

I slam my fist on the table, making Mattia jump.

“It’s been seven months!” I yell at him. “That’s not enough time—”

“Will you fucking give it up?”

“Never!”

Mattia and I stare at each other across the desk in my study in my family’s home. I called him to share a new lead—another one—in Bianca’s disappearance. But he arrived with his shoulders slumped, dark circles and heavy bags under his eyes. I can’t help but feel my best friend has been humoring me these past months. Ever since we took care of Abrashi, it’s like the will to find his sister has slowly been leeching out of him.

Leeching out of him to fuel my drive to recover her. It seems to me no one is doing anything to find her.

“Leo, stop,” he says.

I tighten my fist and clench my jaw. “I won’t.”

“We can’t keep doing this.”

I throw a wad of papers at him. “It’s a lead.”

He sighs. “Seven months old. I can’t even believe they found traces after all this time.”

The sample a top-notch forensics team I hired found is severely degraded, I’ll admit it, but they found it. In the alley right after the ATM machine where Bianca was last spotted. I had them comb the whole stinking shithole with their finest equipment, and lo-and-behold, they found traces of her blood. It’s a spatter consistent with the slash of a knife that dripped droplets on the ground and showered a pattern on the wall, made by a left-handed person.

“Someone attacked her in that alley, Mattia,” I enunciate carefully, to drive the point home. “The traces, the blood drops, end at the mouth of the alley.”

Mattia’s nostrils flare. “An alley that opens onto a whole crossroad of alleyways there.”

Is he seriously not hearing what I’ve been saying all this time? “Ardian Abrashi was left-handed. The forensics state this splatter pattern came from someone left-handed.”

He sighs, closes his eyes, and pinches the bridge of his nose before looking at me again. “What’s this new lead of yours?”

I don’t want to cry victory yet, but at least he’s listening. “One block south of that spot. Cameras caught a car leaving off as if it had nitro turbo boost rigged to its engine.”

He takes the photo I extend and peruses it. “Right. A totally non-descript dark sedan with tinted windows speeding down empty streets in the middle of the night, the driver not visible, let alone the license plates.”

Is the fucker being sarcastic?

“We can use the cameras to track it down—”

“After seven months? Leo, this has to stop.”

“No, I won’t—”

“Please,” he mumbles, and the trembling in his tone makes me pause. “Every time you uncover a lead, it gives us hope, Leo. I…I can’t keep doing this.”

He doesn’t wait for my answer and turns on his heel and leaves the study, the door closing with a soft click behind him. However, the sound is deafening in my ears. It’s like he closed the lid on the entire endeavor it has been, and still is, to find Bianca.

I fall into a heap on my executive chair.

If her own family is stopping the search to find her, what hope do I have left of finding her and bringing her home safe? Of bringing her to my place, to my house, as my wife?

A sound chokes in my throat when I think of her. The sadness, I have to transform it into something, or it will eat me whole like corrosive acid on my every cell. So I think of her, but it’s a different fantasy, one where she’s okay, where she’s with me…

I close my eyes, and I can see her smiling face in front of me. She’s so pretty when she laughs. It’s like her features take on a mischievous expression, her eyes sparkling, that wide mouth grinning and radiating her joy.

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