Page 58 of Ruthless Mafia Daddy

I got off the sofa and walked to the mini bar at the corner of the room, pulling out a bottle of vodka and chugging directly from the bottle. I had a feeling I’d be needing the familiar burn of alcohol to take in whatever was coming.

“Be sure to take the bottle with you on your way out. I don’t want your germs all over my house,” Enzo said with his back to me.

I didn’t bother dignifying his ultra-hygienic tantrums with an answer and returned to the screen with the bottle in hand. Two things were certain: Henry Kincaid was not dead, and he was planning a second takeover. Both of them spelled out war in every language known to man, and going by how tense Enzo looked, he understood what was at stake. He was already in my life at the time Henry struck and saw it all go down. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

My mind strayed to Arielle, worrying about how I was going to ease her into all of this without ultimately scaring her away. I’ll need to protect her. By now, Henry should already know about her. He might be the greediest son of bitch, but he was resourceful, an enemy you should never underestimate.

“Isn’t there a way to hasten this?” I asked, glaring at the screen as I took another gulp from the bottle, letting the acidic burn of the alcohol run through my veins.

“Bingo!” Enzo exclaimed, and I looked up to find the download complete. As expected, the file was protected, and it took an additional twenty minutes for him to crack the code and finally let us in.

It held a lot of records about Henry’s conduct over the years and the wealth he had amassed under the name Garry Winston, but it contained little to nothing about his personal life or what he had been up to.

“Hold on!” I stopped Enzo’s fingers on the remote, “Zoom in on that picture.”

I stared at a low-quality picture that looked like it was taken off a family portrait. “He has a family?” Enzo asked, trying to amplify the quality of the picture.

“None that I know of, but I hope he does.” There is nothing worse than an enemy that has nothing to lose.

A better quality of the picture was out in no time and I found what was left of my sanity completely knocked off its stand as I stared at the picture in horror.

I’ve been confronted by a lot of things in my life—carnage, bloodbaths, things that would break a full-grown man and send an old woman straight to the grave. I’d witnessed my fair share of betrayal and seen the brutalities of dishonesty, and not once had I found myself desperately praying I was wrong and that the perpetrator was innocent, but here I was, frozen in place and desperately praying to be wrong.

I had to be wrong. Scratch that. I need to be wrong. It’s the only way it has to be. No other way was acceptable, and no other way would make sense. Maybe the picture was wrong and increasing the quality somehow messed with the faces on the screen.

“You know, I’ve seen people share a striking resemblance without being related to each other in any way,” Enzo said in a voice that sounded more like he was trying to convince himself than he was trying to convince me.

“Run it,” I said, my voice cold and eerily calm, giving nothing about my internal state of turmoil.

My eyes burned and my heart picked a murderous race when Enzo pulled up the facial recognition software and I found myself desperately praying to be wrong. I would give an arm and leg to be wrong, I’ve never wanted anything more in my life, but I guess I already knew the truth deep down. I was just looking for something to plant a flicker of doubt in me, something to sway me ever so slightly and give me a reason to believe otherwise.

But since I was no saint, and God had no business granting my wishes, the result came out ninety-nine percent accurate: Cara Kincaid. The name was different, but the birthday, eye color, and everything else was the same.

“Jesus Christ,” Enzo muttered, eyes as wide as saucer pans while I just stood there numb and cold.

The pattern slowly formed before me. How the attacks started after she came into my life, how she seemed to be strategically placed for me to discover, how we had similar interests. Every fucking thing added up. How was I so blind? She was a fucking ghost on the internet, and I attributed it to introversion.

My body snapped into motion, snatching my tie and jacket from the couch, I stormed out of the house. My chest felt uncomfortably tight and my head was buzzing with questions Enzo had no answers to.

He caught up with me, placing himself between the door and me. “Mikhail, wait. Let’s be strategic about this. If she’s his daughter, we can use this to our advantage. I know you’re—”

“Get out of my way, Lorenzo,” I seethed, sending him a death glare. If the circumstances were different, maybe I would’ve considered logic, but there was absolutely nothing logical about this situation.

There was nothing logical about the anger growing in me, there was nothing logical about the way my fingers were digging into my skin, there was nothing logical about the ring sitting in my car, and there was certainly no logic to the discomfort in my chest. And he damn well knew it.

He put up his hands in defeat, stepping out of my way. “You need me to come with you?”

I ignored him and continued to my car, snatching the keys from Peter and speeding to the house.

CHAPTER 25

Arielle

Fuck! I practically threw my phone at the wall, biting my knuckles as I paced the transit hotel room in JFK. It was almost five p.m., and no news from Vivian. My flight is scheduled for eight p.m., and I need to be out of here as soon as possible.

My phone beeped, and I almost jumped out of my skin. Relief washed over me as I read the text from Vivian asking me to open the door. I practically threw the door off its hinges and helped her in.

“What’s the problem, Ari? You scared the heavens out of me. Why are you here, and why do you need all of thi—”

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