Page 73 of Ruthless Mafia Daddy

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With Jason and Annalise safe in my house, I made my way to Enzo to work out the details with him.

“This man has to be the scariest human I’ve ever seen,” Enzo said the moment I stepped into his house, his eyes not leaving the screen.

“How is there something new every time we look into him?” I queried, taking in everything on the screen.

We thought his activities with orphaned kids ended with the juvenile, and apparently, Arielle was one of them.

Enzo moved further, and we soon uncovered the details of her upbringing and the academy. I stared wide-eyed as Enzo pulled every string he could pull to gather more information. My vision was clouded with red the more I read. What kind of monster picked kids from the orphanage and trained them to be killers under the guise of working for the government?

“I need you to hack into every CCTV camera leading from my office to the central train station. I need her to be found as soon as possible.” I told Enzo, urging him to close the files from the past. We can go over those later.

The most important thing was making sure Arielle was still alive. I might’ve let her go scott-free, but there's no telling what Henry would do to her. I just know by the time he’s done, there’d be nothing left of her.

It took Enzo about two hours to locate and hack into the CCTV in the streets, and soon, we caught sight of Arielle’s limp body being dragged into a car. We followed the car to a shady manor on the outskirts of Florence and watched as Arielle was carried into the building.

“Gather all the resourceful men you can think of, people who are well-skilled in combat and extraction. We move at dawn.” I said, my eyes not leaving the building on the screen. I silently prayed Henry Kincaid was in there with her so we could end this once and for all.

CHAPTER 33

Arielle

My nose was the first of my senses to wake up. The acrid smell of cigarettes mixed with the musky smell of rotten wood and damp walls filled my lungs, clogging my trachea like a growing tumor. I coughed to dislodge the feeling, my eyes cracking open at the same time.

I was greeted by the hazy sight of a masculine figure seated in front of me and puffing out a ball of cigarettes. I tried to squint my eyes to get a better focus, but the movement triggered a sharp throbbing in my head, pulling a groan from me.

“You’re up. I was beginning to think you might pass on from your little nap,” the smoking figure said, leaning forward, and the fog suddenly cleared from my brain.

The deafening beat of my heart drowned the ache in my head, and awareness spread through my body like wild fear, leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake. I shut my eyes tight, willing the image in front of me to be a figment of my imagination, but an unmistakable, baleful laugh bounced off the walls, and I knew this was no bad dream. It was a nightmare, just not the type you wake up from.

“Cara, Cara, Cara,” he tsked, dusting off the ash on his cigarettes on a table next to him. “I must applaud your guts, but then Iexpected nothing less from my favorite weapon. Italy was quite a surprise. I expected you to run off to some tropical island. Guess the world is full of surprises, huh? And I did you the favor of taking out your contacts and your wig. You looked hideous in that color.” He let out an exaggerated shiver, the red flame on his cigarette glowing angrily as he took a long draw from his cigarette.

My hands instinctively traveled to my head, and I could feel patches of my hair from where the wig was ripped off. My throat tightened immeasurably, and a soft whimper escaped my lips, “Please.”

“Please?” he sneered. Rage flashed through his stoically calm façade, and his voice adopted a low, deep, menacing tone. “I picked you from the deepest pit of the orphanage. I gave you a life, a family, and security. I gave purpose to your meaningless existence, and what do I get in return? Fucking betrayal.”

“I’m sorry,” I choked out, feeling tears burning in the corner of my eyes.

I should’ve known Mikhail’s appearance was a sign of impending doom. Once you’ve been discovered by one, it is only a matter of time till your cover is totally blown.

“You’re not sorry, Cara. You’ve been caught, that’s it.” He got off his chair, stalking towards me. With his cigarette gone, I could make out his face better. He still looked the same way he did the last time I saw him, with no added wrinkles and certainly no smile lines.

“I had high hopes for you. I made no attempt to hide the fact that you were my favorite among your siblings. I let you in onclassified missions. I was even hoping for you to take over in the future, but you just had to let your pussy get a hold of you!”

“That’s not how it happened, Father. I swear it was—.” Pain exploded on my right cheek, the force of the impact sending my head back and crashing into the wall behind me. An agonizing scream left me, and I clutched my face, staring at him in horror.

Father had always been strict. There were times he resorted to extreme punishments like forcing you to repeat an assignment for hours without rest or food, but he never got physical. He never laid his hands on us, not even for a little smack.

“You could’ve picked any of the men from your past missions, and I wouldn’t give a flying fuck, but you choose to have a child with an Ivanov. You gave an heir to a bloodline I’ve been trying to wipe out for years, and you look me in the eye and say you’re sorry?”

My heart came to a stop. The only thing echoing in my head were his words ‘a child with an Ivanov.’ Panic took hold of me, and the pain in my head became irrelevant.

My baby, what have they done to him? Was he safe? I’d kill myself if anything happened to him.

“You really thought you’d succeed at keeping him hidden for long?” he chuckled, pulling out a Polaroid picture from his pocket. I recognized it. It was the same one I carried with me everywhere. A picture of me and Jason at his first funfair.

I immediately rose to my knees, clasping my hands in front of me. “Please don’t hurt him. You can do anything you want with me, but please don’t hurt him. He’s just a baby. He’s innocent.”

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