Page 101 of Deadly Wrath

“What exactly did she see that made her a target?” I press. “Who was after her?”

“I don’t know exactly,” she admits, like she’s piecing it together as she speaks. “She never told me specifics, just that it was dangerous. That she saw something she wasn’t supposed to, something about trafficking minors.”

My grip on her hand tightens. “And Clover?”

“He never had names in his files,” she says, shaking her head. “Or if he did, I never found them.”

I take a slow breath, forcing myself to stay calm.

“Bad men,” she mutters. “That’s all she ever called them. Bad men.”

Bad men? That could be a thousand different motherfuckers in our world.But if it involved trafficking, that narrows it down.

I grit my teeth, staying quiet, letting her talk, even though my pulse is pounding so hard I can feel it in my fucking skull.

“Dad convinced her we could come home,” she murmurs. “She believed him. And she gave him our location.” Her grip on my hand tightens, and she whispers. “That was the night I was taken.”

The more I hear, the more my blood turns to ice. “Where the fuck were you taken?”

She swallows before looking at me. “The last thing I remember is seeing my dad and Uncle Tito… then men in masks barged in and put a bag over my head.”

A fucking bag. I drag a hand through my hair and grip the top of my head, trying like hell to keep myself from breaking something.

“You were a kid,” I growl. “And they fucking—” I can’t even say it. If I ever find these fuckers, they’re all dead.

I force myself to breathe and stay still. I need to keep my shit together because Liv’s curled up next to me,bruised and broken and barely stitched together. She’s already hurting and doesn’t need to feel me shaking the bed like a fucking earthquake.

She nods, like she’s already made peace with the part that still haunts her. “I don’t know where they took me. But I remember a man with a tattoo on his arm. He brought me to Clover.” She exhales, her eyes are more distant now, like she’s stuck watching the memory play out all over again. “He was undercover and didn’t know how they found him… but they did.” That tattoo detail lodges itself in my brain.

“What kind of tattoo?” I ask.

She squints a little, her brows pulling together like it physically hurts to think. The meds in her system are dulling her pain but making her a little foggy. “Like a knife,” she mumbles, her words dragging a little. “Just on his arm. But he was a good guy. He… he put my seatbelt on.” Her eyes flutter like she’s drifting off again, but that detail clings to her lips like it matters.

A man with a single knife tattoo. That alone isn’t much. Half the guys I know have some kind of weapon inked on them.

It’s clear she’s not all the way here. Her eyes keep drifting like she’s chasing flashes of a nightmare she can’t wake up from. I grip her hand again, tighter this time, trying to anchor her back to me. “Then what?”

Liv pauses for a second before continuing. “He retired after that and became my guardian. He’s all I have, really. We moved around a lot, I changed schools every year, but he kept me safe.”

I take a slow breath, trying to piece everything together. “How the fuck did all that lead you to the Commission? To me?”

Liv hesitates before finally saying, “I snooped through his files.”

Of course, she did.

“And I saw he was looking into the Commission… deep.”

Now we’re getting somewhere.

“Clover was building his case,” Liv says. “Like really trying to take you all down.”

I snort. “My future father-in-law. This isn’t off to a great start.”

She rolls her eyes but keeps going. “He put years into investigating all seven of you, but before he retired, his main targets were Antonio Morelli, Giovanni Torino, and you.” She pokes me in the chest for emphasis. “Alessandro Gualtiero.”

I raise a brow. “Lucky me.”

She ignores that and pauses, hesitating just long enough for me to notice. “Even my father.”

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