Page 90 of Second Chance Daddy
“I’ll disappear. You’ll never see me again. I swear it.”
I laughed. “That’s the one true thing you’ve said today.”
His eyes widened as I pressed the barrel to his forehead.
“That’s for touching what’s mine,” I said, and pulled the trigger.
It wasn’t rage when I did it. Rage gets messy. Rage makes you sloppy. What I felt? That was redemption. The only thing keeping me from putting more bullets in his corpse was the fact that I already had my hands full carrying Aria out of there.
She never woke up. Sedated like a pawn, a prop in his sick power play.
But now she’s home. Now he’s six feet under at the edge of that airstrip, rotting with the worms where he belongs, along with the rest of his cronies.
No one will find him. No one except me knows exactly where he’s buried, and my men? They’re ghosts when they need tobe. Sworn to silence. Paid to make sure this never circles back. They’re good guys. Work hard. As we speak, they’re towing Gino’s cars further into the forest, before they set them on fire.
Tina can suspect all she wants. Cassie… she’ll ask questions eventually. But tonight?
Tonight, I bury any trace of Gino.
Tomorrow I start building something better.
But first? I need to wash the stink of him off my skin. I head back toward the house, boots crunching through underbrush, the faint glow of the lake house windows calling me home.
Cassie
I put Aria to bed and go check on Dante. I stand at the doorway and watch as he peels off his jacket, his boots, his blood-soaked clothes.
Something’s wrong.
Not wrong like Aria’s missing wrong, but wrong like I can smell it on his skin.
Blood.
Old, metallic, copper-heavy. It clings to him under the clean clothes. His eyes are darker than usual, and the shadows stretched long across his face.
He told Tina the stain on his shirt was “nothing.” That classic deflection, brushing off concern like it’s a loose thread.
But I know better.
I’ve felt that weight on him all night—the tension coiled under his skin, the shadows stitched along his spine.
He turns and sees me watching. “Cass?”
“I… wanted to thank you,” I say, in all honesty.
He simply nods. “I’m really tired.”
“Okay,” I whisper.
When I no longer feel welcomed, I retreat to check on Aria one more time. But then, when I go to close her blinds so the sun doesn’t bother her, I see him walking out through the lawn, heading to the forest out back.
And when he disappears into the trees, I stop wondering.
I start looking.
Quiet steps down the hall, soft enough not to draw attention from Tina or one of the guards stationed around the house. His bedroom door’s cracked already.
I push the door open and slip in.
