The Mafia Don's Lost Heiress: My Dead Wife's Daughter Named My Brother Her Monster

I didn't waste another second with threats. When a dog bites you, you don't negotiate; you break its jaw and take back what is yours.

""Marco,"" I commanded without turning around. ""Leave him in the chair. Strip his phone, his keys, his biometrics. Pull every cloud backup, every bank statement, and every GPS log from his private devices. If his phone has a dead-man switch for midnight, I want my tech team hacking that signal within ten minutes.""

""Already on it, Boss,"" Marco said, stepping forward with two tech specialists carrying high-grade decryption hardware.

I walked out of the vault and returned to the private penthouse. The heavy security door swung open to an unexpected sight. Mia was curled up on the expansive Italian leather sofa, fast asleep beneath my black cashmere blanket. Clutched in her tiny hand was a worn polaroid picture.

I walked softly across the hardwood floors and gently slipped the photograph from her fingers. It was Isabella, looking thinner, paler, but with that same radiant warmth in her eyes that had first stolen my breath five years ago. She was sitting in a sunlit corner of what looked like an attic room, holding Mia as a newborn against her chest. On the wall behind her, someone had carved a calendar into the wood—hundreds of tally marks counting days of captivity.

Dr. Rossi stepped out of the private office, holding a digital tablet with trembling hands. His face looked as though he had seen an apparition.

""The test, Dominic,"" Rossi whispered, extending the tablet toward me. ""It's a ninety-nine point nine percent match. Mia Elena Moretti is your biological daughter. There is no doubt. None.""

Even though my heart already knew, seeing the black-and-white clinical confirmation hit me like a sledgehammer to the ribs. I closed my eyes, steadying myself against the marble counter. I had a daughter. A living, breathing piece of the woman I loved more than life itself. Four years of mourning, four years of empty beds and hollow triumphs, while my child was being raised in a gilded prison by the brother I had sheltered.

""And her toxicology?"" I demanded, opening my eyes, cold steel settling over my emotions.

""She has minor vitamin deficiencies from lack of outdoor sunlight, but otherwise, she's remarkably healthy,"" Rossi said. ""Her mother clearly prioritized the child's nutrition above her own. Dominic... Isabella was an angel to keep that child thriving under those conditions.""

""Boss!"" my head of intelligence, Dante, rushed into the penthouse, tablet flashing red. ""We cracked Vincent’s encrypted communications. It wasn't a dead-man switch triggered by radio. It's a synchronized biometric ping! Every night at eleven-thirty, Vincent logs into a remote server with his thumbprint. If the ping isn't received by eleven-forty-five, a local thermite charge is set to detonate in the foundation of the Adirondack compound.""

I checked my Rolex. It was already ten-fifteen.

""How far is the property by air?"" I snapped.

""Forty-five minutes by the Black Hawk chopper stationed at the private helipad,"" Dante answered. ""We can make the approach low over the tree line to avoid local radar, but we'll only have a ten-minute window before the timer triggers.""

""Prep the assault team,"" I ordered, my blood turning to pure ice. ""Heavy body armor, night vision, breaching charges. Marco, take Vincent's severed thumbprint data—clone his biometric signature onto a silicone transfer pad. We will fake the ping if we have to, but I'm not risking Isabella’s life on a computer glitch. We breach at eleven-twenty.""