Page 28 of Marrying His Son’s Ex (Forbidden Kings #3)

ALARIC

Benedetto’s search team finds seventeen more files hidden behind a false wall in Dante’s study.

Seventeen.

I stand in my son’s former sanctuary, watching my men document evidence of crimes that span nearly a decade.

Each folder contains the same meticulous pattern—surveillance photos, stolen personal information, obsessive letters, and in some cases, jewelry or clothing that was clearly taken without consent.

What monster did I raise?

“Boss?” Benedetto approaches with a laptop. “Found this hidden in his desk. Password protected, but our tech guy cracked it.”

The screen shows a database that makes my stomach turn. Names, addresses, photographs, detailed behavioral analyses.

Dante catalogued these women like specimens, rating their “potential” on various criteria I don’t want to understand.

Twenty women total. Three confirmed missing. Two found dead under suspicious circumstances. Fifteen are still alive, as far as we know.

“Jesus,” I breathe.

“There’s more.” Benedetto clicks through folders on the desktop. “Video files. This bastard had cameras everywhere.”

I close the laptop before I see something that will make me dig up my son’s grave just so I can kill him again.

“Destroy it. All of it. After we’ve documented the ones who are alive and safe.”

“What about the police?”

“What about them? Half these files show crimes in multiple jurisdictions. By the time they sort through the bureaucracy, more women die.” I turn away from the evidence of my son’s depravity. “We handle this ourselves.”

In the hallway, I find Kasimira sitting on a bench beneath the stained glass window, staring at nothing. She’s been here for two hours while the search continued, processing horrors I can’t begin to imagine.

“How bad?” she asks without looking at me.

“Bad.”

“How many?”

“Twenty total. Seventeen more files.”

Her shoulders sag like I’ve placed a physical weight on them. “Twenty women.”

“We’re going to find the ones who are still alive.”

“And the ones who aren’t?”

The question hangs between us like a blade. What do I tell her? That my son was a serial killer who happened to keep her alive because she served his purposes? That she survived by being useful when others died for being inconvenient?

“Kasimira—”

“I want to see the files.”

“No.”

“They were his victims too. I need to know?—”

“You need to not destroy yourself with guilt over crimes you didn’t commit.” I sit beside her on the bench. “You survived him. That’s what matters now.”

“Is it? Because twenty other women didn’t.”

“Three others didn’t. The rest are alive because he fixated on you instead of them.”

The logic is brutal but true. For two years, Dante’s obsession with controlling and breaking Kasimira kept him occupied. While he was busy torturing her, other women went about their lives unaware of how close they’d come to disappearing.

“That’s not comfort,” she says quietly.

“It’s not meant to be. It’s meant to be truth.”

She turns to look at me then, and the pain in her eyes cuts deeper than any blade. “How did you not know? How did you not see what he was?”

The question I’ve been dreading. The one that’s been eating at me since I opened the first folder and saw my son’s handwriting documenting systematic stalking.

“I knew he was dangerous. I knew he had no regard for other people’s lives or feelings.” I lean back against the wall, suddenly exhausted. “But this level of…depravity…I didn’t see it.”

“Why not?”

“Because I didn’t want to. Because seeing it would have meant admitting I’d failed as a father so completely that I’d raised a monster.”

The words taste like ash, but they’re true. I taught Dante to be ruthless in business, to see people as assets or obstacles. I never taught him empathy or respect or basic human decency. I was too busy building an empire to notice I was creating a psychopath.

“He didn’t become this because of you,” Kasimira says softly.

“Didn’t he? I showed him that taking what you want is more important than asking.”

“You never taught him to torture and murder women.”

“I taught him that people are disposable if they don’t serve your purposes. He just took the lesson further than I intended.”

We sit in silence for a long time, processing the weight of twenty lives touched by evil. Through the stained glass window, afternoon light paints rainbow patterns on the marble floor. Beautiful and normal, while upstairs my men catalog evidence of systematic predation.

“Sarah Carson teaches third grade,” Kasimira says suddenly. “According to her file, she volunteers at an animal shelter on weekends. She likes romantic comedies and Thai food, and she’s afraid of being alone.”

“We’ll find her and make sure she’s safe. But we can’t help her get justice. That would bring unwanted attention to the family.”

“I understand.” She nods quietly.

She stands and walks to the window, her reflection ghostlike in the colored glass.

“For two years, I survived him. That was my only purpose—staying alive from one day to the next. Now I can do more than survive. I can help people. We find out if they’re safe first. Then, if they are, we help them quietly.”

“Help them how?”

“Dante’s money. The fifty million we found. Use it to help these women anonymously. Pay off their debts, basically give them money. All done through shell companies so they never know where it came from.”

The idea has merit. Clean money helping victims without exposing our operations or traumatizing the women further.

“Anonymous support,” I say, understanding her logic. “No direct contact, no explanations they wouldn’t believe anyway.”

“Exactly. We can’t bring them justice. But we can give them better lives with his own stolen money.”

“And if some of them are already dead?”

“Then we make sure their families are taken care of. Same principle.”

This makes sense—using Dante’s ill-gotten gains to quietly help his victims without involving law enforcement or exposing the family to investigation.

I walk up to Kasimira and pull her against my side, feeling her lean into my strength. The gesture is automatic now, natural as breathing.

“You know this changes everything,” I say quietly. “Once we start investigating these women, once we confirm who’s alive and who isn’t, we’ll know the full scope of what he did. We’ll have to live with that knowledge.”

“Was it ever going to be easy? Living with what he did to me, to them?”

She’s right. We were already carrying the weight of his crimes. Now we’re just choosing to do something about it.

“No regrets?” I ask.

“Only one.”

“What’s that?”

“That I can’t kill him myself.”

The savage satisfaction in her voice makes me fall in love with her all over again. My fierce, complicated wife who survived a monster and came out swinging.