Page 90 of Mine Again (Mafia Bride #2)

Chapter Eighty-Nine

Isabella

T his cannot be real. It has to be another one of Hale’s lies, stitched together with his money and malice.

The title screams at me from the top of the page.

Antonio Accardi, Homicide Investigation.

I stare at the first picture in the file… my stomach lurches violently.

It’s my father.

Lifeless.

A cheekbone split open. One eye swollen shut. His mouth hangs slack, dried red crusting at the corners.

I gag, a dry, wrenching sound tearing out of me.

His body…

It’s carved with shallow cuts, hundreds of them. Thin lines like cruel paper slashes, some so small they look deliberate, others deep and jagged. None fatal on their own. But together, they turned him into something unrecognizable, a bloodied canvas of torment.

I stumble back to the sofa, folder still in hand.

The room tilts, my vision disappearing for a second as my temples buzz.

I don’t want to see anymore. I should slam the folder shut, throw it across the room, anything to make it vanish.

The paper is cool beneath my fingertips, an almost absurd detail when the rest of me feels numb, like my body has shut itself off to survive.

The hidden cameras in this room will be recording every flicker of horror across my face. Hale will be watching, savoring it, delighting in the exact moment his poison sinks in.

My throat tightens. My pulse hammers. Still, I turn the page.

A grainy still fills the sheet. Warehouse lighting, harsh and fluorescent. A concrete floor streaked with something dark. Luca drags a man by the ankles, a limp body slick with blood, skin carved raw, and naked. The same body I just saw close up.

Another page. Another still. The angle shifts to a different camera. Luca’s face is there, caught mid-turn, his face a mask of ice. The line of his jaw is set. His hands are red to the wrists.

This isn’t a man I recognize.

I swallow, and it goes down like glass.

The next page hits like a slap. Another close shot of my father’s body on the cold flooring. His gold ring is still on his finger, the one he used to slide up and down when he thought hard about business. His eyes are open. Staring at nothing.

The taste of iron coats my tongue, even though it’s only ink on paper.

No. No, this cannot be true.

My father had lots of enemies. He was killed by a rival gang. That was the official story. Mari’s husband Mateo had just become Don. He dealt with all of this. He wouldn’t have lied to us.

More importantly, Luca would never do this and hide it from me. He’d never lie.

He hasn’t been back to Italy; the risk would have been too great. Plus, if he killed my father, why didn’t he come for me, when the obstacle to us being together was out of the way ?

It doesn’t make sense.

These pictures have to be fabrications. People fake videos and pictures every day, faces stitched onto strangers. Hale could do it in half an afternoon and pour me a glass of wine while I watched. He would. He’s the kind of man who would paint a saint as a demon if it served his game.

I force a breath. It tastes of chemicals and fear.

My mind claws for anchors but only finds memories that now don’t sit right.

Luca said he hadn’t looked into my father’s death, that he doesn’t know who’s responsible. Is that because he’s behind it?

No, that’s absurd.

But then he was about to tell me something moments before the news of the Delaware cyberattack broke, when I demanded there be no more secrets between us. He was hesitant. What was he going to confess?

I stare at another still. Luca’s hand is on my father’s dead shoulder. The frame is rimmed with timestamp digits. The date could be anything. The angle could be from anywhere. None of it proves what Hale suggests it proves.

I set the pages aside and stand, crossing to the window. I stare at my reflection in the glass, seeing a pale woman with wild eyes.

I didn’t love my father, not even like him. But I’d never wish a death like this on him.

Hale knows that. Of course he does. He counted on me being horrified, outraged, shaken… and jumping to conclusions.

But I won’t.

This isn’t evidence. It’s bait.

Luca is the world’s best hacker. He would never have been caught committing murder on camera. And if he did, he’d have erased the files.

I force myself to pick up the photographs again, studying them more closely. The first wave of nausea has passed, leaving me cold and calculating. Hale expected me to collapse under the weight of disgust. He underestimated me.

I spread the pictures across the table in sequence. At first glance, they tell a story, but stories can be manipulated. I lean closer.

In one shot, blood streaks the floor beneath his head. In the next, the streak has shifted, as if the body was never there. Another shows Luca’s shadow bending the wrong way, the edges blurred like a bad splice.

My lips part on a breath that steadies instead of shakes. Hale’s mistake was assuming I’d be all emotion, no reason. He forgot who raised me, what I learned about spotting lies, about surviving deceit.

“Is that all you have?” I say, pitching my voice to the cameras. “Tricks?”

The word lands sharp and clean.

“If you think you can make me doubt Luca, you’ll never succeed.”

I stack the photos neatly, return them to the folder, and place it in the center of the table like an accusation. Not of Luca’s guilt, but of Hale’s manipulation. Then I turn my back on it.

Like a current under my skin, I start shaking again. I rub my palms down my thighs, but it does nothing. This isn’t fear. It’s adrenaline burning off. My body is learning the signs.

In the bathroom, I let the tap run until the water turns icy. I splash my face, watching droplets trace down my jaw and fall into the basin. Gripping the counter, I whisper into the mirror.

“I trust you, Luca.”

Then I pause, meet my own gaze, and murmur even softer, “And I trust myself to know when I’m being played.”

I close my eyes and press a towel to my face, the cotton muffling my words.

“But hurry the hell up and rescue me, Luca. Hale’s games are wearing me down.”