Page 80 of Second Chance Daddy

The front door. Aria stepping outside, red ball under her arm, playing in the yard.

Then—

The feed freezes my blood.

Digital time stamp:8:17 AM.

I’m already moving, locked down, every muscle tight with that cold certainty. Cassie’s breath is sharp and panicked behind me as we tear through the house.

The back door flies open under my palm.

Morning sun hits like a lie.

Everything looks normal. Birds. Trees. Aria’s red ball is by the swing set.

Then I see him. The guard. Face-down in the grass. Blood dried and caked around his head.

I drop to a knee, fingers to his neck. Pulse—weak, but there.

“Oh God,” Cassie whispers behind me. “Is he?—”

“Alive,” I grind out, but the word tastes like ash. I roll him gently, checking the wound. Blunt force trauma to the back of the skull. Precise. Clean.

Gino’s not that smart. But someone on his payroll could be.

“Aria,” Cassie breathes, her voice splintering in two. “Dante… where’s Aria?”

The world slows to a crawl. Sound cuts out.

One truth slams through me like a freight train:

She’s gone.

My daughter is gone. Someone took her from our fucking backyard.

Cassie sees it in my face before I say it. Her knees buckle, body crumpling like a puppet with the strings cut.

The scream tearing from her throat? I wouldn’t wish that sound on my worst enemy.

Except maybe Gino.

“No, no, no!” She claws at the grass, stumbles toward the trees like Aria’s hiding there. “ARIA! BABY, WHERE ARE YOU?”

I catch her before she can bolt, arms locking around her. She fights me, wild and thrashing, nails digging into my skin, desperate to get free.

“Let me GO!” She sobs, writhing. “I have to find her! I have to?—”

“Cassie. Stop.” My voice slices through the panic—quiet, absolute, final.

“She’s not here.”

She freezes. Eyes wide, swimming with tears. “You don’t know that. You—” But she sees it. The certainty in my eyes. The hard, unmovable truth.

Her body collapses against mine, the fight draining out like water from a cracked glass.

What replaces it?

Despair.