Page 20 of Single Mom’s Mafia Daddies (The Forbidden Reverse Harem Collection #22)

ALESSIO

T he time spent with Lila last night was the only thing that kept me sane. The five of us left the bunker, with me giving Matteo a warning about his decision to build without letting me in on the secret. He’d looked appropriately ashamed but not sorry.

Sitting in my office, glass littering the floor and the desk drawers torn out and their contents strewn around the room, the anger I’d kept at bay for the last twelve hours boiled over. I punched a fist into the top of the desk, enjoying the sting of pain rippling across my knuckles.

Luca and Vincenzo invaded my home. They’d insulted me, threatened me, and torn my house apart.

My safe house. What a joke. Nothing was safe or sacred with those two around.

Everywhere I looked this morning, I saw their malicious stamp.

No wonder their sign was the vulture. They circled, and people knew to look for destruction and death.

Lila had asked about my house sign last night.

I’d managed to avoid the question, though it was simple enough to find it if she bothered to look around.

Matteo, Renzo, and I all wore the wolf tattoo on our forearms. The wolf statues throughout the house had been part of my family legacy, going all the way back to my great-great-grandfather.

“Here.” Renzo stalked into the office without bothering to knock and held out a stack of folders. “That’s everything my men and I pulled together after the attack.”

I rifled through the pages. “Mercenaries?”

Renzo nodded. The crisp move warned he’d dropped back into his soldier persona. He stood arrow straight without any sign of pain or weakness. If I hadn’t seen the wound myself, I’d never even know he’d been shot last night.

“I recognized one of them. Bruce and my guys put the rest of the pieces together.”

“Bad enough Luca came for us himself, but I never expected Vincenzo to let him hire mercenaries.” I dug deeper into the folders, stopping when I reached the last one. “What’s this?”

“Justin Tormack.” Renzo rolled his shoulders back and locked his hands together at his waist, far away from his guns. “He was mine, sir.”

“Sir? What the fuck is this?” I tried to lighten the mood.

After all, how could I force him to call me sir after what we’d been through last night.

Not just the fight, but the hours spent with Lila afterward.

I’d never imagined anything as intimate as seeing my two best friends making love to the woman I adored.

Renzo’s lips peeled back into a snarl. “He’s the reason they found the tunnels. No one else knew about them except us, Justin, and one other man.”

“And how do you know Justin is the rat?” A look at the anger rippling over Renzo’s face and the sudden tightening of his hands warned me to let it go. I knew what he was capable of. I’d asked for his skills to be used more than once. “Forget I asked.”

He dropped his head without breaking eye contact. “I’m sorry he put Lila in danger. I’m not sorry for what I did to him.”

Neither was I. “So the Verduccis are stepping it up. Vincenzo’s not content to keep waiting for the line to end.”

“And now they know about Leo.” Renzo tapped the corner of the folders. “I found evidence Lila had a shadow well before you paid her a visit.”

The radio on his waist squawked. He plucked it up and spoke quickly, his feet already in motion.

“The blue folder. Check it. You’ll see what I mean.” With those parting words, he passed through the door hanging from one hinge and broke into a quick jog.

I bypassed the chair that had been sliced to ribbons and moved to the window.

Everything of value inside the room was smashed, trashed, or shredded beyond repair.

Except the windows. They’d opted not to blow them out using the rocket launcher.

I suspected they’d brought it as a threat and had no real intention of using it.

Vincenzo wouldn’t want complete destruction.

He knew there was too much evidence here to risk losing it all.

I’d have to take inventory, see if anything was missing.

Later. First, I needed to know what Renzo meant about Lila’s shadow.

“I won’t let them hurt my family.” It was unnecessary to speak out loud, but it felt good to force the promise into the air.

Flipping open the folder, I pulled out a stack of photos, most taken from a CCTV.

The closed-circuit cameras were not the best at retrieving images, but Matteo’s abilities with computer software helped clean up the image enough for me to recognize one of Vincenzo’s lieutenants standing across the street from Lila’s boutique.

The series of images showed him lifting a camera in her direction as she left the shop, then getting into a car and pulling out behind her. The photos stopped once he moved out of view.

There were not enough curses to convey the emotions rioting inside my body.

I checked the time stamp. Two months ago.

Long before I even returned to the states.

One week after I’d informed the Italian syndicate of my intentions to come here.

I’d not told them why. Seems it didn’t matter.

They’d been ahead of me every step of the way.

But how? How had they caught wind of Lila when I never breathed a word of our relationship?

I’d almost lost her before I found my way back into her arms. I had no doubts Luca would not have sat on the knowledge long once he understood how important Lila was to me. Her life had been in danger before I came back.

“We have been tied together by fate all this time.” I ran my thumb back and forth over her image on the paper. “I’ll make this right. No matter what it takes.”

A knock on the door snapped my head up. Matteo smirked at me and rapped his knuckles on the shattered wood. “I’ll get that fixed by the end of the day.”

“Everything needs to be fixed.” The weight of it all would crush a lesser man.

Good thing my father raised me to take things like this in stride.

It was just another day, another series of problems that needed to be fixed.

I looked away as Matteo sauntered into the room and dropped onto the couch.

Batting floated up around him in tiny puffs that he trapped in his hands. “Anything else?”

He ran his hands across the gouges that ripped the cushions apart. “They were looking for something. The artifact?”

“Maybe.” I twirled my finger through the air then tapped my ear while raising my eyebrows in a silent question.

“It’s clean. I swept the whole house. Whatever their intentions, they didn’t leave any bugs behind.

No microphones, no transmitters, no hidden cameras.

Could have been nothing more than a scare tactic, with Luca hoping to get lucky and find Lila and Leo unprotected.

” He shoved the batting back into the nearest cushion and stood.

“They’ll know better next time, and they’ll be prepared. ”

“More prepared than this?” I held out my hands to the destruction.

“Yes. Last night gave them information. They know the layout of the house, all our possible exits, and even where Lila slept. Our one saving grace is that Lila wasn’t in her room but Renzo’s.

That will confuse them. And they don’t know about the other tunnels.

But staying here without changing things up is a gamble.

” He stood and kicked at a pile of glass stacked in front of the bookcases.

All the globes my father had collected during his travels lay shattered, the largest of them ground into the carpet with Matteo’s heavy strides.

“Leo’s awake. He’s in the kitchen with Lila. I thought you’d want to know.”

Leo. My son. He’d woken up early this morning when we left the bunker but had fallen back asleep in Lila’s arms. I’d wanted to spend time with him but waited to let him rest. I held the packet of folders out to Matteo.

“Go over these. See if there’s anything we missed, anything we can use to get a location on Vincenzo and track their next moves.” Like me, Vincenzo liked to keep hidden. It was his brother Luca who flaunted their wealth and connections. “Luca’s the weak link. He’ll want to brag about last night.”

“I’ll find him.” Matteo followed me into the hallway. “I recommend we wait about bringing in carpenters. Any strangers, really. Even deliveries are suspect.”

“Put Renzo to work on it. His men will need something to do in the downtime. They can pick up the furniture. I’m sure a few of them know how to hang drywall and paint.

” I didn’t care what happened to the house as long as we maintained the perimeter.

Everything else could be fixed later. I trotted down the steps and into the kitchen.

Leo looked up at my approach, his smile stretching wide. “Morning.”

“Good morning.” I rubbed the top of his head and sank onto the stool beside him. “What’s for breakfast?”

“Pancakes.” He stabbed his fork into the stack and lifted it from the plate. “I helped make them.”

“Sounds delicious.” I turned from Leo and found Lila standing at the stove, her gaze glued to the pan where three more pancakes cooked. “Any plans for today?”

“Getting back to normal sounds nice.” There was an edge to her tone that ran through me with an electrical charge.

I stood and rounded the counter to stand beside her. “What does that mean?”

“It means last night never happens again.”

“Which part?” The sound of Leo’s chewing stretched thin between us. “We’re taking every precaution. As for the rest…that’s something we should all discuss together.”

Seeing the two of them together like this stirred the pieces of me I’d thought too broken to ever mend. The guilt I’d endured last night rose with a crushing weight.

“A lot of mistakes were made last night.” Lila looked pointedly at Leo. “Him calling you ‘Papa’ was one.”

I lost my breath. Pain so intense I barely resisted doubling over sucker punched me in the chest. “He’s my son.”

“I never said that.”

“Yes, you did.” I replayed the moment in my mind, and my world shattered. She never said he was my son. Leo asked about calling me papa, and she nodded. Nothing else. It could have been a pity move to help calm me down and give Leo a new focus beyond his fear. “Are you saying he isn’t my son?”

The flat-lipped press of her lips gutted me.

I didn’t believe her, not really. We were too alike, and Lila would do anything—say anything—to protect Leo. She’d killed to protect him. Lying to me would be easy after that.

I draped my head over her shoulder and whispered in her ear. “You can keep denying it, but I will find out the truth once and for all. And when I do, there’s no going back.”