Page 109 of The Underboss's Secret Twins

Then I hear footsteps, crunching against the leaves, coming closer.

27

MARCO

Inever wanted love.

Not the kind that blinds you, weakens you, makes you pitifully desperate.

I saw what love does to a person. I watched my mother turn into something sharp-edged and hollow after my father died, watched the way grief twisted her into a creature made of vengeance and fury. She didn’t mourn him the way other women mourn their husbands—with tears, with silence, with some desperate attempt to hold on to what was lost.

No. She mourned him with blood.

She buried her grief beneath an unshakable hunger for power, for victory, for ensuring the Salvatores never bowed to anyone. She didn’t break, she sharpened.

I was just a kid, but I understood it even then. Love wasn’t something soft, something to be cherished. It was a weapon. It was war. And it destroyed her.

So, I swore I would never let it destroy me.

Yet here I am, tearing through the streets of Nuova Speranza, my hands locked around the steering wheel, my vision tunnelingwith a desperation I don’t know how to contain. My blood roars, my heartbeat a violent rhythm in my ears.

Sofia is out there, in danger, carrying my child.

I weave between lanes, cutting through the rain-slicked streets. The sky is darkening, a storm gathering at the horizon, thick clouds rolling in like an omen.

My mind flickers back to her—Sofia, with her sharp tongue and sharper mind, with eyes that burn like embers when she’s furious, with a defiance that has both infuriated and consumed me from the moment I first laid eyes on her.

She’s not like other women.

She doesn’t cower. She doesn’t plead. She meets me head-on, meets the violence in me without flinching. She isn’t afraid of my world, of what I am, of what I do. She belongs in it in ways I never wanted to admit—because admitting it would mean accepting that I could lose her to it, too.

And now, I might have.

I slam my foot against the gas.

But I also know Sofia.

She doesn’t want safety in a gilded cage. She craves the fire, the thrill of the chase, the pulse of adrenaline in her veins. She is made for danger in the same way I am. We’re carved from the same ruthless instincts, shaped by the same unforgiving world.

She is perfect for me.

If she would justsee it.

My phone rings, snapping me back to the present. I don’t check the number before answering.

"Boss," Rico says, his voice clipped, urgent. "We found the car."

"Where?" My voice is sharp, barely human.

"Outskirts of the city, near the old service road. But listen—there’s more. One of the scouts just radioed in. There’s a crash site in the forest about five miles from where the car stopped."

A breath locks in my throat.

"A crash?"

"Yeah. No sign of her yet, but the vehicle’s wrecked. No bodies in it. Someone survived."

I throw the car into higher gear, pushing the engine to its limit. The city fades behind me, the open road stretching ahead like a dark promise. The wind howls through the cracks in the windows, carrying the scent of damp earth and gasoline.