All Chapters of The Mafia Heiress He Let Go : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

RENZO'S POVLeo found me in the study just after midnight, a folder under his arm.I'd known Leo almost as long as I'd known this house. He was one of Don's men, older than me by a few years, the kind of guy who never asked questions he didn't already know the answer to. If Don needed something found quietly, Leo was usually the one who found it."You said you wanted everything on Daniel," he said, dropping the folder on the desk. "This is everything I could get without anyone noticing."I opened it. Copies of a residency permit, a work visa, a lease for an apartment in Rome, papers for the finance company he claimed to work for. On the surface, it all looked normal. The kind of paper trail any man building an ordinary life would leave behind.Then I got to the date on the residency permit and stopped."Leo. Look at this."He leaned over my shoulder. "What am I looking at?""This permit was only issued a year ago. Valentina met him almost two years ago, at the gallery."Leo straighten

DON VALETTI'S POVThe call came from one of the warehouse managers a little after six in the morning."Don, you need to see this."I was still in my robe when I picked up the phone, and something in the man's voice pulled me fully awake before I'd even asked what was wrong."See what?""One of the shipments. It's gone."I sat up straighter. "Gone how?""Not stolen, exactly. Someone got in overnight. Didn't take anything. Just left a message.""What message?"He hesitated, and that hesitation told me more than whatever he was about to say. "They painted something on the loading door. A name.""Whose name?""Yours, Don. And your daughter's."I was dressed and in the car within ten minutes, Renzo already waiting by the front door when I came downstairs. He must have gotten the same call, or one close enough to it, because he didn't ask questions. He just fell into step beside me and drove.The warehouse sat on the edge of the city, one of a dozen properties we used to move goods that had

VALENTINA'S POVI didn't go back to my desk right away.Renzo said he needed to get the bracelet to someone who could confirm what it was, and left me alone in the conference room with nothing but the folded piece of wrapping paper still sitting on the table. I stared at it for a long time before I finally stood up and walked to the window instead, looking down at the street without really seeing it.‘This isn't about winning you back.’I turned the sentence over in my head, trying to find a version of it that hurt less. There wasn't one. Every angle I looked at it from led to the same place, that the man I'd planned to marry, the man who'd sent me flowers every Tuesday for two years, had never once been trying to win anything back at all.He'd never lost me in the first place, not really. He'd just needed me to think he had.I sat down on the edge of the conference table, my legs suddenly less steady than they'd been a few minutes ago. I thought about the night he proposed, the ring,

VALENTINA'S POVI didn't sleep much after the study, and it showed.By the time Clara sat down at her desk the next morning, I'd already read the same line of a contract four times without absorbing a word of it. She took one look at me and set her coffee down without touching it."Okay," she said. "You look worse than yesterday, and yesterday you looked like you hadn't slept in a week.""Thanks.""I'm serious. What happened after you left with Petrov?"I hesitated, weighing how much I could actually say. Clara didn't know about my father, didn't know what world I'd come from or what Daniel might actually be tangled up in. She only knew there was an ex causing trouble, and a bodyguard who took it more seriously than any normal bodyguard should."I found out some things," I said carefully. "About Daniel. None of them good.""Worse than the bracelet?""Different kind of bad."She studied me for a second, then let it go the way she always did, not pushing past the wall I'd put up. "Well.

VALENTINA'S POVDaniel walked into the office just after three.Not the estate gate this time. Not the cafe. He walked straight through the front lobby, past the reception desk, past two coworkers who looked up and then quickly looked away, like they could tell something was wrong before I even saw him.Clara noticed first. "Valentina."I looked up, and there he was, scanning the desks until he found mine.Renzo was beside me before Daniel finished crossing the room."You need to leave," Renzo said, low and even."I need thirty seconds," Daniel said, not even looking at him. His eyes were on me. "That's all I'm asking.""You don't work here," I said. "You can't just walk in.""I called. I texted. You told me to stop, so I came in person, because that's the only thing that gets your attention these days."A few people nearby had stopped pretending not to listen. My face went hot, embarrassment tangled up with something sharper underneath it."This isn't the place," I said."Then tell m