The Don’s Favorite Lover Vanished

---- Chapter 13 Vincenzo's POV Two months later. Chicago was once again on its knees before the Russo family. But I was different. "Boss," Marco reported carefully, "the Castellano family wants to negotiate..." "Kill their boss." I didn't look up from the document I was signing. My voice was terrifyingly calm. «Yes, Boss." They were all scared of me now. It used to be respect. Now, it was fear. Because I was a monster now. Killing was all I had left. Every night, I dreamed of her. I saw her final look. Cold. Disappointed. Not a trace of feeling left. I'd wake up drenched in a cold sweat.

---- "Find her," I ordered Marco. "Use every resource. I want Chiara Rossi." "Boss, we've been looking for two months..." Islid a handgun across my desk. "Tf you don't find her in one month," I looked at him, my eyes empty, "you know what to do with this." Marco's face went white. His hand trembled as he took the gun. But a month later, nothing. She had vanished from the face of the earth. Then Tony came into my office, pale. "Boss, I just remembered something... that night, I sawa black Mercedes outside the estate... the plates looked Italian..." Italy. She went back to Italy.

"Get the jet ready," I stood up. "We're going to Italy." "Where to, Boss?" "We start with her father." ---- Sicily. The ancient Rossi family estate. Chiara's father, Lorenzo Rossi, a man with white hair but eyes as sharp as razors, sat across from me. "What are you doing here?" "T want Chiara," I said, straight to the point. "You won't find her." "Where is she?!" I took a step forward, my patience gone. "She's gone," Lorenzo's voice was as calm as if he were stating a fact. My blood turned to ice. "What?" "My daughter is gone," he said again, no emotion in his voice.

"She died the night you cast her out." "No... that's impossible!" "You killed her, Vincenzo." The old man stood up, his eyes finally blazing with a towering rage. "You killed her with your betrayal. Your cruelty." "he's not dead!" I shook my head, frantic. "She's just hiding!" ---- "Tf she were alive, do you think she would let you humiliate her family and do nothing?" Lorenzo pointed a finger at me. "You don't know her at all." Tcouldn't accept it. "J don't believe you." "You want proof?" Lorenzo sneered. He pulled a small urn from a drawer and threw it at my feet. "My men found her car.

Burned to a twisted metal shell. This is what's left of her." His voice trembled. "This is all that's left of her." I fell to my knees, my whole body shaking as I reached for the box. I couldn't bring myself to touch it. "The truth you wanted," Lorenzo's voice was a blade. " Now get out of my house." But I didn't believe it. Icouldn't. T flew all over Europe. I used every asset in the Russo intelligence network. ---- I put a bounty out to the entire underworld: "Find Chiara Rossi. I want her alive, or I want her body. I want to know where she was last, who she saw, what she said.

I want to know everything." For the first time, I realized that all the power and money in the world meant nothing. Without her, I wanted none of it. Two years later. An abandoned church in Sicily. I moved through the ruins like a ghost, hunting for any possible clue. On the wall was a half-restored fresco. The Virgin Mary's face was soft with mercy. The brushstrokes, the colors, the restoration technique... It was so familiar. My hands trembling, I went closer. I carefully scraped away a tiny piece of paint in the bottom right corner. Underneath the top layer, I sawit.

A minuscule mark, drawn in a special ink only I would recognize. ---- Aphoenix rising from the flames. It was her. She was alive. She had been here. I dropped to my knees before the fresco, my fingers tracing the tiny phoenix. I didn't cry. I didn't laugh. Ijust let out a choked, desperate sound, like a lone wolf that has finally found the trail of its prey. A sound that was half agony, half ecstasy. Chiara. I'm coming for you.