I didn't exactly choose to be stolen at four years old.
But the French underworld isn't big on consent.
One minute I was Donatella Acardi, Mafia royalty. The next? Just another stolen kid bleeding in someone else's basement.
That's where I met Ami...
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Donatella POV:
We just stood there. Dripping.
The bathroom was a war zone. Water was *everywhere*. All over the tiles, the floor mat, the toilet paper that had unrolled itself in panic like it saw the devil, and even the mirror which had somehow caught a backdraft from the splash. The laptop lay in the tub like a bloated corpse. It even fizzed a little, as if giving me one final middle finger before it went to tech hell.
And I?
Was *pissed*.
No.
*Furious.*
Not the good kind of mad, either—the cold, seething, “if I don’t break something I’m going to scream into the void” kind of mad. That goddamn USB. That fake-ass, malicious, vindictive piece of plastic. That wasn’t intel. That wasn’t a key to answers. That was a *trap*.
A *decoy*.
A landmine for anyone dumb—or bold—enough to steal from Leonardo fucking Romano.
I wiped my wet face with a soggy towel that did nothing but smear the frustration deeper into my pores.
“He’s such an *asshole*,” I muttered, staring at the tub like it insulted my ancestors. “Who even *does* that? Who wires a flash drive to blow up a computer and flood someone’s bathroom?!”
Amir, still soaking wet and looking like a raccoon who fell in a fountain, leaned against the wall and exhaled. “A paranoid, calculating, manipulative, sociopathic genius?”
I glared at him.
“I was being supportive.”
I threw the towel at him.
He didn’t duck fast enough, and it hit him square in the face. “Okay, ouch. Rude.”
“I lost *everything* on that drive, Amir.”
“I know. I saw it all get deleted in *real-time*, remember? I was the one hacking like I was defusing a nuke in *Mission Impossible 12: Italian Soap Opera Edition*.”
“It had *my research*. All my theories. The layout sketches. The leads. The messages. I had a color-coded folder called ‘Things to Possibly Kill Later’—and now it’s *gone.*”
Amir held up his hands, trying to calm me. “Okay, okay. Deep breaths, killer. Before you spiral into a rage blackout, let me remind you—I have backups of everything you gave me.”
I stopped pacing.
“What?”
“Yeah. I have all your stuff. You gave me half of it for safekeeping when you thought your computer might be compromised a few months ago. Remember?”
I stared at him.
“…I thought you deleted that when you had that caffeine-induced mental breakdown and formatted your drive because it ‘felt cluttered.’”
“False. I *almost* did. But then I remembered you’d kill me with a spoon, so I moved your folder to my encrypted stash and never touched it again.”
“…You *what*?”
He blinked. “I saved your ass.”
I nearly collapsed into the damp counter with a groan. “Thank *God.* I take back half of the mean things I’ve said about you.”
“Just half?”
“Let’s not push it.”
I took a deep breath and stepped away from the bathtub, trying not to slip on the slippery-as-hell marble floors. “So... the mission was technically a bust.”
“We didn’t die,” Amir offered. “That’s something.”
“My *computer* died.”
“Well. Rest in pieces. May it never haunt another playlist.”
I shot him a look.
He held up his hands again. “Hey. It’s not a total loss. We found out Leonardo is more paranoid than we thought. That USB wasn’t just fake—it was a *trap*. Meaning whatever’s really important? It’s hidden even deeper. And probably protected with more booby traps than a treasure vault in a Bond movie.”
“Which means,” I said slowly, “he’s hiding something he doesn’t want *anyone* to find. Not even people close to him.”
Amir’s jaw ticked. “Exactly. He’s not just running the business. He’s *burying* the truth.”
I walked over to the sink and grabbed another towel, this one less soaked. I started patting my hair, which now looked like a soggy halo of frizz and regret.
“I hate him,” I muttered. “I hate how smart he is. I hate how many steps ahead he is. He probably *knew* someone would break in eventually. Hell, maybe he wanted someone to.”
Amir moved beside me, running a hand through his dripping curls. “He definitely expected it. I mean, that office looked *too* clean. No dust, but also no recent activity. It was like a display room.”
“He *wanted* it to be broken into. To lure people in. Like a spider with a shiny USB fly.”
Amir sighed. “So, what now?”
I stared at myself in the mirror. My mascara had smudged from the splash, but honestly? I looked kind of badass.
I leaned forward.
“Now,” I said, voice low, “we get smarter.”
“Smarter than *him*?”
“We don’t have a choice. We get smarter. Sneakier. We make a new plan. And next time, we don’t settle for crumbs. We dig until we find the real vault. Because if he’s hiding the connection to the French mafia—and to *him*—we’ll find it.”
Amir nodded beside me, still damp but slowly regaining that smug calm of his. “Alright. But for now, we should probably clean this bathroom before someone comes in and sees that it looks like Poseidon had a tantrum in here.”
I muttered a curse in Italian and grabbed the mop from the closet.
Mission failed? Maybe. But war wasn’t over.
Let Leonardo think he won this round.
He didn’t see what we saw.
He didn’t hear the hallway creak when we slipped out of that room like ghosts.
He didn’t know Angela Della Morte was coming for the truth.
And the next time we meet?
There wouldn’t be any mercy left to give.
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