Page 1 of The Don's Secret Heir

1

LIANA

“I’m sorry, Li, but you’ve just got to find somewhere else to go,” Felicia Rossi, my stepmother who is only about six years older than me, says flatly. She sweeps her bleached blonde hair out of her face as I stare at her, shocked.

I can’t breathe. It’s like my windpipe has narrowed into a pinhole and I wheeze before I speak.

“Papa has only been missing for—” I start, but she cuts me off.

“Two weeks,” she barks, picking up Sonny’s things from around the living room and stuffing them into a box.

She doesn’t say it but I know what she means. Two weeks missing in the wiseguy lifestyle might as well be twenty years. I know that my father is probably dead, and I'm grieving him in my own way.

Our relationship was... complicated.

I watch as she shoves Paddington, his favorite bear, into the box and I grab it and snatch it away from her.

“You’re kicking out your grandson, too?”

Sonny, my little boy, turns six this year, and he’s always lived in this house. He’s never known anything else. Thank goodness he’s at pre-school right now, because this whole situation would stress him out.

“Grandson is a bit much,” she huffs. “I only met him two years ago.”

“Yeah, when youmarriedmy father!” I exclaim. “I’ve lived here my whole life and Sonny has too, you’re the newcomer. Why shouldn’t you move out?”

She looks at me, mouth agape, clearly offended. “I’m hiswife. This house? In my name. His bank accounts? Also in my name. You think he wanted the feds to be able to track him?”

My father is...wasan enforcer for the Gallo family. He’d been doing it since he was young, and he’d amassed a fortune that I’m not ashamed to say I’d gotten used to. My father had always taken care of me, and especially after I got pregnant with Sonny...

I swallow hard as Felicia thrusts boxes into my hands, a pit in my stomach. Where will I go? What will I do? I’ve never lived outside my father’s house. I draw in a deep breath, trying not to panic.

“You’re really doing this? Kicking us out into the cold?”

“You’ll be fine,” she says, and it’s clear from her actions that she doesn’t care what happens to me or Sonny. “Call Sonny’s father.”

I feel the blood run out of my face. Sonny’s father.

A slow grin, dimples popping out of his cheeks, making him look ten years younger. Closer to my age.

His hands, large, long, pianist's fingers driving me mad as he trails them along my skin.

I was the one to walk up to him, the one that started all of this. It was at a mobster dinner party, a particularly boring one.

I was there with my cousin, Marisa, and she was a mobster groupie at the time, wanting only to date those in power. So she insisted that we ride along with my father when he went to the meet.

I found it boring, but Marisa acted like it was the most wonderful place on earth. She was like a kid in a candy store, and I... well, I stood out like a sore thumb.

My hair, bleached blonde at the time, was straightened. My olive skin, which outed me as Italian, looked like a mere tan since the winter had been cold and I’d stayed in the house.

My father disappeared into a room with Viktor Gallo, and I made a beeline to the bar, needing to get some alcohol in my system.

The man with the slow grin and the dimples was leaning over the bar, hitting up the bartender. I should have just moved on, but God, he was handsome. Dark, unfathomable eyes. A slow grin, dimpled and sexy.

There was just a hint of gray around his temples, his face unlined, jaw sharp. He was closer to my father’s age than mine, I could tell just from the way he held himself.

“Hello, if you’re done bothering the bartender, I’d like a martini,” I grumbled as I stalked up to the bar.

The bartender looked at me and laughed.“Vodka or gin?”