He Called Her a Traitor and Threw Her Out Into the Storm — Then Learned the Quiet Woman He Lost Was Born to a Mafia Dynasty.

PART 6

Before she could, the bell above the motel diner door rang.

Four men entered. The conversations around the room faded. Silas Bram — no. Odalys had chosen the diner because it remained open all night. Everett Kade — no, the enforcer was Dario Reyes, leading three others.

He stopped beside her booth. “Priya Osei.”

Odalys kept the phone connected beneath the table.

“Dario Reyes,” she replied. “We finally meet without a forged photograph between us.”

“You have caused Mr. Voss considerable inconvenience.”

“I have never spoken to Mr. Voss.”

“That can be corrected.”

Dario slid into the booth across from her. “Weston Kade threw you away. That must have hurt.”

“You seem very interested in another man’s romantic failures.”

“I’m interested in what you know. Rossi — Kade might have expelled you, but he trusted you once.”

“He trusted me until your friend Silas handed him a packet of lies.”

“Careful.”

“Silas is useful to Marcus only while Weston remains alive. Once the Kade organization collapses, Silas becomes a witness who knows too much.”

Dario pulled a suppressed pistol beneath the table and aimed it at her ribs.

“I am going to give you one opportunity,” she said. “To stand, walk out of this diner, and tell Marcus Voss he has attacked the wrong family.”

“You don’t have a family.”

A faint smile touched her mouth. “That is the last mistake you will make tonight.”

Dario gestured to the man beside her. “Take her.”

Odalys seized the heavy ceramic coffee pot and drove it into his forearm. She shoved the table forward, trapping Dario against the bench. His gun fired into the underside of the table.

She turned as the second man rushed her, catching his wrist and slamming him into a support column. The third grabbed her from behind. Protecting her stomach changed every movement. She dropped her weight, drove her heel into his foot, and struck backward with her elbow.

Dario forced the table aside and raised his pistol.

There was nowhere to move without exposing the child. She turned her body slightly, one arm crossing her stomach.

The diner window shattered.

Dario spun as a bullet struck his shoulder. The pistol flew from his hand.

A line of men in dark suits entered through both doors with disciplined speed.

An older man stepped through the broken glass. His charcoal suit remained immaculate despite the rain.

Everett Marchetti looked at his niece for the first time in ten years.

“You were always impatient in close quarters,” he said in Italian.

Odalys laughed once, and the sound broke into a sob. “Uncle Everett.”

He crossed the diner and pulled her into his arms.

“I searched for a way to bring you home,” he murmured. “Every year, I searched.”

“You told me not to contact you.”

“I told you to survive. I did not tell you to disappear from my heart.”

When he stepped back, his gaze moved immediately to her stomach.

“You carry a child.”

“Yes.”

Everett looked around the ruined diner, then at Dario groaning on the floor. “Who is the father?”

“Weston Kade.”

Everett’s face became dangerously still. “The same Weston Kade who banished you?”

“The same.”

“And Voss’s man aimed a gun at you while you carry this child?”

“Yes.”