Page 104 of Mafia Obsession

That’s what I believed. And I allowed Daria to talk me into letting her go, if it meant Lourdes would find information we could possibly use against the Volkovs. Even though it killed me.

However, when her taxi stopped at a state-run psychiatric facility, the room went still. Daria and I looked at each other, and in that brief exchange, we were both shocked to get it all wrong.

“Run the patient list there,” I murmured.

“It’s a home for adults with disabilities,” she said, swiping at her tablet.

“Jesus fucking Christ, is her father not dead?” My mind rearranged the board with ruthless speed to consider what that twist meant.

Perhaps he staged his murder, and Lourdes is meeting him in the one place no one would think to look.

Daria typed fast, her fingers moving with clinical precision. “No De la Vega listed in residency or employment,” she said, eyes flicking to me. “Not current. Not historical.”

I watched as Lourdes walked through the front doors at that facility as if she’d been there before. For a brief moment, she paused, her hand hovering over her throat, and even through pixels and compression, I recognized the tremor she tried to swallow.

“Deeper,” I ordered through clenched teeth. “Aliases. Cash transfers. Guardianship records. Give me a profile on every resident admitted in the last ten years.”

That brings us to now.

Daria’s team is drilling into databases. “New camera feeds are live,” she announces.

In the span of three phone calls, hallway footage from this place is now streaming into my command center. We didn’thave this access yesterday.

It’s morning, and I watch Lourdes once again enter that building with a softness and ease that I’ve never seen in her.

She should not be there alone. Not in a city where the Bratva may have killed her father. Every instinct in me howls to yell at Wrath to pull her out, to put her on a jet back to New York with him. Back to me.

“She’s too exposed.” I drag a hand down my face, forcing breath into lungs that seem to have forgotten their function.

“She’s protected,” Daria counters with reassurance to keep me from detonating. “Wrath is in position to intercept.”

At the facility, Lourdes steps inside a small room where a young woman sits by a window, her hair…is the same champagne blonde as my Lourdes. It catches the light like a pale halo. The camera angle shifts, and I see the way Lourdes gathers the girl into her arms.

My throat tightens.

“She’s not looking for documents,” I say softly. “Link facial recognition to the facility’s database. Who is that woman?”

“Five minutes,” Daria answers.

Two minutes later, her screen fills with a name that means nothing to me at first.

“Jessica Parker,” she reads. “Admitted four years ago, transferred from a private hospital. Traumatic brain injury. Retrograde amnesia. That’s total memory loss, by the way. Long-term placement. No guardian. Ward of the state.”

Traumatic brain injury. Amnesia. Four years ago.

Parker. Not De la Vega.

On the monitor, Lourdes whispers something, and the smile is something I recognize. The waysiblingssmile at each other. The way I vaguely remember how Alexander smiled at me.

“She didn’t run to escape me,” I say, the admission a weight off my soul. “She ran to protect someone.”

A sister…

That should change nothing. But it changeseverything.

“I told myself I could marry her and keep my heart out of it,” I whisper.

Daria finally looks up at me. “How’s that working out foryou?”