Piko - Where every story finds its reader

Most men would have slept after such a discovery. Dante Costello had never been most men, and sleep felt like surrender.

The dossier remained spread across his desk like an autopsy—clinical photographs, financial records, surveillance stills. Each piece dissected the life of Anna Vance, but Dante saw past the careful construction to the woman beneath. Aria Grimaldi. The ghost who'd haunted him for five years now had a face, a name, and his son.

He poured another scotch at midnight, watching the amber liquid catch the city lights beyond his window. The burn down his throat did nothing to quiet the fury simmering in his chest. Five years. She'd looked at their son every day for five years and chosen silence.

Julian entered without knocking, tablet in hand. "Updated surveillance."

Dante didn't turn from the window. "Tell me."

"She withdrew five thousand in cash this afternoon. Small bills. Checked a storage unit registered under a third alias—Elena Morrison. The unit contains two additional go-bags, emergency supplies, and what appears to be a motorcycle registered to yet another identity."

"She's preparing to run."

"She's been preparing to run for five years." Julian set the tablet on the desk. "The woman you met at that ball wasn't some pampered mafia princess playing dress-up. She's a professional. This level of operational security doesn't come from paranoia—it comes from training."

Dante finally turned, his expression carved from ice. "Then she knows we've found her."

"Suspects, at minimum. Our surveillance detected her taking countersurveillance photographs of one of our vehicles yesterday. She's running those plates through civilian databases." Julian paused. "She's good, Dante. But not good enough to stay invisible once you started looking."

"No one is." Dante returned to his desk, fingers trailing across the photograph of Leo. The boy's eyes stared back with unsettling familiarity. His eyes. His son. "What's her exit strategy?"

"Three possible routes out of Beacon, all monitored as of two hours ago. She can't leave without us knowing. But if she realizes we've boxed her in—"

"She'll do something desperate." Dante's jaw tightened. "She has my son, Julian. Desperate women with my son are not acceptable variables."

"Then we move sooner."

"We move now." Dante pulled his phone from his pocket, scrolling to his legal team's priority line. "Get Morrison and Chen here. I don't care what time it is."

Twenty minutes later, his conference room hummed with expensive urgency. Samuel Morrison, his lead attorney, arrived with a leather portfolio and the slightly disheveled look of a man pulled from his bed by the devil himself. Beside him, Grace Chen—no relation to Aria's business partner, though Dante had noted the coincidence—spread preliminary custody documents across the table.

"Emergency custody filing," Grace said, her finger tapping the relevant passages. "We're citing fraudulent identity as evidence of instability and flight risk. The mother has lived under at least three aliases, has no verifiable employment history prior to five years ago, and maintains resources suggesting criminal connections."

"You're painting her as a criminal?" Julian's tone held warning.

"We're painting her as unstable," Samuel corrected. "The family court doesn't need proof of crimes—just proof that she's unfit. A woman living under assumed names, with unexplained cash reserves and multiple escape plans? The judge will grant temporary placement with the biological father pending investigation."

Dante leaned back, fingers steepled. "How temporary?"

"Sixty days minimum. Longer if we can demonstrate ongoing instability."

"And her access to him during that period?"

Grace exchanged a glance with Samuel. "Supervised visitation only. At your discretion. The court order can specify that all contact occurs under your direct supervision until she proves residential stability and legitimate identity."

Perfect. The word tasted like victory. "Do it. I want the filing submitted by morning and a hearing scheduled within forty-eight hours."

"Judge Morrison owes you three favors," Samuel said carefully. "I'll call one in."

"Call in all three if necessary." Dante stood, dismissing them with a gesture. "My son has spent four years without his father. I'm not waiting another week for bureaucracy."

When they left, Julian remained. "You're moving fast. Faster than strategy dictates."

"She had five years, Julian. I've had one day."

"And Marco Grimaldi? When he discovers his presumed-dead sister is alive with your child?"

"Let him find out." Dante's smile held no warmth. "Marco's always been the reckless one. If he makes a move, he'll solve one problem for me."

"By killing his own sister?"

"By proving she needs my protection." Dante returned to his desk, pulling up additional surveillance footage. "Marco sees everything as leverage or liability. Aria qualifies as both. When he comes for her—and he will—she'll have nowhere to run except to me."

The footage showed Aria at Leo's preschool pickup, kneeling to the boy's level to fix his jacket. The maternal efficiency in her movements made something tighten in Dante's chest. She brushed hair from Leo's eyes with a gentleness that contradicted everything else he knew about her capabilities.

She'd raised his son well. That much was evident in the surveillance. Leo was bright, well-adjusted, confident in a way that spoke to consistent love and attention. But that acknowledgment did nothing to cool Dante's rage. She'd had no right. No right to those years, those moments, those pieces of his son's life that Dante would never recover.

Julian moved to stand beside him, watching the footage. "The boy looks like you."

"He's mine." The words came out flat, absolute. "Every part of him. And she tried to keep that from me."

"Maybe she was protecting him."

Dante's hand slammed against the desk. "From what? From his father? From his legacy? From the empire I've built that he'll inherit?" He stood abruptly, pacing to the window. "She was protecting herself, Julian. From accountability. From consequence. From me."

In the glass, Dante's reflection stared back—a man who'd built everything through control, precision, calculated risk. But the face in the window held something rawer now. Something almost desperate.

"I want them here." His voice had dropped to a lethal quiet. "I want my son in this penthouse within forty-eight hours. I want every security measure in place. Background checks on the nanny candidates. Child-proofing. Everything."

"And the mother?"

"She comes too. Under supervised custody if necessary, but she comes." Dante turned from the window. "Leo is four years old. Removing him from the only parent he knows would be traumatic. I won't damage my son to punish her."

"How generous."

"It's not generosity." Dante's eyes hardened. "It's strategy. She'll stay because leaving means losing him entirely. And every day she stays, she'll remember that she only has him because I allow it."

Julian studied him with that unreadable expression that came from twenty years of reading dangerous men. "And what happens when Marco makes his move?"

"Then she'll learn exactly why they call me the Devil." Dante checked his watch: 4:17 AM. "And why running from me was the one mistake she'll spend the rest of her life regretting."

He gathered the custody papers, sliding them into his briefcase alongside the photograph of Leo. His mother deserved to know she had a grandson. His empire deserved to meet its heir. And Aria Grimaldi deserved to understand that the life she'd built on lies and theft was about to be replaced with something far more permanent.

By dawn, the machinery of reclamation was in motion, and Dante allowed himself a rare smile—she'd hidden well, but not well enough, and soon she'd learn that running from him was the one mistake he'd never forgive.