Missing for Twenty Years, I Found My Mafia Father in a Nightclub Chapter 03
The private lounge fell silent for several seconds.
Steam still rose from the pesto pasta, and Bianca’s fork froze halfway to Vincent’s mouth.
Vincent set down his phone and looked at me.
“How did you know I can’t eat pine nuts?”
His voice carried unmistakable hope.
My heart began pounding.
Tell him everything: the bullet-graze scar at his temple, the burn scar on my arm, the pine nut allergy, and the song only the two of us knew.
He could order a DNA test or have the Family’s advisers investigate every second of my life.
Whatever it took, I finally had to tell him the truth.
I drew a breath and was about to speak when Bianca slapped me across the face again.
“You really did your homework, didn’t you? You found out about my father’s allergy in advance, then staged this entire performance in front of every capo here so people would think you had some connection to the Moretti Family.”
She gave a cold laugh, every word dripping with contempt.
“A nightclub hostess pretending to be the Don’s biological daughter? What a ridiculous little stunt.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
I shook my head and tried to explain.
“I never investigated him. I was only trying to confirm whether Mr. Moretti was my…”
My father.
He might really be the man I had spent twenty years searching for.
But before I could say Dad, Vincent let out a disappointed sigh.
“Young lady.”
I slowly raised my head.
Vincent was not looking at me.
He was looking at Bianca, and from his tone, it was clear he had already decided I was lying.
“Lying your way into a powerful Family won’t give you the life you want.”
After that, I could barely hear anything else.
Vincent turned to the Family members seated at the table and said quietly, “Tell me, what am I supposed to do if my daughter is out there somewhere, so desperate that she ends up in a place like this and has to seek help from powerful people?”
The others sighed along with him, but not one of them was willing to hear me out.
To them, I was nothing more than a nightclub hostess they could humiliate whenever they pleased.
I had no background, no Family protection, and no right to sit at the same table as the Don.
At that moment, I could not tell whether the rage or the heartbreak was tearing me apart more.
Should I set aside the humiliation and tell them everything I had endured over the past twenty years?
When I was three, a human trafficking ring took me.
They resold me three times.
The farthest place they sent me was an isolated farm deep in the mountains.
There was no reliable signal, and no one was allowed to leave without permission from the guards.
They kept kidnapped girls there until they were older, then handed them over to underground buyers.
Someone once told me that if I worked for a wealthy man, I would never go hungry again.
I refused.
Someone else threw a thick stack of cash at my feet and told me to learn how to obey.
I still said no.
On the nights when things were at their worst, I lay inside a leaking trailer and forced myself to remember the scar at my father’s right temple.
To find him, I carried building materials at construction sites, washed dishes in restaurants, and worked overnight shifts at convenience stores.
I took the hardest jobs for the lowest pay and endured more contempt than I could count, but I had never used my body or lies to buy myself an easy way out.
Then someone told me they had seen an Italian American man in New York with an old scar at his right temple, a man who had spent years searching for his missing daughter.
I wanted to find my father so badly that I put on this short dress and walked into a private lounge where Mafia men conducted business.
But I had not come to worm my way into the Moretti Family.
I had not come for their money.
I only wanted to see my dad.
I paused and forced myself to calm down.
“I understand.”
I fought to keep my voice steady.
“If I’m no longer needed, I’ll go. Sorry to have bothered you.”
I smoothed my disheveled hair and turned away.
My sleeve caught on the corner of the table, ripping the fabric open along my right arm.
The old burn scar was fully exposed.
The instant Vincent saw it, his gaze locked onto my arm.
“Stop!”