Page 218 of Vicious Temptation

With one last kiss, I reluctantly let my girl go.

A few moments later, a knock at the door pulls me to my feet. I remember the tiny ponytails still covering my head and decide whoever is on the other side will have to deal with them.

“Braga,” Remi calls out from down the hall. “Get the door. It’s Athena.”

“On it.”

I know Remi’s building has security, and no one gets to her apartment without being cleared first, but the cop in me insists on checking the peephole anyway. The boyfriend in me does too.

Boyfriend.

We haven’t officially put a label on what we are, but the word comes surprisingly easily.

I look through the peephole and see the profile of a woman I don’t recognize. Athena and Santino Leone were on my list of people to research, but my attention has been elsewhere lately.

I unlock the door and pull it open, ready to finally meet Zara’s mother.

The moment Athena turns toward me, I stop. There’s something familiar about her face.

I know those eyes.

They’re older now, but there’s no mistaking them. I’ve seen the same ones on Matteo without ever making the connection, but this woman knew my father.

Her small gasp and the way her eyebrows draw together tell me she recognizes me too. She’s looking at the little boy she once knew, except that boy is standing in front of her as a man now.

“Thiago?” she whispers, taking a tentative step toward me.

Hearing my name in her voice strips away whatever doubt I had left. This is Athena, the woman I first met as a toddler in Miami, then years later in Rio. She was a friend of my father’s.

“Thiago, is it really you?” She takes another careful step. “What are you doing here?”

I back away from her, trying to make sense of something that shouldn’t be possible.

Athena is Zara’s and Matteo’s mother, which makes her Remi’s aunt.

“What...?” I shake my head. “This can’t be.”

“Mommy!” Zara races past me and throws herself into Athena’s arms. “Officer Thiago, look! This is my mom.”

I know, princesinha. I just don’t understand how.

Remi comes up beside me and gently touches my forearm. “Thiago, what’s wrong?”

I can’t bring myself to look at her.

My mind drags me back to Rio, to the day a woman took a grieving little boy for ice cream. She told me everything would be all right and promised she would check on me from time to time, but then she disappeared from my life.

Until now.

Athena’s gaze shifts between the two of us.

“How do you know each other?”

I finally look at Remi, and the concern in her eyes makes it even harder to get the words out.

“Baby, you’re scaring me.”

I swallow and force myself to say the one thing I can make sense of. “Athena knew my father.”