The Mafia's Babies by Kaycee Romano (little readers TXT) 📕

It had been a month since the kids went missing. 

Twenty nine days to be exact. 

If someone asked River and Mateo, they would count down to the seconds since their precious children went missing. 

"Tesoro, please go home. You are still not fine." Mateo bent down and hugged River from her behind, placing a kiss on her jaw and taking a whiff of her scent which seems to calm him down every single time. 

"The house feels so empty, Mateo." She breathed out, diligently watched the CCTV footage for any clue - the smallest of a clue would do - anything that might point to where the children were. "I can't breathe in there without them." 

"Nothing." Michelia sat back in her chair. "Absolutely nothing." She breathed out angrily and looked up at her husband and then at Mateo. "What the fuck do you pay all these people for?" She asked angrily as she picked up Leonardo's hip flask and threw it against one of the screens, shattering the display. 

"Lia, calm down!" Leonardo got up from his seat and walked over to her, hugging her shaking form. It had been extremely overwhelming for Michelia as well. She was a mother after all, and to think that the children of their family were kidnapped from right under their nose was extremely scary to her. 

And it had been a month, with no news, ransom... body... nothing. What did the kidnappers want? 

"How can I calm down?" Michelia clutched her hair. "They must be so scared!" 

"I know." Leonardo hummed.

A sob left River's lips and Mateo hugged her. "Shhhh.... They are going to be fine. You know how brave our bambini are. I wouldn't be too surprised if Ki made the kidnappers question their existence with her smart mouth." River smiled as she pursed her lips, trying to keep in her sobs. Mateo was right about their Kiara alright. She was shy and didn't speak much but every time she opened her mouth, her words would be coated with sass. 

"And Luke must be showing them the real meaning of a death glare." She whispered. 

"Yeah." Mateo chuckled.  

River's phone rang. 

The couple looked over at the device to see that it was none other than the younger brother of the Boss of the Russian Mafia, Dmitri Petrov. 

"Hope he has some good news." Mateo sighed. He did not really like Dmitri. Especially because of how close he was to River in such a short time. 

In River's words, he helped her find their children but Mateo could argue that he had already found them anyway so even if Dmitri had not helped, it wouldn't have made much  difference. 

And in Dmitri's words, River had saved his life. And again, Mateo could argue that she was a surgeon and he was at the hospital so even if she had not been there, someone else would have saved his life. 

But of course, his arguments would fall on deaf ears because Dmitri and River had a pretty decent friendship. So Dmitri had offered all the help that he could provide when he found out that the kids had been kidnapped. 

"Dmitri.." River sighed as she took the call. 

"So, I took a diversion from the normal direction of investigation-"

"Please get to the point, Dmitri." River said, tired. She was exhausted from all the stress. She just wanted her kids back.

"Okay okay, Detective Ian Sanders, the sketchy guy who's been tailing you guys?" Dmitri asked.

"What about him?" River sat up straight. They had thought of him as one of the prime suspects but could not find anything against him. He was just going about solving cases. And his crime solving rate was also pretty high. 

"I may or may not have approached him with this." He sang. 

"What?" River furrowed her eye brows. "Dmitri, what did we talk about not getting the stupid police involved?" 

"He did what?" Leonardo bellowed. 

"Technically, I hired him as a private investigator. He took leave from his job for this." Dmitri quickly said. "Besides, he knows nothing about the Mafia."

"Or so you say." River sighed and looked up at Mateo. "Dmitri went and hired Detective Ian Sanders as a PI to find the kids." 

"Is he crazy?" Michelia asked. "Should I go kick him? What does he think we are all doing? Sitting back and waiting  for a miracle?" 

"HE MADE SOME HEAD WAY!" Dmitri yelled when he realized that the entire Italian clan were going off tangent and probably planning to take his head. "And he wants to meet up with me to talk about it so I was thinking if you wanted to come?" 

River paused, taking deep slow breaths through her mouth when she heard what Dmitri just said. 

There was news? There was some sort of news? 

Anything would do. 

Anything would be fine as long as she could somehow get to her children. 

"Of course I am coming. Mateo's coming too."

"Okay, I will text you the time and place. Meet you there." He said. 

"Okay." River breathed out and hung up the phone, feeling some kind of hope in weeks. 

"Detective Sanders have something." She stood up from her seat and hugged Mateo, who didn't miss a beat before hugging her back. "We will have to go meet him." 

"I hope we find them soon." Michelia hugged Leonardo. 

"We will." Leonardo said, looking over at Mateo and nodding at him. 

"We will." Mateo echoed. 

Of course they would. They were going to bring their kids home and make whoever kidnapped them and attacked them pay. 

.

.

.

"You know sex is not the answer to this, right?" Adam sighed, holding Alessia by the shoulders and pushing her back a little so that he could get a look of her face. 

Alessia was acting pretty irrationally. 

Ever since the day of the kidnapping, the guilt just kept eating away at her to the point that she was not able to think straight. 

One would think that an assassin like Alessia would be immune to such emotions. But the ones in question were her nephew and niece, who were only five years old, and the woman just could not take it.