Submitting to My Best Friend's Dad-Chapter 1026 : DNA

*Leo*

I leaned back in my chair with a deep sigh, hearing the familiar creak as it worked overtime to support my weight. I was halfway to lying down as I stared at the ceiling in my office. I dropped my pen as my hand cramped with pulsating pain, sharp and uncaring as it stabbed like pins and needles into my flesh.

I could only sign so much paperwork before it failed, I thought. I rubbed and stretched my hand, hoping to soothe the pain but it didn’t do anything to help. I threw my arm over my eyes, sending me into pitch darkness as I wished that I was at home with Bianca right now.

I didn’t move even as I heard a sharp knock on my office door.

“Come in,” I called out idly. I heard multiple pairs of footsteps enter, one dragging itself with reluctance but another I could recognize anywhere. Not many people wore expensive Italian-shipped shoes with such a stiff gait.

“Leo,” Franky called out to me. I dropped my arm, turning my head lazily towards the front of my desk. Just like I thought, Franky and Darion stood in front of me. Franky’s face was pinched together, like he had discovered some very bad news while Darion just looked nervously between us.

He honestly looked like a child caught in the midst of Mom and Dad about to fight. My stress-riddled brain threw out the thought before I could redirect it - Would that make me or Franky the Mom?

I snorted, ignoring Franky and Darion’s looks of tight-lipped disapproval and confusion respectfully. I dragged myself to sit up again, tiredly looking at them. It had been nine hours straight since I’d come into the office at the real estate business.

Not only did I have to handle all the paperwork and meetings for the real estate, but since we still didn’t have a new hideout after the tragic attack on the warehouse, I had to handle the mafia business here as well.

It was a headache of massive proportions.

“What is it now?” I sighed, glancing at them as I crossed my arms over my chest.

“You’re not going to like it,” Darion said in a small voice, shrunken in on himself like I was a bomb and he was waiting for an explosion.

“Of course not,” I pinched the bridge of my nose.

Franky took the seat across from my desk as Darion lingered a bit behind him, exchanging glances between us before meekly sitting down beside him. It was only once silence fell between us that Franky practically threw the folder on the desk.

“We got a hit back from the blood test,” Franky said, looking none too happy about the results.

My heart leaped in my chest. I couldn’t help but flash back to the sight of the woman I’d seen. Her blue eyes dared me to do something as she lay there on the floor. Her hoarse voice as she whispered that name.

‘Leoncito.’

I’d been so rattled that day that I let her get away. I ground my teeth together in frustration and anger, that gloomy feeling in the middle of my chest coming to the forefront again. I had no idea why that woman had shaken me so much but I didn’t have a good feeling about it.

“Who?” I demanded, glaring at Leo as I refused to touch the information in front of me. I knew I could easily get everything I wanted to know from the file but I wanted - no, I needed to hear it from his mouth.

“Maria Moreira,” Franky said bluntly. His eyes were ice cold as they always were and I steeled myself to prepare for whatever I was going to hear. “We mainly got the hit off the criminal database in the police station. Seems she’s got a rap sheet longer than all of ours together.”

I frowned as Franky nodded to the file and reluctantly opened it up. Detailed was a photo of the woman, a mugshot clearly of her in her younger days though her swollen and bruised face wasn’t doing her any favors.

Despite how messed up and dirty she looked, her eyes still shone with that steely determination. Like she would bring hellfire upon everyone around her. It made me uncomfortable to think but I couldn’t help but remember how Elio used to say the same thing about me. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

It was chilling. How similar our eyes were to one another.

“Most of her history was expunged but what’s left tells a very interesting story,” Franky went on boldly. I grimaced as I got to her arrest and charges list. Franky wasn’t kidding.

“Arson, Assault, Grand Larceny, Kidnapping, Possession of Substances four times, petty theft,” I grimaced as I read out the list but it seemed odd to me. The more I read, the more I realized something unusual.

“You see it, too?” Franky smirked, leaning back in his chair lazily. “Her crimes start out bad and then get better as time goes on. Usually it’s the opposite, right?”

It was true. Arson and kidnapping were pretty serious crimes but her most recent activity which was only two years ago was charged with a misdemeanor and let go on bail for it. It didn’t make much sense.

Criminals usually started out with petty and minor crimes before escalating but Maria Moreira, or Jack Frost as she was now known was the opposite.

I looked back through the start of her history but the note of it being expunged hit me hard.

“Expunged. As in before she was eighteen?” I frowned. “Usually they won’t do that if it’s a teenager with a long history of criminal behavior.”

“I agree. Which begs the question, what makes her different?” Franky gave me a meaningful look, raising an eyebrow in challenge.

“It is possible that she hired someone to clean it?” Darion suggested with a frown. “That’s what my parents would’ve done if they still talked to me that is.”

“There’s no way, no family ties, no friends or associates within the system,” Franky disputed, but he had that glint in his eyes as he watched me. The one that meant he was leading me to an answer, like was waiting for a lightbulb to appear over my head. “Interestingly enough on its own, most of the charges I managed to dig up from the expunged ones were thrown out under mysterious circumstances as well.”

Expunged records and mysteriously thrown-out charges. I frowned as I thought deeply about it. There was a familiar ringing to it and I glanced from Franky to Darion, who had a clueless look on his face.

He was probably hardly following the conversation. Admittedly his rap sheet was pretty full too though most of it was– it hit me like a brick across the head.

I whirled to Franky with wide eyes and he smirked.

“Who was in charge of this area ten or so years ago? Before us and before the Angels?” I demanded as I gripped the file tightly in my hand. I wracked my head for the answer, a vague symbol and name just on the tip of my tongue.

“The Vices,” Franky answered firmly.

“Fuck,” I breathed out, the shock having drilled into me.

“Who are the Vices?” Darion frowned in confusion. “I’ve never heard of them before.”

“Because they don’t exist,” Franky said uncaringly, turning to Darion with a hard look. “At least not anymore. Before the Angels and we took over this territory, it was run by a highly feared and respected gang called the Vices for at least twenty years.”

“Twenty years?” Darion repeated wide-eyed. “That’s insane.”

“They were highly feared for a reason,” I said, remembering everything I’d learned about them. Elio and I had done research on them when we first set up in the area as a favor to Alessandro. I’d done the footwork myself to search for any hints of their lasting influence but there was nothing.

“Ten or so years ago they got raided by the Feds,” Franky explained. “One night the whole gang just disappeared. Apparently, there was a rat who sold them out from the inside.”

I glanced at the files and then at Franky. “And you think it was her?”

“Makes the most sense,” Franky shrugged. “Why a rap sheet that long would be expunged, why her charges were dropped all the time. The Vices had been known to use kids as drug mules, even worse. They were practically enslaved without any choice in the matter. If she sold them out for immunity, it’d explain why she kept evading the law. This could be where she found out how to make drugs as well as she did as well. They were known for experimenting with various substances to create new variants.”

“Then why work with the Angels?” I demanded, trying to will this scenario to make sense but it just didn’t. You finally get out of the gang by selling them out and then immediately dive into another gang ten years later?

There had to be a connection there, something we were missing but it was like we didn’t have all the pieces to the puzzle yet.

“I’m not sure. We know she has a goal, though. You.”

I grimaced, throwing myself back into my chair as I stared at the ceiling. The thoughts were whirling around in my head, none of it stopped for even a moment but all I could do was just breathe out.

“Why me? What the hell did I do to her? I was just a kid when the Vices were active,” I grumbled under my breath.

“Well, unfortunately, we also have the answer to that.” Franky’s voice sounded the most hesitant it ever had and I turned to him with a confused look. Darion avoided my eyes, staring intently at the floor like it was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen.

Franky though, stared me straight in the eyes. He’d always been straight with me, no matter what. I knew he would never lie to me, would always be honest with me no matter how much it would hurt and I knew just from the dark look on his face that this was going to hurt.

“What?” I swallowed, not giving myself enough time to psych myself out.

Emotions flashed across Franky’s face - reluctance, sorrow, guilt, finally landing on the one thing I never wanted to see.

Pity.

Franky sighed, gesturing to the file. “The last page contains the blood test results. When we ran it, we actually had another hit in the database. A close genetic match, not particularly high but high enough to raise a red flag.”

My heart beat loudly in my chest as I flipped to the last page and skimmed over the information fast until I saw it.

DNA match reports a 25% similarity between Sample A and Sample B.

My whole face turned pale, my body trembling uncontrollably as my worst fears stared at me from up at the page. Sample A, detailed by the photo of Maria Moirera, and Sample B...

Leo Wilson.

My own photo stared back at me, and seeing our photos together, I couldn’t believe how I hadn’t noticed it sooner. Or maybe I had. Maybe I’d known all along. That this was why I’d let her escape that day, why she’s shaken me so badly.

Maybe deep down, I’d recognized it already.

Our identical pairs of blue eyes, the sharpness of her chins. Even just the simple curve of our noses. It was too similar to be a coincidence.

“Maria Moirera is most likely your half-sister,” Franky said damningly.