The Mafia Boss Returned with Loyal Dog to Find His Abandoned Mom – The Truth Made Him Freeze

Chapter 2

Her name was Iris, and she gave it like a person who had grown used to being forgotten.

“Just Iris,” she said, when the words finally came, her voice hoarse from cold and fear. “No surname. People don’t bother with the rest.”

She said it without bitterness, which was somehow worse.

Dante had been about to press her, to demand answers, when a sound cut through the night from the darkness near the brick wall. A soft, frightened stirring. He turned, and only then noticed the old stroller with rusted wheels parked a few steps away, and inside it a little girl—no more than three—waking in fear from Otis’s earlier growls, whimpering softly, her cheeks flushed pink despite being wrapped in layers of too-small blankets.

Iris’s attention snapped to the stroller with a mother’s reflex that overrode every other instinct, even the danger standing in front of her. She reached back and pulled the blanket higher over her child, her voice dropping into a low, soothing murmur.

Dante stood. When he spoke again, his voice had changed. It was no longer searching or wary. It was a command, low and flat, the voice that had broken men who thought they were strong.