Tony woke up to a loud banging coming from the floor above him. He had returned from a two week mission in Brazil, where he had been helping fellow avenger, Dr. Bruce Banner, with a pest control problem of the ten foot variety the night before. He had been soar and hungry, but mostly tired. In his exhaustion he'd collapsed in his work shop bed and fallen unconscious as soon as his fiancé, Pepper Potts, had cuddled into his side. Now he was even sorer, even more tired, and at 5:30 am, after only three hours of sleep he was still exhausted.
Pepper jumped up, telling him to go back to sleep but Jarvis' voice stopped him before he could fall back into blissful unconsciousness, "Sir, it appears to be Ms. Consetta Viglionni."
"What!" Tony shouted at he shot up. Suddenly the screen on the wall across from him kicked on and indeed, the last woman he'd had a relationship with before Pepper was banging viciously on their front door. "Is anyone else with her, Jarvis?"
Pepper held her breath as anxiously waited for the answer. Tony, and by extension she, had been in a custody battle with Consetta for over a decade. After the woman and Tony broke up she had forcefully taken their seven year old daughter to Italy just before Pepper was hired. Once she became his assistant she could only sit back and watch as he spiraled into the drunken man whore he'd become, when he wasn't trying to get his daughter back.
Even though she had never met the little girl, Pepper had become rather fond of her after watching all of Tony's home videos of his little princess. She had even continued Tony's fight when he was kidnapped in Afghanistan. Over the years there had been days when hearing Tony make his daily two phone calls to Consetta to try and convince her to let him talk to their daughter was the only thing that kept her from quitting.
Now, knowing that they were going to be married in less than two months, it killed her to see and hear the broken hope in his voice that died when Jarvis responded, "No sir, she is alone. I'm sorry, sir."
Tony didn't respond as he shook himself then looked over at Pepper, "Something must be wrong; I have to go talk to her."
Pepper smiled; for all Tony's bravado he was so worried about hurting her or disappointing her. More than that he was afraid of doing something wrong and of her walking away, "I know that, sweetie, I'll be right behind you."
He nodded before hurrying up the stairs with his fiancé close on his heels. It wasn't really surprising when Rhodey, who had been in similar shape upon their return home and had collapsed on the workshop's sofa, drug himself from his makeshift bed and fell in behind them. Rhodey was Tony's best friend and had been at the hospital when his little girl was born, as a result he had been at every annual binge fest since Tony's little princess was taken from him and would have woken from a comma to be at this confrontation.
"Would you like me to answer the door, sir?" Jarvis questioned.
"No, Jarvis, I'll get it," Tony said as he entered the foyer. Consetta was still banging on the door as he jerked it open.
As soon as the door was open Tony's entry way was filled with crazy ex-girlfriend, "Where is she, you son of a bitch!"
Tony laughed as Rhodey moved to grab Pepper who just shrugged him off with a roll of her eyes, "What are you talking about, Consetta? Is Tori okay?"
"Like you don't fucking know! You kidnapped her!" Consetta screamed so loud that it took Tony a moment to process what she'd said.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" he growled, "I haven't seen our daughter in more than a decade. What happened?"
Consetta continued to rage, "She graduated Wednesday and I haven't seen her since. It's been almost three days and she's just fucking gone; I know you took her, Bastardo!"
"Vaffanculo te, cagna stupida!" Tony shouted in perfect Italian. Pepper looked at Rhodey, who just shrugged, but they both knew whatever Tony had said wasn't exactly nice, "If I'd have taken her, you wouldn't have been able to get back into this fucking country!"
"You can't expect me to believe that you had niente to do with this!" Consetta wailed poking Tony's shoulder.
"She graduated, cagna, you said it yourself. If she's anything like me, she's blowing the money I gave you for her college on a wild party somewhere!"
"She is non ti pace; she hates you and I know that's not what's going on here!"
"The only reason she hates me is because you poisoned her by keeping her away from me! If she'd had her way, she'd have stayed with me when she was seven!" That was when Consetta suddenly attacked the billionaire. Rhodey moved quickly to put a wall between the two and Pepper moved to stand beside Tony, checking him over.
"What the hell is going on here?" came Nick Fury's voice from the open doorway; Natalie and Coulson were bug-eyed as they followed him up the steps.
"Sir," Rhodey said, "Ms. Viglionni, here, attacked Tony after accusing him of kidnapping their daughter, who just graduated high school."
Consetta looked like she was going to correct him but stopped herself. Tony made a mental note to research his daughter's school, thinking that whatever his ex was hiding might be a lead to her being missing.
"Please! His daughter graduating," Fury said, "sounds like the party of the century to me."
"Yeah, expecially when I just gave her a million dollar college account," Tony growled.
Fury put his hand on his hips, "We'll circle back around to giving a 18 year old…"
"Seventeen, she had a few more days to go before she's an adult!" Tony interjected.
"….that kind of cash," Fury continued like Tony hadn't said anything, "I thought you didn't have any contact with your daughter because the Italian government was unwilling to negotiate over her custody?"
Tony rolled his eyes and moved to answer but Consetta cut him off, "I told you this isn't some party! She had to be taken!"
Fury looked at the woman, "Why do you think that?"
Consetta looked down as she jerked away from Rhodey, "…Because he didn't have access to our daughter, he only had contact with me. As far as Tori knew, he'd cut us off completely."
After a moment everyone realized what she meant, "She doesn't know about the college fund; does she know about the child support?"
"There's nothing about child support in our files," Fury said, ignoring Pepper as she tried to warn him off.
When Tony turned on him with a vicious glare he realized that maybe he should have taken her advice, "Look, I don't need some dumbass judge to tell me to take care of my kid! Although I did think it was going to the welfare of the child!"
"How much were you giving Ms. Viglionni?" Fury knew it probably wasn't any of his business but he wanted to see how vindictive this woman was before they decided how to go about finding the missing girl.
"$50, 000 a month, not including when I doubled it at her birthday, Christmas, and the start of every school year, bought her first car, or gave her the college fund."
"Damn," Rhodey muttered.
Tony heard Pepper's blackberry start ringing and nodded for her to go ahead and answer it, "Are you sure she's not at a party somewhere?"
Consetta glared at him, "She thought we were barely getting by with what she was bringing in; she couldn't have gone anywhere."
Fury was so angry he spluttered for a moment before having to walk away to escape the woman. Tony turned to follow him and they headed for the workshop; suddenly the man turned back to his agents, "You and Rebecca are on babysitting duty. Take Ms. Viglionni to a hotel and then keep an eye on her."
He knew that despite Tony's playboy façade the billionaire was a good man and over time he had come to be rather fond of him and his eccentrics, "Any help you need finding her, we'll give you."
Tony nodded as they entered the shop where Pepper had escaped to take her call; from the look on her face both men knew something was very wrong, "What is it?"
"Nothing, finding Tori is more important," Pepper said.
"Pep, tell me what's going on."
Pepper sighed, "Someone hacked Stark Industries…"
Both men froze and Tony turned away from his computer, leaving it to search any movement on the name Vittoria Stark/Viglionni around the world. He felt a strange sense of violation and admiration, "Someone hacked my systems?"
"Yes, apparently they were experts. They were in and out with no trail or trace but no one knows which files were looked at or taken; they won't know for a few hours."
"It can't be a coincidence," said Rhodey as he walked in, having just seen off the agents and their guest, "Whoever took Tori must have hacked Stark Industries."
"Are we sure it was a kidnapping?" Fury asked, "The Italian government kept her identity anonymous vigorously over the last decade and I know you always tried to keep the press away from her."
Tony was back to pounding away at his key board, "All that means is someone was looking! God damn it I can't let anyone hurt her!"
"Tony," Fury said pulling Tony away from the computer, "You're exhausted and not thinking straight. Sleep, give me until two, that will be eight hours. By then Stark Industries will have the results on the files taken and we'll have found some sort of lead on where she could have been taken."
"You want me to sleep while someone has my daughter!" Tony yelled.
Rhodey stepped between the two, "Tony, he's right. We can't do anything until we have something to go on. We'll be better off if we're not exhausted when something comes in."
Tony seemed torn between the facts and what his inner daddy wanted to do for a moment but finally said, "Fine but there won't be any of this eight hours crap. You get something and you call me, immediately."
"I'm going to go ahead and call the team in," Fury said as he headed for the door.
"Come on, let's go upstairs," Pepper suggested, pulling him along behind her so that he wouldn't object. Rhodey fell in behind him and they both disappeared into their rooms.
…..