“Tell me what you found.”
He exhales slowly before ripping off the Band-Aid in one quick motion. “Lucia was witnessed depositing money into a rival’s offshore account.”
My jaw clenches, but I try to stay calm. I can’t ask Lucia to trust me, then not give her the same level of respect. “How much?”
“Thirty thousand.”
I scoff. That’s barely a drop in the ocean.
My stance changes when Elio adds, “Every month for two years.”
“Two years?”
A cold pulse thuds through me when he jerks up his chin. I slump back, the chair creaking under my sudden shift. Two years isn’t a mistake or a one-time favor. That’s commitment.
“Who?” My voice is low and controlled, but I feel my patience fraying. The only rivals we face are those who have tried to kill us or who go against everything we are. They’re the murky sludge at the bottom of the mafia realm, the shitkickers no one wants to deal with.
Lucia also isn’t paying them chump change. She’s deposited over seven hundred thousand dollars into the account of someone who could disrupt my campaign for Camille to achieve equality in the Cosa Nostra.
Elio hesitates. That alone churns my stomach.
“Elio.” My tone leaves no room for delay. I need a name, and I need it now.
“Edoardo Cordoza.”
The name pummels me as effectively as a stern fist to the sternum, and I bare teeth.
Edoardo Cordoza stalks high-level functions like a saint whose corpse isn’t rotting underneath his cloak. He launders money throughcharities, buys loyalty with blood, and has a reputation for making problems disappear—permanently.
He’s a man I’dneverlet within a mile of my daughter, so the thought of him having ongoing contact with Lucia boils my blood.
My fingers curl around the crayon box until the cardboard turns to dust.
“Why?” I only speak one word, but it tastes like garbage.
Elio shakes his head. “I don’t know. But for the amount and the consistency, it has to be something big.”
I stare at the faint scratches in the wood of his desk, striving to make sense of the impossible. Lucia, the woman fighting come hell or high water to keep me out of her life, is funneling money to a low-ranking gangster.
Why?
My pulse hammers in my ears when Elio judges Lucia on her job title. “Could Edoardo be her pimp?”
“No,” I shoot back quickly, my jaw clenched.
My knuckles itch to become acquainted with his nose when he says, “You saw how she was living, Dante. The Cordoza prostitutes live well below?—”
I’m out of my seat and pinning him to the wall of his man cave before he can finalize his summary. With my forearm crushing his windpipe, I bring my face extremely close to his. He doesn’t flinch.Idiot.
“Luciaisn’ta prostitute.”
Before Elio can issue a defense, Matteo joins a fight they’ll never win. “You can’t always authenticate a woman’s purity on the tightness of her cunt, Dante. The Carusos are always the biggest cocks they’ve ever had.” He wanders into Elio’s man cave, swagger in full force, before he butts his backside on the edge of his desk. “And Elio only asked what we’re all wondering.” He eyes the paperwork on the desk, missing the loud grind of my back molars. “That’s mighty suspicious.”
“It is.” My hold on Elio’s shirt firms instead of loosening. “But my word should beenough.”
“It is.” This reply doesn’t come from Elio or Matteo. It comes from Giovanni, who is standing in the doorway with Nico. It’s a full-fucking-blown family meeting. “And that’s why I told them to drop this.”
He glares at Matteo, knocking down his arrogance barely a smidge, before he shifts his eyes to me. He doesn’t tell me to remove my hands from Elio, but his stare sure does.
