I take a long, steadying breath. “Where?”
“Come to the meeting, and I’ll tell you.”
“Don’t piss me off right now.”
“Or what?”
I crack my neck, ready to square up to him if I have to. Teo sniffs, sensing the incoming attack, and matches my stance.
But before either of us can land a blow, Donatella steps between us.
“Enough of this nonsense, you stupid boys!” She gives us both a stern look before turning on me specifically. “You. Let your friends help you, dammit. I cannot spend another day dealing with your sulking, and you will lose everything you’ve spent five years building if you don’t clean up your act. Do you hear me?”
God, if that woman doesn’t terrify me.
“And you!” She turns on Teo. “Tell the poor man where Cassandra is. He’s literally going out of his mind with worry. Look at the state of him. So don’t be such a dick.”
Teo murmurs something that sounds suspiciously like an apology as he looks down at his feet.
For a moment, we’re just two teenagers again, causing havoc and getting into fights for no reason. Teo must think it, too, because he shoots me a sheepish look.
“I’ll meet with them,” I declare, a peace offering if there ever was one.
Teo nods. “She’s with Mia, staying at her place by the looks of things. Chiavari…senior…has more details.”
The relief that floods through me is only a splash of respite in the face of the fire of despair that has consumed me these last forty-eight hours. But it’s enough to make the walk to my private study more bearable.
After so long of having her near-constant presence in my life, her absence feels like I’m missing a limb.
It’s more than just the overwhelming heartache and depression spiral of having hurt her irreparably. I miss her companionship, her sarcasm, her seemingly unending determination to mess with me. Her laughter haunts this house like a ghost.
But her lips haunt my memories like a parasite, sucking every ounce of feeling and joy from me to the point where I don’t know if I even remember what it’s like to be happy.
Nothing matters anymore. There’s no way to fix this. No way I can atone for what I’ve done.
And now I’m going to have to figure out how to live with it. Even if living without her means that I’ll slowly become a shell of the person I once was.
I shake these thoughts from my mind as I step into the office. These were my friends. Donatella was right. I should at least pretend to let them help me.
“So?” I ask the room, immediately getting to business. “What is it you have for me?”
Marco clears his throat and approaches my desk first, holding a thick file of documents. He dumps them in front of me with an unceremonious thud.
“What am I looking at here, Chiavari?” I ask the older man irritably.
“Loan agreement paperwork,” Marco replies as I take a look at the document at the top of the pile.
I tense at the sight of the name signed at the bottom. “Carmine Bellini’s loan agreement paperwork.”
“The man was many things, but sloppy was not one of them,” Marco continues. “Look at the handwriting. The loan he allegedly took out on Lazzaro’s behalf wasn’t written in cursive.”
I massage my temples. “This feels like grasping at straws.”
“I knew my friend.”
“Not well enough.”
Marco’s lips curl out slightly. “I knew him better than anyone. Better than the goddamn wife who abandoned him. Carmine was a good man. If you hadn’t caught him red handed with the Cartel, I would never have believed he’d do something like that.”
