However, Tower D was closed for now, which made Sienna available. It was worth a shot. If we paid her enough, maybe she’d even help Julisa improve her Italian faster.
“I may know someone who can help,” I told Julisa. “I’ll reach out tomorrow.”
“Today,” Julisa corrected immediately. “You’ll do it today.”
I sighed. “Today,” I agreed.
“Good.” She went back to arranging things while muttering under her breath in Italian this time. “Voi uomini Cattaneo mi fate impazzire cazzo.”
You Cattaneo men drive me fucking crazy.
I chuckled. “You know I speak Italian, right?”
“I know,” she replied without looking at me.
The conference room door opened a second later. The rest of the team had finally arrived. Anthony smiled at Julisa as he took his seat. She pretended she didn’t see him. Apparently, she was angry with him also.
Davide DeLuca greeted me when he entered the room. Once everyone was seated, Julisa told them to turn on their devices and open their folders. She then explained that the passwords for the files on their devices were in the folder.
At every meeting, the files had a different password. This was an added security measure she insisted we have, and I was all for it. Once she sat down, she told everyone that the folder contained projections for next month and that on the device, they could review stats from the first quarter.
I reviewed the numbers as she spoke. We’d exceeded my expectations, despite a bump in the road that had nearly forced us to shut down. Just thinking about the compliance disaster we’d dealt with a few weeks ago made my blood boil.
For nearly a month, the casino’s gaming license had hung in limbo because one greedy idiot decided betraying me was worth the payout. At first, the issue looked like a simple administrative mistake.
Several employee compliance files tied to casino floor workers suddenly had missing documentation during a routine gaming audit. Without those background clearance confirmations, renewal approvals, and identity verification forms, those employees couldn’t work the gaming floor.
One or two incomplete employee files wouldn’t have caused such a stir. But there had been more than ten incomplete files, which triggered a formal review of the casino’s gaming license.
And once regulators began their investigation, they’d said they may have to issue a temporary suspension until the matter was corrected. That would’ve destroyed us. No gaming license meant no gaming floor.
No tables. No slot machines. No VIP gambling.
The entire casino would’ve been crippled. Investors started panicking. Lawyers got involved. Julisa practically moved intoher office, trying to help fix the mess while Anthony worked overtime keeping staff calm.
And I spent weeks trying to keep the situation from turning into a public disaster. At first, I honestly believed someone in compliance had fucked up. Then I started noticing things that didn’t make sense.
The secretary was confident that all the employees' folders were in order the week before. Files didn’t just disappear on their own. Not that many. Not all at once. Someone had tampered with the records before the audit.
That realization pissed me off enough that I stopped handling the situation legally and started handling it the Cattaneo way. Thanks to the systems we had in place, we could keep track of who opened documents and when.
It didn’t take us long to find the person responsible. I’d had the fucker brought to the facility that the DeLucas allowed me to use to work on my pharmaceutical pursuits. It took a broken jaw, missing teeth, and several hours tied to a chair before he finally admitted the truth.
Pasquale Cattaneohad paid him to alter the records and destroy the files. I should’ve guessed it from the start. That miserable bastard wanted the casino shut down. He wanted the DeLuca partnership destroyed.
And more than anything, he wanted me out of Italy. He saw this casino as a stain on the Cattaneo name. The family here didn’t want to be involved with the DeLucas or any casinos.
They didn’t want the world to believe they’d returned to their old ways. But I hadn’t and still didn’t give a fuck about what theywanted. Once he confessed everything, the employee pleaded with me not to kill him.
He’d cried, telling me about his wife and kids while blood poured from his mouth. I killed him anyway. His family wasn’t my responsibility. They were his. The bastard should’ve thought about them before accepting payment to sabotage my casino.
As for Pasquale...
Well, that motherfucker was still breathing only because I hadn’t decided exactly how I wanted to end him yet. But family or not, I would end him before I returned to the U.S. Which meant, I had one week left to kill my cousin.
CHAPTER THREE
ROME
