Page 43 of Daddies of the Underworld

“Yes, but messy usually doesn’t mean criminal mastermind. Often it means a dumb twenty-two year old who’s hungry.” I lifted both hands when Matteo glared at me. “I was that kid. Younger, but no less hungry. I would have done just about anything for a good meal. Not that this is any excuse.” But I defended him because he mattered to Nina.

The office door opened, and Dante stepped inside.

“Well?” Matteo asked.

Dante stared at the screens. “He knows how to watch without making it obvious. Could be street smarts. Could be more. He clocked guards at the terrace door, the one near the stairs, and the cameras behind the windows near the fountain. Pretended not to notice, but I caught him counting steps by tapping his thigh. He could be doing the same with the cameras.”

“Could be nerves.” Again, I played devil’s advocate, because someone had to. I was the most liked. Least likely to get punched for my efforts. Then again, we were all on the same page. Sometimes I liked to stir shit up. I relented when they both growled. “Fine. could be training, fear, or nerves. What else?”

“He asked Nina where she was staying. Said he’d gone looking for her last night.” Dante rubbed his knuckles.

No doubt he’d like to be punching something right now.

My fingers paused on the keyboard. “What did she say?”

Dante folded his arms over his chest, his jaw going tight. “She pointed toward the private wing and said she had a suite. He asked if she was still in the same room from when she worked here before, and why she didn’t have to work this morning.”

Matteo’s head lifted.

I swore under my breath. “She was in staff quarters before. If she talked to him about that, he should have picked up on the difference when she mentioned a suite.” I turned back to the screen and put in a few more search terms. Nothing popped. Fuck. We had crumbs that led nowhere.

“Anything else?” Matteo stood, hands going into his pockets as he resumed his professional stance.

Dante scratched his nose, his fidgeting out of character enough we all noticed. “He refused to leave his bag. He’s carried it everywhere.”

I started to give an excuse for that too but stopped as I thought back over breakfast and our dinner last night.

He had been obsessively protective of the canvas backpack. “Can we search it?”

“It went through the scanner before stepped foot on the property. Nothing flagged, but that’s all I know.” Dante’s jaw tightened. “That doesn’t make him safe.”

“No, but treating him like an enemy before we know he is one will make us unsafe to her.” I pushed back from the desk and stood. “She spent years protecting him. You saw how she looked at him. I’ve told Matteo this already, but we have to be careful, Dante. If we come after her brother without definitive proof, all she will see is three men in power taking away the only family she has left.”

“She’s not blind.” Matteo glared.

“No, but she’s loyal.” Dante sighed. “As much as it pains me to admit, Luca is right. We observe, and we protect Nina.”

For two days, we did exactly that. We watched Marco charm Rosa into sending extra pastries and avoid every important question with a story about their childhood.

Dante found him near the east corridor twice, and he claimed he’d gotten turned around.

Maybe he had.

Nina believed him, and I couldn’t decide how I felt about that.

I kept one eye on Marco and split the other between Nina and the financial report that was required once a week for our allied organizations who had joined us at the summit.

I was sitting in my office, drinking cold coffee, when the report finished.

An alert blinked red on the corner of my screen. Irregularity detected.

The hell it had. “There goes my afternoon.” I clicked the alert and read through the report in its entirety, my blood going cold the longer I read. Millions of dollars were missing.

Millions. In a week. Another coincidence timed with Marco’s arrival. I had no proof of his involvement. We had no proof of anything.

But I felt it in my gut, that instinct I had learned to obey as a young boy. Marco did this.

Now we had to prove it.