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ELEVEN
REBECCA
I sent handwrittennotes sealed with my family crest to be simultaneously delivered to Anthony, Sebastien, and Giancarlo this morning.
My father is about to be indicted.
Get downtown to my office, now.
Just you.
The great and powerful Giovanni Domenico never asked his partners to his office. Neither would I.
Those brief details about my dad were enough to get the princes in their limos. Their drivers no doubt flew down the West Side Highway to Domenico Holdings headquarters on Wall Street.
Facing his mortality, my father hadn’t had much to defend when I showed him what the FBI suspected and what I knew about Sunrise. In a matter of hours, he had my mother packed up and under the cover of night, I drove them to a private airfield in Westchester. The site was chosen so my sisters could meet us safely from Connecticut. The way we grew up, our parents leaving the country wasn’t a total shock to them. Just sad. To Christina and Camille, they were our loving parents. They never saw what happened inside the world my father had ruled. The kingdom I would now rule.
Despite all the questions I had for my father about how he could green-light a date rape drug, I had my mother to consider. It wasn’t fair to risk their escape and have her deal with my father going to prison. Any ounce of humanity I sent his way was because of my mother.
Guilty or not, the courts would have reprimanded Dad to the Metro Correctional Facility here in Manhattan while prosecutors built their case against him. No bail for mob bosses.
I also had to consider his illness. No chemo in federal prison. There was a chance his lawyers could call for leniency on account of his illness. Something told me my father would have preferred dying in jail over his enemies knowing he was sick. Seeing him weak.
After saying goodbye to me and my sisters, my father boarded a private plane I had reserved under a phony name. In those final minutes, I ensured my father I could run Domenico Holdings and the underground operations his captains kept humming for him. But that I planned to destroy Sunrise.
At my father’s insistence, Kato traveled with them, and they had enough cash to pay the bodyguard for his services and loyalty. With the sky starting to tinge pink off the horizon from the sun rising over the Long Island Sound, my parents’ plane took off with little else said between us.
With my father, the king gone, I was now the queen.
Anthony, Sebastien, and Giancarlo strutted into my father’s office, the corner suite I’d taken over. One by one, their handsome faces read something different. Sebastien’s curious dark eyes tore through me. Anthony’s foaming at the mouth to get his hands on my company as well as my underground crime syndicate. I’d expected that. Giancarlo looked surprised since we’d played one of his sex games the afternoon before and I’d given him no hint of what was about to go down.
They each looked devastatingly gorgeous and smelled so damn good. I nearly lost all train of thought.
“I’ll get right to the point, gentlemen because what I’m facing is a goddamn no-brainer.” I paced in front of Anthony and Sebastien, who sat on my father’s black leather sofa while Giancarlo leaned on the windowsill watching me cautiously. “Vale,” I said to my guard, who lifted my briefcase onto the meeting table in the far corner of my father’s expansive office. “I need to speak to them alone now.”
He reluctantly left, sending a not-so-subtle sneer in Anthony’s direction.
To his credit, Anthony didn’t react to Vale. He understood the visceral protection instincts we needed from our bodyguards.
After opening my briefcase, I revealed one of the bound presentations I’d found in the vault. I’d burned the rest. And after this meeting, that copy was headed for the new safe Gil installed in between the floorboards of my townhouse. He’d placed it right under a steel brace so a metal detector wouldn’t pick it up. Only the brace. Which every floorboard had.
“What the fuck is in that thing, Becca?” Anthony sauntered over in an elegantly-cut custom suit that matched his charcoal eyes.
“Evidence.”
“Evidence of what?” Sebastien’s deep voice, with that damn sexy timbre, rolled through me and grabbed me by the throat.
“A hideous crime.”
Anthony knitted his brows together and thumbed the four-hundred-page pharmaceutical report. “Which one?” he asked, being flippant.
“One I couldn’t overlook.”
“You’re gonna need to overlook a lot, Rebecca,” Giancarlo spoke up, barely looking me in the eye. He set my senses off-balance dressed in a dark blue slim-fitted suit. I’d now officially seen him stark naked more than dressed.
“One that could take all of us down,” I hinted. “Someone got sloppy, and it wasn’t me.”
Sebastien grabbed the bulky report. After breezing through a few pages, he sat down. “Oh shit.”
“Yes, Bastien.” I had to accept that’s who he was now if I wanted him to accept that I ruled this city. “Oh shit, is right. I had the same reaction when I came across that shameful operation. You all know me. You’ve known me your whole lives. We grew up together. I...” I almost said I love you. Anything to soften them to me. I needed them on my side. “You know I’m not skittish or thin-skinned about the world we live in. This was too much.”
I needed them to help me take down their fathers. As rightful heirs to their individual business industries in New York City, my goal was not just a mountain to climb, but freaking K2.
“My father pays millions of dollars a year to make sure everything we do looks legal.” Anthony pointed to the report in Bastien’s hands. “Becca, what the fuck are we talking about here?”
“A date rape drug.”
Blank stares passed between them. The lines in their faces refused to reveal if this was the first they’d heard of MATOHN or were they silently communicating?
“Does the word Sunrise mean anything?” I prodded.
Anthony dipped an eyebrow at me. “Papa’s been talking about something called Sunrise for a year. We have lots of business deals. I don’t keep track of them.”
Stupid, since he would assume control soon. Or maybe he couldn’t accept his father was getting too old to manage Messina Associates.
“There’s sensitive financial information in here.” Sebastien looked up at me, and my heart stopped. For the first time in five years, our eyes connected. Really connected. “Rebecca, where did you get this?”
“It doesn’t matter where I found it. My father buried it. Didn’t want me to know.” I felt soaked in Sebastien’s stare. “What’s most important is that the right people know I’m in charge now. So, if I make a commitment to kill that deal, I plan to stick to my word.”
“You sound like a lawyer being that vague.” Sebastien stayed seated at the meeting table, his legs crossed, his expensive trousers creased so perfectly. Swiping through the pharma report, he said, “Oh fuck me.”
Yes, please...
I swallowed, missing him so badly it hurt. I’d buried my heartbreak so no one would see how shattered I was. Giancarlo satisfied me, but also reminded me what I used to have with Sebastien. Not that he’d ever spanked me or secured me to his bed with his tie or teased my clit until I screamed his name. Sebastien taught me the meaning of love. He’d been my best friend. The person who made me laugh until I cried. Now I just cried from wanting him so much.
“Bastien, you’re white as a ghost.” Giancarlo tore his eyes from me. “What the fuck?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Each of you,” I said, watching them each carefully, knowing it was three against one if they attacked. “Our fathers have gone too far with this one. I know you guys wouldn’t touch a date rape drug with a ten-foot pole.”
They each squirmed in their own way. Giancarlo rubbed his temple, Sebastien lowered his head, and even Anthony shifted uncomfortably in his expensive Italian shoes.
After a moment of silence, Anthony said, “So, we’ll dump it.” He shrugged like it was no big deal. Only, I doubted Anthony Sr. would walk away from something he’d spent a year working on.
“I don’t know your exact fortune, Anthony,” Sebastien bit out, annoyed. “But it looks like my fucking father invested nearly every penny we have in this.”
“Let me see that.” Anthony ripped the presentation from Sebastien’s grasp. His complexion dropped a few colors from his usual sexy olive skin tone to a rather unflattering gray. “Fuck me.”
What I thought would be a giant no thank you whispering in my brain, the idea of getting naked with Anthony had me stroking my throat, wondering just how big his dick really was. His hesitation over a date rape drug showed a side of him I wasn’t expecting. A decent human being was hiding under that bravado.
Maybe.
Anthony narrowed his eyes at me, holding the presentation. “No way would Papa agree to that kind of upfront investment. What the fuck is your father playing at?” He trekked toward me, trying to scare me. As if that would work. Despite being dangerous mob princes no sane person would cross, neither of them would ever physically hurt me. They knew better. Right? “You get him on the phone, right fucking now.”
“I can’t.” I folded my arms.
“You won’t.” Giancarlo’s voice cut through me, sent blood pumping through me like...Sebastien’s voice did. No, I couldn’t fall for Giancarlo, especially not now.
“Take a look at that.” Anthony flung the report to Gian. “I assume you know what your hotels are raking in these days.”
Gian pursed his lips and then tossed me an angry look. “That number looks right.”
Sebastien shot from his seat. He roughly grabbed Anthony by the suit jacket with one hand and Giancarlo’s sleeve with the other. “You know what this proves? Intent. That’s the basis for every crime to be charged in the first degree. Making that type of investment puts us at the top of the pyramid, the ones the Feds will want to go after.”
“But this deal is nothing but paper. The drug isn’t on the street yet. Burn it,” Anthony said with a sneer.
“I doubt this is the only copy.” Gian shook his head.
“Now it is,” I chimed in, raising my voice. “Original printed anyway. I have the disc and I’m certain there’re no copies. After you leave, that copy will be locked away.” Only I had the safe’s combination. Their birthdates. “The last few pages spell out the distribution and timeline. The drug is on the street now, Anthony. In limited quantities. But the big drop is coming soon.” I strutted to the center of the room, reminding them I was in charge. “And I’ve got a hold of emails between our fathers. Despite your families’ billion-dollar organizations, your fathers rely on old-school shady buddies to keep their records safe. People who use 1234 as passwords.”
Gian swore under his breath and then shot a look at Anthony. “I told you.”
“Gian, you may be an MIT-trained hacker, but your father’s laptop was rather easy to break into.” Gil had helped me hack into their networks and sorted through emails mentioning Sunrise.
“Bullshit.” The pained look on his face kicked me in the stomach.
“I can see why you think that.” I almost said if Salvatore was around...
My eyes said to him: Don’t expect to see me at your club again. Well, maybe one more time. Business was business and pleasure was pleasure. He’d made that clear. At the club, we weren’t Giancarlo and Rebecca. We were whoever he made up for the night.
