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TWELVE
SEBASTIEN
“We’re not going tokill Becca,” I said low through clenched teeth, closing the door to what was her office.
She’d walked us here, strutting with beauty and grace, as a queen should. Shit, she did it. She crowned herself.
I glanced around, wondering if Giovanni had soundproofed these offices. Anthony used knives not guns, and if he tried to hurt someone, it wouldn’t make a sound. My favorite shotgun made way too much noise. That’s what drives to upstate New York were for.
I’d seen what Anthony could do with his knives. But Anthony would never kill a woman. Or hurt one. Not himself, anyway. Not Becca. If I knew that, she had to know that.
Then again, I’d never seen the guy face losing his family’s fortune. His guards sat thirty stories below in his limo, but they’d rush up here with the snap of his well-manicured fingers. Hold Rebecca down, cover her face with a towel so she wouldn’t scream.
“Bastien’s right, Anthony,” Giancarlo backed me up. “You’re not killing her.”
“You gonna stop me, Bastien?” Anthony looked at me with wild eyes.
“Yeah, and the fucking NYPD.” Owning illegal gambling halls in Manhattan meant I had New York’s Finest in my back pocket.
Anthony grumbled and paced in front of Rebecca’s bookshelves. “She’s not going to get away with this.”
“Are you even going to talk to your father?” Giancarlo asked him.
“Fuck, no. He’ll murder me himself if he knows I had access to that kind of statement of intent.” Anthony’s lips snarled, mocking me. “And didn’t destroy it.”
“Now it’s evidence.” Damn, he made me crazy when he got wild.
Exhaling sharply, Giancarlo paced. “Do we even know if any of that was actually real? It’s just paper.”
“I was hoping you’d tell us,” Anthony said.
“And how would I tell you that?” Gian snapped.
“Get online and look for a copy of that presentation on the company’s servers,” Anthony ordered. As the man destined to marry Rebecca, he always acted like he was in charge. That annoyed the fuck out of me.
I plowed my hands through my hair. “That wasn’t just online, Anthony. It’s in writing.” I’d try to smuggle it out of her office, but both Vale and Gil guarded the door.
“Gian will break into the pharmaceutical company and delete that document,” Anthony said.
“You think I got nothing to fucking do but hunt down that company and dig through every file? That’s even if it’s on their servers.”
Anthony rolled his eyes. “Forgive me, Gian, if I thought you were some computer genius like your brother.”
When Gian lunged for Anthony, I jumped in between them, pushing Giancarlo back. “I hate to agree with Anthony’s nonsensical ravings, but he has a point,” I said to keep everyone calm. “Okay, so our fathers contracted a pharmaceutical company to make this drug and then a bunch of dogs here in America will distribute it. But, Gian, if you can hack into the servers and get a copy, that would be very helpful. I need to see everything in there.”
Giancarlo narrowed his eyes at me, but I could tell he agreed it was a viable plan. “Fine,” he said, taking out a laptop from his briefcase.
“I’ll unhook all the bullshit subsidiaries that were listed.” I had to make it look like it wasn’t us. “Right now, we might get away with it. They looked like our typical shell companies, but I worry the veneer is wearing thin. And if Rebecca hands over that evidence, it ties us directly.”
It could take me weeks to move the pieces around and create all kinds of hops from one subsidiary to the next with many new shell companies in between. Exhaust the Feds as they get subpoena after subpoena and keep coming up empty.
Judges will stop issuing them.
“Blah blah blah,” Anthony chimed in. “You’re forgetting one thing. We can’t stop this. Our fathers made this deal. You think if it falls apart, they’ll shrug and move on? They handed over all our money. Kill the deal and we go down.”
“If I don’t change all the business names around, after the first real shipment hits the streets, we go down. Rebecca will hand over the evidence just to spite us,” I reminded him. It burned me up, but my options were limited. “We’re not stopping the project. Not right now. We just need to change the documents with our fathers’ names on it.” Seething, I turned to Giancarlo. “Can you find anything, Gian?”
He tapped away on a skinny red laptop that made me wonder what the hell kind of Mac Pro had the processing power and speed to do the kind of hacking he did.
I swallowed hard watching Giancarlo’s hands shaking. “What, Gian?”
“I found the pharma company’s backdoor, but I can’t get in.”
“You?”
He stared up at me, the challenge burning through him. “I’ll keep trying. This has a firewall I’ve never seen before.”
That worried me more than going to my father about this. Why hadn’t he told me what he’d done? With all our money.
I waved my hands. “Anyone else have a suggestion about what we do, besides kill Rebecca so she doesn’t hand over the report to the FBI?” I stayed on the other side of the office, not getting anywhere near Anthony, who looked ready to explode.
“We?” Anthony snapped. “You. You talk to her. You’re closest to her.”
I stared and balled my hands into fists. “You know that’s not true. And that hasn’t been true for five years. Thanks to that deal your father made with Giovanni.”
Anthony grinned. “Her father came to Papa. Was he supposed to say no? And you acting all brutish and hurt hasn’t helped me break down Rebecca’s walls either. Thanks a lot.”
“Fuck you, Anthony,” I muttered.
He grabbed his package. “Say the word, my friend.”
“Okay, not now,” Giancarlo broke in. “Seriously, you two are getting on my last nerve. We have a problem.”
I exhaled. “Clearly, one of us has to talk some sense into her.”
“Fuck sense. We need to fight fire with fire.” Anthony grabbed his phone. “We’ll see how her little plan holds up when I threaten to kill her sisters. She may have sent her father away, which Gian, seriously, get back on your computer and find the guy.”
“I don’t take orders from you, Anthony.”
Although, Messina had a point. We needed to find where Becca hid her father. It wouldn’t be that hard to find out. How many flights out of New York to countries without extradition were there? Unless they took a private plane. Shit.
Shaking my head, I said, “We’re not killing her sisters.”
“We can’t kill Becca. We can’t kill her sisters,” Anthony mocked us. “What the fuck kind of pussy gangsters are you?”
“We’re not killing each other. That’s the deal our fathers made. Giovanni Domenico included. Remember the tribunal rule? To ignore it will mean war between our families. Is that what you want?”
If one of them turned on the other, he’d have to stand before the others and be judged.
“I think this goes beyond the tribunal,” Giancarlo muttered, and Anthony smiled, nodding.
Frustrated, I gripped the handle of Becca’s office door and yanked it open. “You want to kill her, go ahead.”
Anthony stood frozen at the challenge. No, he wouldn’t kill her. He wanted to marry her. Now even more so because it would mean he’d rule since Nate recently abdicated. Rebecca wasn’t any good to Anthony dead.
With that tribunal commitment, we’d learned to trust each other as well. We were inextricably tied together. There were no secrets between our fathers, although I wondered if that promise had eroded lately.
I was the legal genius who could argue circles around anyone’s evidence.
Giancarlo could hack into anything, usually.
Anthony... I stared at him. He had attitude and style, I had to give him that. He had just enough crazy in his eyes and grace with a knife to scare the hell out of someone. When that didn’t work... I swallowed, thinking of his ultimate scare tactic that involved me.
He used me to terrify someone who’d crossed the line.
I shivered when I thought of the things he did to me, and I hated myself for liking it.
