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SEVEN
REBECCA
Evil?
Julian’s words sent a sharp jab to my gut. Despite being the youngest in my family, I’d seen and heard plenty of unpleasant things in my father’s world that would make other women cringe. Threats, beatings, and murders happened every day around me. I’d toughened up and accepted the necessity of my father’s business after working for him and seeing the scum all around him.
No one who found themselves on the other end of Kato’s fists or his Sig was innocent.
But evil?
“You have my attention,” I said to Julian. “I’ll just speak to you.”
“Sorry, I need to bring my associate here.” Julian drifted his head to the left.
When all that heat got drawn on me, I hadn’t noticed the man with glasses standing there holding a briefcase.
Using a couple of curled fingers, I said, “The two of you. Inside. Now. People could be videotaping me.” I glanced up at my security camera. “Vale,” I whispered. “Please get Gil here now to erase all this from my system and turn off the cameras.”
My guard turned sharply to me, his gun tucked into his jacket. “I can work the security system just fine.”
Julian opened the gate for his associate. “Then it’s best we talk alone, Rebecca. Trust me. Semper Amici,” he whispered.
The codeword from St. Mary’s. The sacred vow we all committed to. Friends Forever.
It’d taken balls for Julian to go into law enforcement when, let’s face it, all of our businesses skirted on the razor-thin edge of legitimacy. His father Phillip had been an insignificant player in our world until he divested from his construction business and retired to Miami.
In truth, I was probably just as safe with two Feds as with my guards. Although, talking to the FBI could raise some eyebrows. Perhaps that was why Julian came under the cover of night, late on a Saturday, when most people were drunk or fucking. Interesting how he knew I’d be engaged in neither activity.
While Julian and his associate stepped into my foyer, Vale busied himself in my security room, erasing the video footage from all my cameras and turned off the ones in my house. My cameras could be hacked.
“Follow me.” I walked with purpose through my foyer, past my curved staircase, then stopped at the ornately trimmed archway that led to my kitchen in the back of the house. “As you can see, I just got home.”
Julian motioned to the man with the briefcase. “Rebecca, this is Michael Connolly. He’s DEA. We’ve been working together for months.”
“DEA?” I bit back a curse. Months?
I had worried Julian’s appearance might have to do with a murder no one told me about. My father had often tried to keep the brutal side of our business from me in the early days when I first joined Domenico Holdings. DEA meant drugs, which I had a particular disdain for.
“He works the financial forensics side,” Julian clarified. “Lawyers getting crafty these days with business contracts. Sebastien Daria is a master at setting up shell companies.” He peered at me waiting for a reaction.
I froze, but held Julian’s gaze, making sure he only saw ice in my blue eyes. Everyone at St. Mary’s had known Seb and I were a couple. And now everyone in our world knew we weren’t.
Ignoring Julian’s assessing glare, I said, “Hello, Michael,” and folded my arms, eyes on his briefcase, wondering what the hell was in there. “What can I get you?”
Julian eyed me up and down. “Do you want to get comfortable? Pair of jeans perhaps? We can set up in your office, or anywhere else so you can relax.”
“Miss Domenico doesn’t wear jeans for cops,” Vale announced from outside my security room.
Julian turned his back to my guard, showing defiance. “Sorry. This might take hours, Rebecca.”
Hours?
I noticed well-pressed dark suits under their trench coats. “I’m perfectly comfortable. Let’s get this over with. My office is behind the kitchen. Vale, just set the alarm before you leave, please. I’m fine, no need to wait for Gil.”
An hour later, I stared at an iPad, my hands shaking.
“Your father has enough local cops and prosecutors on the take to look the other way from all the smaller...er...violations Domenico Holdings commits regularly,” Julian said, his hands in his pockets as he paced in front of my desk.
Michael specialized in ungluing business records to weed out corruption, Julian had explained. And he’d been busy. How he got access to so much confidential information, I chose not to question. That would be for our lawyers to argue as inadmissible evidence in court.
What I was looking at though, went beyond fear of prosecution. It sickened me.
“A witness came to us about a month ago. A woman beaten up pretty badly.” Julian swiped through his phone and showed me the photo, making me wince. “Call girls on heroine who get smacked around rarely flag down a G-Man. She’d seen enough to know the local cops must have been protecting whatever mess she’d found herself in.”
Interesting that Julian knew Domenico Holdings had an entire division that ‘handled’ local cops, politicians, and ADAs. People we kept happy in order to keep their bosses off our backs. As far as I knew. Drugs were a fact of life, so long as the dealers didn’t sell to kids. Call girls had made their own choices so long as they weren’t being forced or coerced into those choices. And weapons... Well, those were just a necessity.
The wheels fell off this operation as far as making it look clean. Like sludge made up of fecal matter moving through an aqueduct under an ancient city, an entire underground operation to push a new date rape drug had been moving beneath my feet like toxic lava.
Operation Sunrise was yet another joint venture between my father, Anthony Messina Sr., Richard Daria, and Patrick Byrne, the feared Irishman from Boston who married into the New York mafia world by wedding Gian’s mother Francesca Bianco.
Someone buried Sunrise so far down in our business records, it never blipped on my radar.
All I had to hear was date rape drug and my skin turned prickly. My fury kicked up too. I was a mob princess, but still a woman. I had limits to what I’d look the other way from.
“This is pretty intense, Julian.” I put down the iPad and stepped to the wet bar in the corner by the window. Pouring a shot of vodka, I said, “Drink, fellas?” I glanced over my shoulder. “I promise you, I don’t have any of those drugs here in the house.”
“Thank you, Rebecca. No. We’re technically on duty.” Julian folded his hands.
“Right.” After taking a shot that lit up my throat and burned my chest, I said, “I turned those cameras off.”
“Still.” Julian smiled. “There are just samples of the drug out there. But they’re turning out to be really potent and fights are breaking out for the limited quantities. We’re trying to figure out where it’s being made. Offshore, most likely. Asia perhaps. Our informant said the bigger shipment dump would land in about two months.”
“I’m thinking it’s gonna be a sizable drop,” Michael added. “Based on the massive influx of money leaving Domenico Holdings and the other companies.”
If Michael was correct, those massive wire transfers were being done by someone else in my company. As the CFO, I would have noticed. Or had my father set up a subsidiary I didn’t know about?
“The shell company operating under Sunrise was built like a Jenga game,” Michael added, flicking the iPad screen to life again, showing me the digital tunnels someone had built. “Domenico, Messina, Daria, and Byrne each control a part that can’t exist without the other.”
“Only a genius lawyer would come up with that one,” Julian said.
Sebastien...
Sebastien was the master at setting up shell companies.
But we all had lawyers who were constantly reorganizing our businesses when the questionable deals drifted too close to the fire.
Nodding to look confident, I did another shot because I couldn’t have felt less in control at the moment.
“And if you get your indictment, I assume the arrest papers will be wide-sweeping. I’d have to—”
“You’re not under arrest, Rebecca. And you won’t be. I’m not an idiot. I can’t take down all of Domenico Holdings and frankly, I don’t want to. You employ twenty-five hundred people.”
“Deals like Sunrise tend to also fund good causes,” Michael said. “Just to get rid of most of the money, I suspect. There’s only so much a person can spend.”
“I agree.” I held my head up high. “And that doesn’t count for anything?”
“A charity built on the back of a date rape drug?” Julian set his hands behind his back. “We can’t overlook that.”
Staring at the DEA and FBI agents in my office, both federal agencies, I realized what I was up against. And all the money my father spent keeping local law enforcement happy and the mayor in custom suits had been a complete waste of time.
“One more thing, Rebecca.” Julian’s voice felt like acid on my skin.
“Sure. Lay it on me. Twist the knife.”
“From what we’ve gathered, word on the street says your father was the mastermind behind Sunrise,” Julian began.
“Those payment channels through the Messinas, the Darias, and the Byrnes weren’t as buried as they should have been,” Michael said. “Although, the attempt to cover them up with false servers and links all over the place that just loop around the world was very sophisticated.”
Giancarlo...
“No one, I mean no one, has better cyber capabilities than the FBI,” Julian added with his head held high and a bite in his voice as if he’d been personally offended that someone would even try.
“Anything digital can be manipulated,” I commented.
Paper though... Authenticated documents didn’t lie. Despite the sophisticated nature of how this had been buried, my father and the others were old-school. I guessed there were documents they’d signed.
But where were they?
“If Sunrise is isolated and self-funded, is Domenico Holdings clean?” I asked.
“Sort of.”
“Just not my father.”
“We have to take him in.”
He’s sick.
“What do you really want?” I sat back in my desk chair, my legs folded seductively. Julian was still a man, and I didn’t miss the way his eyes inched up my legs. “Do you want an old man in jail while Sunrise grows another head?” I feared that would be under Messina’s company. Something told me bars were a great place for predators to buy drinks laced with a date rape drug.
Anthony...
“Or do you want this to stop?” I held up the iPad.
Rage clawed at my insides that these types of drugs were being produced and that my own father, a man with three daughters, would become the dealer. I had to close my eyes to so much working for him. I’d turned numb to all the guards and hitmen who would come into his office with bruised knuckles and blood-stained sleeves.
This I couldn’t ignore.
“Sunrise can’t be shut down overnight,” Julian said. “There’re too many people making money in the food chain now and a promise of a huge ass shipment on the way means this won’t go away quietly.”
“So Messina, Daria, and Byrne are just operational partners. Can they walk away?” I rapped my fingers on my desk, thinking.
“With the money they’ll make, I doubt they will.” Julian cocked his head to me. “Where are you going with this, Rebecca?”
“You admitted you didn’t think I had any knowledge of this. In fact...” I stood and set my shoulders back. “Shame on you for not bringing it to me sooner, Jules.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “I didn’t think to come to you.”
My breath hitched. “Nate. You thought my brother was taking over and that you’d address it with him.”
“It’s now clear to everyone on this side of the fence that your brother has nothing to do with Domenico Holdings and never will.” He must have seen that damn Instagram post too. “Or your sisters. Just you.”
I swallowed. “Give me six weeks to shut down Sunrise. I’ll stop that big shipment. Watch me.” Julian and Michael stared at each other. “I can leave the room so you can talk.”
“We go after big fishes, Rebecca. Your father is a whale.”
I smiled. “Whales are mammals, Julian.”
“You know what I mean,” he snapped. “I don’t want to shut down four major businesses here in the city that employ thousands of people, hard-working New Yorkers. We plan to grant immunity to your father’s partners if they testify against him.”
I kept my inward chuckle to myself. No way would they testify against my father. Unless they knew he was sick.
“Give me seven days to state our intent. But I need something.” I stared into his blue eyes, feeling something stir inside me.
Julian’s face twisted with confusion like he caught the same wave of lust storming through me. “Rebecca, you can’t mean—”
“Semper Amici!”
Julian folded his arms, arching that thick Italian eyebrow at me. “What do you need?”
“Discovery,” I said with confidence. Sebastien was the lawyer, but I listened to him in meetings enough to catch on. “You came to me.”
“I’m here as a favor to you, Rebecca. Not official capacity.”
“You flashed your badge,” I reminded him. “Waved government-purchased shotguns at me!”
Julian cursed under his breath.
“Then let’s split the difference.” I waved the iPad. “I want all of this in writing. My father deserves to see the evidence against him.”
Michael, who’d stayed silent for a few moments, looked around. “Do you have a Wi-Fi printer?”
“I most certainly do.”
Not that I planned to tell my father where any of this came from.
Julian would be dead in twenty-four hours. And that...bothered me.
