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Matteo slid it closer to me. “It’s everything that I dug up on Carla.”
Eagerly, I grabbed the file, pulling it towards me.
“Shit.” Luca sounded impressed as he looked at the file. “You work a lot faster than I thought.”
Matteo shrugged once more. He almost appeared embarrassed by the compliment. “After everything that happened last night, I figured that time was of the essence. Since you wouldn’t let me watch your back, I decided to do my part.”
My fingers skimmed the edge of the folder.
Luca placed his coffee down on the table. Even my cousin who generally employed a laissez fair attitude toward things appeared eager at the sight of it. “Are you going to open it?”
Though I allowed Carla to believe I did not know anything about her past, when she slept, she’d moaned and cried about her family. The sounds of that grief were unlike anything that I’d ever experienced. It’s why I pretended not to press the issue.
“He’s having a moment of crisis,” Matteo explained. “So, allow me to enlighten you about what I found.”
He leaned forward and pulled the file from me. “Moreno is good. The man practically owns the media, which is interesting given that he’s also one of the largest gun runners in the world.”
This took me aback. “Gun runner? Doesn’t the cartel normally deal with drugs?” Luca asked the question that I was thinking. Every organization had its thing. The cartel was known for peddling opium over the border.
“I was as surprised as you were,” Matteo said. “But it also makes him incredibly powerful. He’s a freaking organization in his own right. Moreno is larger than the cartel.” My brother pulled out a piece of paper. “And with that comes enemies.”
Taking the paper from Matteo, I allowed my eyes to skim the print, and what I saw was one of the worst things I’d ever read. It also didn’t shock me.
“What?” Luca sat up. “What is it?”
The paper crumbled between my fingers as I read through it. Luca plucked it from me, causing the edge to slice against my fingertips. I didn’t react as my mind tried to process what I’d just read.
“Fuck.” Luca released a low whistle of air from between his teeth. “Seems Moreno’s enemies came knocking.”
“This isn’t a joke,” I snapped. Suddenly, a great deal of things were starting to fall into place. “They were slaughtered.”
“Medical examiners’ report was pretty bad,” Matteo told me. “Especially for Carla’s mother. Her brother got a bullet to the skull, but Mrs. Moreno was beaten to death.”
Carla had cried out for her mother in her sleep and her sister.
“Your father did not tell you any of this?” Luca’s brow rose. “He just let her into our lives knowing that the people who killed her family were out there.”
The idea left a bad taste in my mouth. He’d purposefully kept this hidden, and so had my mother. Why?
“Moreno covered this all up well. I had to dig deep to find even this, and the journalist who wrote it is now doing Substacks. I was able to pull some of the police reports, and half of them are redacted. The man is more powerful than anyone I’ve ever known.”
That didn’t surprise me. If Carla’s father was anything like our own, he would have wanted this all to be in his control. My mother once told me that my father desired control over everything else. It was why he wanted me in the city.
I couldn’t leave the family if I couldn’t get away.
“Dad must not think there’s any danger with Carla here.”
Matteo pulled something else out. “Probably because no one knows she’s here. If anyone looks into her, a paper trail leads them to Oxford.” He released a sardonic laugh. “Though if they looked into her grades, they’d wonder how the fuck she got in there. Her transcript is even worse than my own.”
Luca looked at me. “What do you want to do?”
This time my brow rose. It was rare for Luca to ask me what we should do. He wore his position as heir on his sleeve. Not that it bothered me. Luca could run the family organization into the ground if that’s what he wanted, and as long as he didn’t do anything to harm the people I loved, I didn’t give a shit.
“This is your show.” Luca must have seen the question on my face. “After all, she’s staying at your house, and you’ve been put in charge of her.”
Carla was a huge question mark, and I was not someone who liked any sort of upset in life.
“For now, we pretend like we don’t know anything.”
