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Anni had come out of the laundry room. “Hi,” she said with a small smile.
I looked carefully at her, but she didn’t seem to have heard me talking to Clara.
I didn’t want her to know that I’d just been trying to get Clara to say Dadda. I concealed my emotions and moved my mind to a safe topic. “Where did the new dress come from?”
“I took the children to choose some new clothes a couple of weeks ago. I know it’s taken a while to get Clara to wear the new things, but—”
“But nothing,” I said firmly. “I’m pleased to see the new dress. Good job.”
Anni’s eyebrows shot up at my praise, and I realized that I probably hadn’t given her much credit since she’d arrived and started taking care of the children. She was more mature than I’d given her credit for, and I probably hadn’t appreciated her enough so far.
The cat trotted off toward the kitchen, probably to try the same thing on Adelina to get a snack from her. She also, for some reason, seemed obsessed with the animal.
The cat looked over his shoulder as he heard Clara follow him, and after waiting for her to catch up, they both went into the kitchen side-by-side. Clara spent a lot of time with the cat—maybe he was good for her in some way, although I didn’t understand it.
Adelina came through to put the food onto the dining table, Clemente at her heels, and then we all sat down to eat.
“Did you manage to get any further with the problem at the bakeries?” enquired Anni. Although she was making conversation, she seemed distracted. She must have had a busy day, I thought.
“No. Aloysius and I have been working on it for a while now, looking at all possible avenues, but we keep drawing a blank.”
“What signaled it in the first place that there’s a problem?”
“A contact of mine at our bank told me that one of our guys, Alberto, has been depositing large sums into his account. He works for us, overseeing a lot of the stuff going on at the bakeries. There’s no way he could have that sort of income. The idiot should have used a different bank, but he knows that our bank doesn’t ask questions which is why they are safer to use. He didn’t know that we keep tabs on the men’s accounts.”
“Where do you think his extra money might be coming from?”
“We thought he might be doing a sideline, like working for the Bratva or Cartels as well and earning money from them. But we’ve had him followed and all his online activity tracked for over two months now, and we’ve come up with zilch. Which means he must be taking money from the bakeries business—that’s the only business he’s closely involved in.”
A small frown puckered Anni’s forehead. “Are the bakeries losing money?”
“That’s the thing. They are making less money than they used to, but that’s all explainable due to higher overheads. Our accountants have gone through all the accounts, but nothing is showing up as suspicious—it’s all as it should be.”
“What are you looking into next?”
“I really don’t know. I’ve brought a set of accounts home with me tonight to have another look through it. Aloysius’s coming over after dinner so we can go through it together—two heads are better than one. But I don’t think the problem is there. I’m beginning to think that maybe Alberto is taking a small cut from a number of bakeries.”
“That would be harder to detect, right?”
“Yes, because smaller amounts are easier to hide. But the bigger worry is that if this is Alberto’s mode of operation, he must also have quite a few of the bakery employees working with him—so we’re looking at not just him betraying us, but also betrayal from a number of our associates who are working in the bakeries. We can’t run a money laundering operation through a business containing so many disloyal men. The only reason we have the bakeries is for laundering purposes. The whole thing is a complete nightmare.”
It was good to be able to talk this through with Anni, and she seemed genuinely interested. Rita would have forbidden any such business talk, hating all the illegal things that went on within our organization.
“You don’t mind me talking about business at home?”
“No, my papà and brothers were always talking about their work during mealtimes, so I’ve grown up used to it.”
ANNUNCIATA
We had just finished up our meal when Lorenzo headed into his study to take a phone call.
The children had gone into the den to finish watching a cartoon and then it would be time to take them upstairs for their bath time. I was just about to go into the kitchen when Aloysius arrived.
“Hey Anni.”
“Hi Aloysius.”
Lorenzo saw Aloysius in the hallway through his open study door. Covering the mouthpiece of his phone, he said, “Just give me a couple of minutes to take this call, Aloysius.”
