AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I thought it had been weird that nobody had bothered coming after Mia more than once. Nobody seemed to care, aside from her friend who had fallen completely off the grid. But now, it all made sense. They were closer than I thought to finishing this, and I needed to figure out how. Who the hell had gotten deep enough within my ranks to warrant this level of drawback?
9
MIA GENOVESE
I strode toward the large, double office doors at the end of the hallway, and I took a deep breath. It had been another week, and nobody had bothered coming for the documents, but I’d gone through them all with a fine-toothed comb. Despite half of the information being boxed out with a black sharpie, I was one hundred percent certain that I’d found outstanding debts that nobody had known about—large ones.
Two armed guards stood outside Vincent’s doors, and I paused in front of them. To my sheer surprise, neither of them stopped me. They each stepped aside and let me stride into the room. I pushed through the doors, and the guards behind me pulled them closed again with a boom.
Vincent sat across his desk, hands crossed over one another as he spoke to Caterina. Her eyes turned toward me immediately, and one of her thin brows rose in what I assumed was surprise. She held a thin blade in front of her and swiped the tip of it beneath each of her fingernails. She lay back on the couch, one knee propped up and the other relaxed.
“I don’t know why they let me in,” I said. “I didn’t realize you were in a meeting.”
“It’s nothing formal,” Caterina said with a shrug.
“And you’re on my list of people they’re not to stop,” Vincent said. “What do you need?”
I looked between them and bit my lip before shaking my head. “I’ll come back.”
“No, you won’t,” Vincent demanded. “Show me what you have there.”
I could make this quick, I decided. I planned to show him where all the outstanding debts rested, but I could just pass over the stack. My notes on the back of many sheets were self-explanatory, and he certainly didn’t need me to decipher them.
“Here,” I said, passing them over and pointing to the top paper. “I have everything listed regarding outstanding debts, and there’s a ton of them. You can see where they all came from in the stack.”
I took a step back, making to leave the room, but Caterina stood. “You stay and go over all of this with Vinny. We have our business settled.”
I couldn’t help but look her up and down, specifically at the knife she still expertly twirled in her hand. “Whoareyou?” I found myself asking without thought. The moment the words came out of my mouth, I closed it quickly. I hadn’t intended to ask the question out loud.
She laughed. “I think the question you’re looking for is ‘what can you do?’ The answer is a lot of things.”
I knew I should keep my mouth closed, but I couldn’t help myself. “At the fight last week, how did you do that?” She had to know what I meant. She’d snuck up on a grown man and shot him without ever being seen. She’d used moves to fight others even I couldn’t do.
Vincent chimed in. “Our Caterina had a unique upbringing,” he said, looking her over. “She used to be a pickpocket—a damn good one—in order to earn enough money to survive.”
“Blending in has always been my specialty,” she admitted. “It’s how I survived as long as I did. The first person to ever catch me was Vinny himself, and he wasnothappy when I chummed a gold watch and a few hundred bucks off of him, even after he caught me and took back the wallet. I didn’t know who he was at the time, but when he found me later and told me, I realized that staying here would be my best bet.”
I wondered what kind of upbringing she must’ve had to need to pick the pockets of strangers for a living. I had a feeling that Caterina’s story was a lot more intense and interesting than either of them was letting on, but before I could ask, she turned toward the door. “I’ll keep my ears to the ground on the west side and see if I hear anything.” And like that, she was gone.
“What’s happening on the west side?” I asked.
Vincent shot me a piercing glance, and I nearly took a step back at the weight of it. Fortunately, I managed to keep myself cemented to the spot. “I learned some new information.”
“No need to be cryptic,” I scoffed, rolling my eyes. “It’s not like you plan to leave me alive long enough to do anything with the information, do you?”
He sat a little straighter. “You’ll be pleased to know that your family has pulled back because they have someone who’s infiltrated ourborgata, and there’s no need to have boots on the ground when they have a way in already.”
I clenched my jaw as I considered it. They didn’t bother sending anyone for me, because they had another way into Vincent’s business arrangements? I didn’t think I could hate my father more for leaving me here, completely uncaring about my well-being. Whomever he had on the inside had better—
I cut off my own thought process. They had pulled back as soon as Vincent had taken me. I’d assumed my father’s lack of interest in retrieving me had been a lack of care, but now I couldn’t help but wonder if it wasn’t that at all. It couldn’t be a coincidence that there was now someone on the ground on the inside. That someone wasme.I knew I should be pleased that he put so much stake in me gathering information and doing my job; but as his daughter, I’d expected him to care for me more than this. To be interested in retrieving me and sending me back on our terms. But he spoke about me like I was nothing more than a pawn, and I wouldn’t let that stand. I couldn’t be just that. I’d always known that I was a tool to him, but I thought he cared enough to see me as more than that, too.
“Interesting,” I finally replied.
“Interesting is the only thing you have to say?” Vincent asked, easing himself to his feet in a way that I knew should’ve scared me. It didn’t, though. I knew my days here were numbered, and I realized there was little he could do to intimidate me.
“I’m not there,” I told him with a shrug, wrapping my arms around myself. “As I said, it’s not like it’s going to affect me at all.”
With a predatory stiffness, he moved around the desk and approached me, and I held my breath, my body reacting in a way I didn’t want to admit. He stopped when he stood mere centimeters from me, and his eyes flickered across each crevice of my face wildly, almost as if he was searching for something there. “I don’t fucking like you,” he told me. “And I don’t like your attitude.”
