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Our conversation last night was brief and straight to the point. All I really had to say to make this meeting happen was one name—Falcone.
Giovanni Falcone is an Italian mafia boss a respectable man like William Wright shouldn’t know. Yet he does.
“It’s all here.” I hand him the envelope, and he takes it as eagerly as a vulture tearing the bones off a carcass.
He pulls out all the documents, and as he starts flicking through the evidence, his face falls further, becoming paler if possible.
I have pictures—a lot of them. I also have whole email conversations, offshore bank transactions, and transcripts of phone conversations.
William might not have had anything to do with Conrad’s setup, but he had his own thing going on to steal from his clients when he gambled away all his money.
To me, it looked like he started gambling in high-stakes poker games and started drinking. There are also records of him going into rehab months after his wife’s death. Things got worse financially for his business, and he was never able to recoup his losses.
That was when he turned to Falcone, who is notorious for buying and selling on the black market. It’s so much easier for men like him to have his very own investment banker at his fingertips—aka, William. A man who can manipulate stocks and shares and anything he wants. Which is exactly what he did.
But what Falcone doesn’t know is that William was also stealing from him.
The reason behind the plan of Aurora marrying Nathan was to replace that money, along with client investments William lost. Nathan’s family would get shares in Wright’s Investments, and William was going to get an investment handout. Except he didn’t tell his friend the whole truth about what the money was for. He left out the part about Falcone.
The whole thing is like a Mexican standoff where everyone has a gun pointed at them, and nobody knows who will pull the trigger first.
When William finishes looking through the documents, he brings a trembling hand to his forehead.
It’s a full minute before he’s able to look me in the eye.
He knows what I have there is enough to put him away for a good twenty years. That’s if I play nice and keep my silence to Falcone. Ifhediscovers what William has done, he’ll kill him and do whatever he sees fit to recoup his losses, including taking his daughter.
“What do you want?” William speaks in a rusty voice, sounding like he hasn’t said a word in centuries. “You obviously want something, or I’d be in prison or six feet under.”
That ruthless smile returns to my face, and I sit forward, keeping my gaze trained on him.
“I want Sunset Cove.”
His brows knit, falling so deep they almost touch. “Sunset Cove isn’t mine to give.”
“Oh, but it is. You are the executor of your daughter’s estate until she turns twenty-five.”
“That is her gift from her mother,” he argues. “It’s the only valuable thing her mother had in this world to give her.”
From the meaningfulness in his tone, I sense that this mess he’s in isn’t the real him. He sounds the way a father should. One who cares but ended up screwing himself over with one bad mistake.
But this is business. He did what he had to do. I’m doing the same.
“I believe your wife left a separate provision that allowed you to act on Aurora’s behalf in exceptional circumstances.”
His jaw drops because I’m not supposed to know that.
The intel was literally in a separate proviso Aurora’s mother only shared with William. Susana Wright was a wise woman who tried to foresee and make provisions for all eventualities. That letter was one of them.
“How the hell did you find out about that? I haven’t even shared that information with Aurora.” He shakes his head in utter disbelief, and I smile wider.
“I know everything I need to know, and I believe this is anexceptional circumstancegiven that you just lost your only ticket to fixing yourdirefinancial situation.”
William stares back at me, unblinking beneath his craggy brows, alarm spreading across his face as the seconds tick by.
He knows I’m right. Nathan and Conrad are completely out of the picture.
When the Feds finish taking everything from them, they won’t even be able to rub two beans together, so William has no one. At least not anyone who is willing to give him the amount of money he needs, which is several million.
