Chapter 10
Fatima had not been taken from my house.
She left.
That distinction saved someone’s life.
Rafe’s men found security footage.
A woman in catering whites approached Fatima through the service entrance and told her Alessandro wanted mother and daughter moved for safety.
Fatima believed her.
Why wouldn’t she?
The woman wore one of my household pins.
Fake.
Again, my name turned into a key.
The car took them toward the old Rienzi greenhouse property.
Marcus knew it.
His face gave him away.
I turned toward him.
“Insurance.”
He sighed.
“No one was going to hurt them.”
I looked at Genevieve.
She laughed once.
Bitter.
“That’s what they always say.”
Good.
She was finally hearing her own excuses in someone else’s mouth.
The greenhouse belonged to my uncle Lorenzo decades earlier.
Of course.
Every road returned to dead men.
We reached it within forty minutes.
Fatima and Amara were inside.
Not tied.
Not physically harmed.
The doors were locked.
Two Ashworth men stood outside.
My guards removed them quickly.
Non-graphic.
Efficient.
Amara ran toward me carrying the stuffed lamb, now dry except for one champagne stain near the ear.
“Mr. Alessandro!”
I crouched.
“You okay?”
She nodded.
Then frowned.
“You said nobody stops us.”
The accusation was simple.
Devastating.
“I know.”
Technically I had said nobody would stop them.
Someone used my authority to move them instead.
To a child, difference meant nothing.
“I’m sorry.”
She studied me.
Then handed me the lamb.
“Hold.”
Apparently forgiveness came with responsibility.
I held it.
Fatima stood several feet away.
“I should have known.”
“No.”
I looked at her.
“You should not have to interrogate every person wearing my family pin.”
That failure belonged to the system.
Then Fatima said something useful.
The woman who brought them made one phone call.
She told someone:
“The maid is secure. Start with the accounts before Rienzi gets back.”
Accounts.
Not violence.
Money.
I looked at Rafe.
He understood.
While I chased conspirators across houses, someone was trying to move the organization’s financial control.
We returned immediately.
Halfway back, my accountant called.
Three authorization attempts had already been made using my uncle Lorenzo’s obsolete signet credentials.
The ring had not been symbolic.
May you like
It was a key to old family structures nobody had bothered to fully erase.
The dead were still signing paperwork through systems I thought no longer existed.
