Chapter 39 #2
Pietro nods, face grim. “I understand it very much. You are not to blame for protecting your son, Ada.”
Her eyes flash gratefully. “I worked on the books for many years since, calculating profits, losses, and the secret accounts that Gregorio kept with all the money he was making. I figured out pretty quickly that he was skimming much more money than the agreements were for, but I kept my mouth shut.” She took a deep breath.
“I just made a separate ledger for those amounts and hid them away.”
“Wait, you were able to hide those all this time?” Nico asks. She nods. “And how did he not find them?”
“He only ever wanted the main ledger. He knew I was smart, but he never counted on me being smart enough to realize what he was doing. I hid the ledgers in a small hole behind one of the paintings in my room. He would at times search my room, making sure I wasn’t hiding a bug or squirreling money away, but never found anything so he would leave it be for a while.
Eventually he would do it again, but they got less frequent as he got more involved in his businesses and working with Nico’s mother. ”
“Did you see or hear them meet?” Alessio asks gently.
Ada nods. “She was over at least once a month. I wasn’t often around, but the few times I was, it struck me that she was far too calm and lucid to be drunk or on the drugs he told me she was always dousing herself with.
She was very angry once that he had dared to change a shipment without consulting her.
He slapped her hard across the face, told her without him she would be nothing.
She surprised me though. She grabbed the gun on his desk before he could react and she put it right against his temple.
She threatened that if he ever struck her again, it would be him that would die and she’d take over.
She had men in her life that could make it happen.
It wasn’t until later that I learned it was the other families that she was talking about.
Esposito was frightened of that. Of the possibility that they would cut him out.
Things were tense for a long time between the two of them before they finally got back to normal.
But I also noted that his portions weren’t as large as they were before when it came to profits and what he was skimming.
I didn’t know if that was his own caution or her getting back at him.
I figured out quickly that it was her doing the majority of the books for the entire ring as a whole. ”
“I’m surprised he didn’t kill her,” Nico mutters, frowning. “Gregorio has no respect for women, either, which is why he fits in with the others so well.”
“She had control of the main books,” Ada explains. “She was the money person, and she refused to give those up to him. He knew that if she was dead, he had nothing. But he waited to get revenge.” She looks at him. “Until you killed your father and he saw his chance to take it over fully.”
Nico stills, eyes darkening. “Gregorio was the one to give Dante just that hint of what was going on so I would look into it.”
Ada nods. “He didn’t want Dante to know it was coming from him, so he paid off some men to make sure that the payment and the women who were being sent through that night would be intercepted by you.
He paid them really well, too, to make sure that they wouldn’t tell you anything about him being involved.
When you didn’t come after him and killed your mother, he knew he was alright.
So he worked with the De Lucas and Gallos to move the routes, hide them again, so you wouldn’t find out, and he assumed the books and all parts of it.
Leonardo and Giovanni tried to fight that, Seamus as well, but at the time he was so overwhelmed with grief for your mother he didn’t push too hard.
” She swallows hard. “I was given the books and told to make them work. I was responsible for paying out the payments, making sure that Gregorio got more than his fair share and keep things running smoothly. The last few months though, things have been tense, and he’s been stressed.
Something about you sticking your nose in and screwing things up.
He had a deal with Leonardo to marry Dante to his daughter, but that was in jeopardy since you married her.
The routes have been halted for the last couple weeks, and he’s been demanding that Leonardo get them back up and running with Seamus’s help because of his contacts and the money they’re losing. ”
“Have you heard anything about him having a buyer for a woman? Either the Conti’s or the Bianchi’s?” Dante asks her gently.
She nods. “I heard him on the phone with the Bianchis the other night. They were pissed about not getting the merchandise they were promised. He’s trying to smooth it out but it’s not going as well.
They are demanding a replacement or they want their money back, and Gregorio refuses to part with a single penny.
He told Leonardo that since he lost it, he was in charge of getting it back. ”
“Fuck, so they are going to try to make a move to get Lucy, and probably the rest of us, back,” Sienna gripes. “Why can’t they just accept that we don’t want anything to do with them? We got out, we don’t want their twisted version of family.”
Ada’s entire demeanor changes as she stares at Sienna. Her lips tremble, her body going rigid, and her eyes widening in both shock and horror. “Mama?” Dante asks, concerned.
Ada ignores him, just stares at Sienna. “W-W-What did you say?” she whispers.
Sienna blinks, brow furrowing in confusion. She glances at Alessio whose eyes are narrowed on the older woman. Not menacingly, more thoughtful, curious even. Sienna looks back at Ada, and repeats her statement. “I guess you haven’t heard that we’re back, huh?” she jokes lightly.
“We?” Ada gasps, looking around the room. Her eyes fall on me, then Amara. Suddenly she starts talking in another language that I don’t recognize, but Dante must, because for once he looks shocked. His mouth goes slack, he takes a step back, making Sofia look at him in concern.
“Holy shit,” Dante breathes. “You. That’s the piece that was missing. That’s why he blackmailed you.”
“What did she say?” Nico demands.
Ada gets shakily to her feet, ignoring the hand Pietro offers her.
She steps closer to Sienna, her eyes wet.
Oh so carefully, like she’s sure that Sienna will bolt, she cups the side of Sienna’s face.
Sienna stiffens, but doesn’t pull away. “I knew that you would get away but I hoped to never see you pulled back in,” Ada whispers.
Then she pulls away and her gaze sweeps to Amara and then me.
The tears spill down her cheeks. “I tried my best, but I failed if they found you. I am so sorry.”
“What is she talking about?” I whisper to Massimo, unease making my stomach cramp. Massimo doesn’t answer, eyes narrowed like he’s trying to fit the pieces together.
“You got us out,” Amara suddenly says softly, watching Ada. “Or you were the one to set up the network to get us out, right?”
A collective gasp fills the room. Ada looks at Amara, nodding slowly.
“Bianca De Luca was suffering greatly at the hands of Giovanni. He beat her daily for not doing things the way he wanted. They came to our home one night because Giovanni wanted to talk to Gregorio about the routes and the cuts, and that left her with me in the kitchen. She was bruised and so broken, pregnant and exhausted, but also determined. She told me she found out earlier in the day the baby was a girl, and she would not allow her to suffer the same fate as her. She was working on a plan. I told her it was dangerous to be talking of such things, but she told me that she would do anything to save her daughter. Her own family abandoned her, left her to being abused instead of helping her. They wanted the connections more. At first I told her I couldn’t help her, but then she told me that she already had a plan, and had been thinking about it for just such a case.
She had people in place that could help her, but she needed someone on the outside to take the baby where it needed to go.
She had someone ready to take her. I thought it over, but I just kept thinking of her child being forced into such a life because of her gender.
It was well known through the staff in all the family's households that the De Lucas only wanted boys. So I agreed.”
“How…How did you get me out?” Amara finally asks, her voice trembling.
“The doctor was paid off and you were given to the nurse, who gave her to Bianca’s housekeeper.
She then snuck you out to me. I had to meet her at an abandoned warehouse down the road from Gregorio’s.
From there, I was in charge of getting you to the next point of contact, who would get you out of the city. Out of the state.”
“And Gregorio found out,” Nico butts in. “That’s why he blackmailed you, right?”
Ada nods. “It was when I got the final baby out. I was so tired, and he had beaten me again, and…well, other things, and I wasn’t as careful.
He followed me, thinking I was sneaking out to see a lover, but when he saw me with the baby and taking her to the next destination, he knew I was involved in something.
He held me for days until I finally told him.
He told me that I wouldn’t be helping anymore, and that I had to do what he said or he would hand me over to Leonardo and Giovanni to do with me as they pleased.
He’d also kill Dante. That’s how he got me to do the books.
” She looks at Amara. “Are you the youngest?”
“I’m the oldest,” Amara says with a sad smile.
“I was the first one you go out. Sienna would have been a few months after me.” She looks over at me.
“Lucy is the youngest out of all of us that got out. We don’t know about my other sister.
” She gives her a hopeful smile. “Do you remember her? She would have been the only other daughter from Bianca.”
Ada nods slowly. “She was a very sombre baby. So quiet, while the rest of you liked to cry. She was given to a Russian woman, Anya. We tried to go through each family so that they didn’t trace back to just one. I don’t know what her final destination was after that, I am sorry.”
“That gives a new place to start,” Aurelio assures her with a warm smile. He pulls out his phone. “I’ll get our men on it with that new information.”
I look at Massimo, shocked. This woman was one of the ones to help get us out? I don’t know what I’m supposed to say about any of it, but one thing I do know is that Leonardo and Esposito won’t take her spilling any of this to us well.
Just how much danger are we about to be in?