Chapter 14 A Name He Knows #2
"People, Del. Moved alongside product, through supply chains built specifically to make that kind of movement look unremarkable.
" Matteo watched her face as the words landed, watched the specific moment disbelief flickered across her features before something colder replaced it.
"Nightclubs make ideal cover. High staff turnover, cash economy, deliveries nobody questions. "
"You're saying Marea is one of his fronts."
"I'm saying the wire transfer Nico found, fifteen thousand dollars, no invoice, sender listed as V.
Sorin, sitting in your club's earliest financial records, isn't a coincidence given everything I just told you.
" Matteo said it without flinching, without softening the accusation buried inside the observation, because she deserved the truth delivered whole rather than cushioned into something easier to survive.
"I think someone funded Marea from the beginning specifically because it would become exactly what it's become.
Clean. Legitimate. Fast growing. The perfect camouflage. "
Del went very still, the color draining slowly from her face, and Matteo watched her process the accusation methodically, refusing to let the full weight land until she'd examined every angle for an escape route.
"That's not possible," she said. "I built Marea. My money, my hands, my risk. I took out a loan against my own car in year one because I refused to let anyone else have a stake in what I was building."
"I know."
"I would know if someone else was funding it from the beginning."
"Would you?" Matteo said it gently, though the gentleness cost him considerably, because the honest answer sat between them heavier than either of them wanted to hold.
"You showed me your books last night, Del.
You told me yourself you'd never seen the whole picture assembled in one place before, because you'd built a version of your history that never struggled, successful from the first day.
If someone laundered money through your accounts early enough, carefully enough, is it possible a fifteen thousand dollar wire transfer got absorbed into the noise of a business barely staying afloat, exactly the kind of year you told me about last night? "
Del's jaw tightened, and for a long moment she said nothing, standing in the middle of his office with her arms wrapped tight around herself, refusing to let fear show even as everything in her expression suggested it was fighting to surface.
"I don't believe it," she said finally.
"I understand why."
"No, you don't understand, because you're standing there telling me the one thing I've been most proud of in my entire adult life might have been a lie from the very first day, and you're delivering it like it's a business update instead of the worst thing anyone's ever told me.
" Her voice cracked, sharp, raw, and Matteo felt the words land with real force, deserved force, because he had delivered it exactly that flatly, refusing to soften what needed to be said clearly.
"I'm not going to lie to you about this to make it easier to hear."
"I'm not asking you to lie. I'm asking you to understand what you just did to me."
"I do understand." Matteo closed the distance between them, close enough now that he could see her hands trembling despite the fury holding her spine straight.
"And I'm telling you this way because you deserve the truth clean, not managed, not softened into something I think you can handle better.
You've spent your whole life proving you can handle the truth.
I'm not going to be the person who decides you can't."
Del looked at him, something complicated moving behind her eyes, fury and gratitude and disbelief all tangled together in a way that made her look, for the first time since he'd met her, genuinely uncertain of the ground beneath her feet.
"I need to see the records myself," she said. "Not your version. Not Ronan's summary. I need to sit with Nico and go through Marea's books from the beginning, every transaction, every wire, until I either find proof this is true or prove you and your contacts got it wrong."
"That's fair."
"I don't believe it," she said again, quieter this time, though something in her voice suggested the words had less certainty in them than they had thirty seconds ago. "I refuse to believe eleven years of my life, everything I built, was never actually mine to build."
"Then prove it wrong."
"I intend to."
She turned toward the door, spine straight, composure rebuilding itself, and paused there with her hand on the frame.
"Matteo."
"Yeah."
"If this is true, if Sorin's been using my club this entire time, I need you to understand something.
" Her voice had gone flat, cold, a register he hadn't heard from her before.
"I'm not going to be someone's victim in this.
Whatever he's built through my business, whatever he thinks he owns because of it, I'm going to be the one who ends it. Not you. Not your organization. Me."
"I wouldn't expect anything less."
She left without another word, and Matteo stood alone in the office, watching the door close behind her.
Ronan reappeared a few minutes later, expression careful. "How'd she take it?"
"About as well as you'd expect from a woman who just found out the foundation of her entire life might be a lie."
"You told her straight. No cushioning."
"She deserved that much." Matteo crossed to the window, looking down at the district, Marea's sign visible even in daylight, a bright, defiant smear of magenta against the gray morning.
"Whatever she finds when she goes through those books, she needed to walk into it clear eyed, not managed by me protecting her from a truth I decided she couldn't handle. "
"And if she finds proof this is real?"
Matteo thought about the fury and fear tangled together in her expression an hour ago, the trembling hands she'd refused to let control the rest of her body, the flat, cold certainty in her voice when she'd told him she intended to be the one who ended this herself.
"Then this district's about to get considerably more dangerous," he said, "and I intend to be standing right beside her when it does."