Chapter Nineteen Leone
I'm already awake when my phone buzzes, lying in the dark with Alexandra's head on my chest and my mind churning through the same problems it's been churning through for weeks. Giovanni. Apex Meridian. The shadow financier who's been bleeding both families while they tear each other apart.
I ease out of bed without waking her and take the call in the hallway.
"Talk," I say.
"We have a situation." Claudio's voice is clipped. Controlled. The voice of a man delivering information, not emotion. "One of our front companies flagged an internal security breach two hours ago. A legal assistant accessed financial ledgers she wasn't authorized to view."
"How much did she see?"
"Enough." A pause. "The offshore accounts. The ghost investors. The numbers that tie the Castillo war to a third party. She doesn't know what she's looking at, but she knows it doesn't belong to us or the Castillo’s."
My blood goes cold. Those ledgers are Alexandra's work, compiled over weeks, hidden in a subsidiary's system for safekeeping while we figured out how to use them. If someone unauthorized has seen them, if they understand what they're looking at...
"Who is she?"
"Charlotte Richardson. Twenty-eight. Legal assistant at Marchetti Holdings for three years. Clean record, no known affiliations, no red flags in her background." Another pause. "She's smart, Leone. Too smart. She recognized the laundering structures. She's already started mapping the connections."
"Where is she now?"
"That's the situation." Claudio's voice tightens slightly. "Someone tried to kill her two hours ago. Professional hit. She barely got out of her apartment alive."
"The financier."
"Has to be. No one else knows those ledgers exist. If she's seen them, if she can connect them to whatever Giovanni is building, she's a liability he can't afford."
I lean against the wall. A legal assistant who stumbled onto the wrong files. A hit team sent to silence her. The conspiracy protecting itself the way conspiracies always do.
"What do you want to do?"
"Bring her in." Claudio's response is immediate. "Not to hurt her. To assess. She's either a liability or a weapon. I need to know which."
"And if she's a liability?"
Silence. Then: "Then we handle it. But I don't think she is. Anyone smart enough to recognize those patterns is smart enough to be useful. Like Alex is."
I trust Claudio's instincts. He's been like a brother to me for fifteen years, the one I send when precision matters more than force. If he thinks this woman is worth the risk, she probably is.
"Do it," I say. "Bring her to the compound. Keep it quiet."
"Already in motion. I'll have her within the hour."
The line goes dead.
I stand in the hallway, phone in hand, staring at nothing. Another variable. Another complication. The war keeps expanding, pulling in people who never asked to be part of it.
Alexandra appears in the doorway of our room. She's wearing one of my t-shirts, hair mussed from sleep, eyes sharp despite the hour.
"What happened?" she asks.
"Someone found your ledgers."
Her face goes pale. "How?"
"Legal assistant at Marchetti Holdings. She accessed files she wasn't supposed to see." I cross to her, take her hands. "Claudio's bringing her in. We need to figure out if she's a threat or an asset."
"If she's seen the offshore accounts, if she understands what they mean..." Alexandra's mind is already racing. I can see it in her eyes, the calculations running. "She could expose everything. Or she could help us trace it further."
"That's what we need to find out."
An hour later, Claudio walks into the compound with Charlotte Richardson.
She's not what I expected. Tall, professional, wearing a blazer that's torn at the shoulder and heels that are scuffed from running.
Her dark hair is pulled back in a ponytail that's coming undone, and there's a cut on her forehead that's still bleeding sluggishly.
But her eyes are clear. Sharp. Taking in every detail of the compound with the analytical precision of someone who's used to deciphering information.
She doesn't look afraid. She looks furious.
"I want to know who tried to kill me," she says before anyone can speak. "And I want to know why those ledgers exist."
Claudio stands behind her, arms crossed, face unreadable. He catches my eye and gives a tiny nod. Assessment: not a liability.
"Sit down, Miss Richardson," I say. "We have a lot to discuss."
The interrogation takes three hours.
Charlotte doesn't buckle. She doesn't stammer or cry or beg. She answers questions with the same cold precision Claudio uses on enemies, and she asks questions of her own that cut closer to the truth than I'd like.
She knows what she saw. She’s almost as quick as my girl. She doesn’t know who's behind it, but she's already started connecting dots.
"You're laundering money," she says flatly. "Both families are. But these accounts aren't yours. They're not the Castillo’s either. Someone else is playing both sides."
"Yes," I say.
"Who?"
"That's what we're trying to find out."
She leans back in her chair. Studies me with those sharp, analytical eyes.
"You brought me here because you think I can help," she says. "Not because you think I'm a threat. If you thought I was a threat, I'd already be dead."
She's not wrong.
"You recognized patterns in those ledgers that you shouldn’t have," I say. "That makes you valuable."
"Valuable enough to protect?"
"That depends on you."
Alexandra has been watching from the corner, silent, absorbing. Now she steps forward.
"I built those ledgers. I found the patterns and put them together.
They were supposed to be in safe holdings, yet somehow you accessed them," she says.
"The offshore accounts, the shell corporations, the money flows.
I've been tracking them for weeks." She pulls a chair up across from Charlotte and sits.
"I need someone who can help me trace them further.
Someone who understands corporate finance at a level I don't."
Charlotte looks at her. Something passes between them. Two women who process the world through numbers and patterns instead of violence and threats.
"What do you need?" Charlotte asks.
"The Cyprus accounts funnel through a law firm in Nicosia. Kontos and Demetriou. They're a service provider, probably clean, but they filed paperwork for six shell corporations between 2022 and 2023. I need to know who authorized those filings."
"You need the beneficial owners."
"Yes."
"That information won't be in any public database. It'll be buried in client files, trust documents, things that require direct access."
"I know." Alexandra leans forward. "Can you get it?"
Charlotte is quiet. Then she looks at Claudio, who's been standing by the door, silent and watchful.
"What happens to me if I help you?"
"You stay here," Claudio says. "Under protection. Until we neutralize whoever tried to kill you."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then you leave. But you leave without our protection, and the people who sent that hit team will find you within twenty-four hours."
It's not a threat. It's a statement of fact. Charlotte seems to understand the difference.
"I'm not a criminal," she says. "I don't work for the mafia. I don't launder money or forge documents or help people hide their assets from the government."
"No one's asking you to," I say. "We're asking you to help Alexandra. That's all. The same thing you do every day, just pointed at a different target."
"A target that tried to kill me."
"Yes."
She's quiet again. Thinking.
Finally, she nods.
Claudio steps forward. "I'll take her to the secure suite. She can work from there."
I watch them go. Charlotte walks beside Claudio, matching his stride, not flinching when he puts a hand on her elbow to guide her through a doorway. She's not intimidated by him.
That's unusual. Most people are.
Alexandra comes to stand beside me.
"She's smart," she says quietly. "She could help us a lot. Aurelio should offer her protection. She’s confident too. I could see it in the way she talked about the ledgers. She understands finances."
"Claudio sees it too."
"I noticed." She glances at me.
There was nothing platonic about the way Claudio looked at Charlotte during the interrogation. Not with interest, exactly. More like... lust. The way a predator looks at another predator. Need and desire warring with each other.
"She's going to be a problem," Alexandra says. "Not for us. For him."
"Maybe. Or maybe she's exactly what he needs."
The next morning, I find Claudio in the armory.
He's alone, which is unusual. Normally Emilio is with him, the two of them moving in sync the way twins do, finishing each other's sentences and anticipating each other's needs. But today it’s Claudio, sitting on the bench with a disassembled pistol spread across the table in front of him, cleaning each piece with methodical precision.
"How's our guest?" I ask.
"Settled. Already working." He doesn't look up from the pistol. "She started digging into the banking systems."
"And you've been watching her."
"That's the job."
"Is it?"
He looks up then. His eyes are flat. Controlled. The eyes of a man who doesn't let anything slip that he doesn't intend to show.
"She's a variable," he says. "I don't like variables."
"You never do."
"Variables get people killed." He sets down the pistol barrel, picks up the slide.
"But she's also the only person besides Alexandra who understands what we're looking at. If we're going to trace Giovanni’s network, we need her. It’ll also give Alex a much-needed break and you two can focus on yourselves for once. "
"And if she turns out to be a plant?"
"Then I handle it." His voice is final. "That's what I do."
I watch him work. The steady hands. The controlled breathing. Emilio is all instinct and speed, explosions and improvisation. Claudio is calculation and control. The blade to his brother's sledgehammer.
"Aurelio is tightening control," I say. "Pulling back on offensive operations, focusing on surveillance and retaliation. He wants psychological chaos, not open warfare."
"Makes sense. The Castillo’s are bleeding us dry between their warehouse hits and taking over the ports. We can't sustain a prolonged conflict."
"He wants you running point on the quiet work. The precise stuff. The threats that need to disappear without anyone knowing they were threats at all."
He slots the slide onto the frame, chambers a round, checks the safety. His movements are fluid, automatic. Twenty years of practice condensed into muscle memory.
"Alexandra found a connection between Apex Meridian and Westpoint."
"Westpoint?"
"Westpoint Academy. Private college. Old money, political dynasties. There was a war between us and the Castillo’s and then the building went up in flames. Secret societies, students who disappeared. The Silent. I was there. Didn’t think it all lead to the same source, but here we are."
Claudio goes still.
"I've heard that name," he says quietly. “You’d know more than I do.”
He stands. Holsters the pistol.
"Leone. If this goes where I think it's going, if The Silent is real and Giovanni Russo is connected to it... we're going to need more than soldiers. We're going to need to dismantle their financial infrastructure from the inside."
"We will figure the pieces out. It’s just a matter of time.”
He nods once and leaves.
I sit alone in the armory, surrounded by weapons. Westpoint. The Castillo’s. Us. All of it leading back to one point. And we've brought yet another civilian into the middle of it, a woman who can help mine with bearing the load of uncovering it all.
Walking out, still deep in thought, I find Alexandra in our quarters, hunched over her laptop.
She looks up when I enter, and I can see the exhaustion in her eyes.
She's been working longer hours since Charlotte arrived, cross-referencing everything the new asset has identified with her own research.
"Anything?" I ask.
"Too much." She leans back, rubbing her eyes. "Charlotte's good. She’s taking my ties and finding the banks they’re attached to. The piece I’ve been trying to solve, but with a project this big, I can only do so much. She connected someone with the larger corporations I’ve been looking at. But… I think she’s hiding something.”
"Giovanni."
"Sure. Or something else." She sighs. “Hopefully Claudio will be able to figure it out.”
“He will. Or she’s going to be fish food.”
“LEO!” Alexandra squeals. “That’s terrible!”
A chuckle escapes me, “Not as terrible as the things I’m about to do to you.”