Chapter 9
MATTEO
WE SPLIT THE WORK BECAUSE there’s too much of it for one person. Amalia focuses on studying the money trail. I take the reports from her men about chatter instead, since gossip and rumors can often reveal interesting things.
She’s got a laptop open and folders fanned out in front of her, and she’s scribbling something in the margin of a page. I lean back in my chair and watch her work before I pull my own pile toward me.
“You’re going to overthink it,” she says, without looking up.
“Overthink what? I haven’t even started.” I frown.
“Exactly. You stared at faces in those photos as if they owed you an answer.”
“That’s called being thorough.”
“More like stalling.” A faint smile tugs at her mouth. “Some of us just skim through and find the important parts.”
“And some of us read through the whole thing for hidden info.”
She finally glances over at me, one eyebrow arched. “Did you just call me superficial?”
“I didn’t. You said skim.”
She laughs, and I grin, but then I focus on my work. Every now and then, I keep glancing up at her. Why do I find her so interesting? I have no idea. Maybe because I’ve never been around a woman like her.
As I stare at Amalia for I don’t know which time, I realize her eyes are narrowed at the screen.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“A company.” She doesn’t take her eyes off the screen. “It buys and sells nothing. No products, no clients, no employees that I can find... But money moves through it. A lot of it, in and out. Always to other companies that seem exactly like this one.”
“A shell.”
“A shell inside a shell inside a shell.” She turns the laptop toward me and points.
“And every one of them eventually traces back to a man who’s worked for Dominic for years.
On paper, he’s a nobody. An accountant. But these accounts have moved more money in a year than Dominic’s legitimate businesses bring in. ”
I lean in to read the numbers, and yep, money laundering, buried under a bunch of paperwork to look boring to anyone who didn’t know what to look for.
“This is good,” I say.
“Yep, very good.” She grins. “If we follow these companies far enough, we’ll find where the real money is and who else has their hands in it.”
“And the people whose names are on these accounts. They’re exposed. If any of this ever came out, they’d go down with him. That’s leverage.”
“Exactly what I was thinking.” She pulls the laptop back and starts typing. “We need to find out who else is connected to these shells. Partners, middlemen, whoever signs the papers... One of them is going to have a reason to be nervous, and we can use that.”
We’ve got the money trail now, which is more than we had this morning, but a trail on a screen can only take us so far.
At some point, we have to put ourselves in front of these people, hear how they talk, and watch how they flinch when certain names come up.
You can’t read much off a bank statement.
“There’s a way to speed this up,” I say.
“Maybe you already know, but there’s an event.
The kind that doesn’t get advertised. People in our world host them every so often, and Dominic’s men go.
The middlemen and the ones who handle the money might like to be seen at things like that.
It makes them feel like they’re part of something instead of just bookkeepers.
If we’re there, we can hear what they’re saying when they think they’re among friends.
We can watch who Dominic’s people defer to and who they ignore.
That’s worth more than another week of records. ”
She studies me a moment. “I heard, but do you know how to get into one of these? Apparently, you need a special invitation.”
“I know who to ask.” I shrug.
“Then we can go.” She claps her hands in front of her.
“But not blind. We need to know exactly what we’re getting into before we walk in.
And maybe we can come up with a different story.
We don’t have to go there as ourselves. We can use wigs and makeup to change our appearance.
It’s better that we appear as ourselves when we’re fully ready and have more info.
For now, we can improvise. And if we mess something up, we won’t do it as ourselves, so no harm. ”
I nod, and we run through our parts like we did the Dominic story, except this time it’s less about what to say and more about how we appear.
Amalia pretends to be a woman who’s bored and rich and used to getting her way, and she’s frighteningly good at it.
I play the husband who likes that everyone watches when he comes through the door.
We go back and forth, figuring out our story until it makes sense.
“Where did our money come from?” she asks.
“Shipping. Boring and clean enough that no one asks twice, and dirty enough underneath that the right people understand.” I lift my chin. “And yours?”
“I don’t talk about mine. I let them wonder. A woman with secrets is more interesting than one with answers.”
“You’d know.” I chuckle.
She gives me a look, but her lips twitch. “Stay in your role.”
“I am. I’m an arrogant man with too much money and a beautiful wife. It’s not a stretch.”
A laugh slips out of her throat. As she reaches toward one of the papers, I try to pass it to her, and our hands end up touching. Her gaze meets mine, and a zap of something rushes through my fingers, so I pull my hand back. What the fuck was that?
As we go back to our work, eventually she runs a hand over her face.
“This is dangerous, even if it doesn’t feel that way.
If one person in that room recognizes me or you, we’re not getting a second chance.
” She scratches her chin. “And getting this close and blowing it because I got cocky or careless...”
“You’ve waited too long to be careless now.
And you won’t be alone in there,” I say and she glances at me, so I hold her gaze so she’d know that I mean it.
“Whatever goes wrong, it’ll be for both of us.
I’m not going to leave you there on your own.
We’re stronger together than apart, and that’s just true. ”
She tilts her head, eyeing me carefully. “You say that now, but once you get there and you think you can taste your freedom...”
“I give you my word. Besides, trusting unknown men over you and turning against you would make me really stupid.”
“And very, very dead.” The corners of her lips quirk up. “Okay, so we’re not going to get everything in one night, and we won’t even try. We’ll listen so we can get information, Dominic’s allies, and a real picture of his world. Anything more is a bonus.”
I nod. She knows exactly what she’s walking into and she’s still willing to do it. It’s admirable. I thought I’d be tolerating her and humoring a woman who got handed power she didn’t know how to use, but she proves me wrong every time she opens her mouth and I really like that.
“What?” she says, because I must’ve been staring.
“Nothing, just thinking that you’re probably better at this than your father ever was.”
“Don’t get soft on me now,” she says, shaking her head.
I grin and pull the reports closer. Soft isn’t the word for it. But I’m not going to argue with her about that either.