Chapter 10 Rafe
RAFE
The conference room stretches along the eastern side of the building, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the industrial district below.
I sit at the far end of the table with my hands folded in front of me and listen to men who have never touched a ledger in their lives lecture me about financial oversight.
The board of directors fills the seats on either side in their expensive suits and their concerned expressions.
And at the head of the table sits Don Salvatore Ferretti, my uncle, the man who built this empire before I was old enough to understand what it meant.
His silver hair is combed back from his forehead, and his barrel chest fills out his tailored jacket in a way that makes him look both imposing and grandfatherly.
His blue eyes are on me now, though, and I know he's waiting for me to explain how we ended up here.
Sal is a hard man, but he's not unreasonable with family. That's what I'm banking on today.
"The accounts are frozen," one of the directors says, a man named Patterson who handles the legitimate side of the pharmaceutical operations.
His gray hair is thinning at the crown, and his hands shake slightly as he flips through the papers in front of him.
"Three of our primary operating accounts have been locked pending federal review.
We can't process payroll. We can't pay suppliers. We can't move inventory."
"I understand that, but it's not like any of us could have foreseen this." There is no other explanation. Lombardi's death triggered a cascade of automatic fail-safes. Just like the one that will be triggered on Christmas Eve if Riley can't figure my shit out.
Riley—who sits in my office right now because these meetings seem to be more important to men in suits than the fact that I'm floundering behind the scenes scrambling to keep the damn place afloat.
"The unforeseeable is what you as CEO are paid to see, Mr. Ferretti.
" The man is livid, fuming. If he had smoke coming from his ears I wouldn’t be surprised.
They hated that the Ferrettis took over this company hostilely and without any remorse.
They'll hate it even more when I fire every person at this table for wasting my time.
I lean back in my chair and keep my expression neutral.
There's an investigation that started the moment the banker's body surfaced in the river two days ago—no thanks to my idiot men who can't do a job right.
The news coverage has been relentless, authorities investigating possible foul play.
The story spread faster than I anticipated, and now every agency with jurisdiction is circling, looking for an angle.
"What triggered the freeze?" Sal asks, but his eyes are on me.
I know he wants explanations but to him, this business is burnable.
I'm burnable. He won’t do that to me because we're family, but he doesn't have to make this easy on me.
I've seen him let his own son go to county lock up for thirty days for lesser things to teach him a lesson.
Probably a good thing, because Joel needs to learn a few things, but none of this is my doing.
Lombardi tanked me hard and now I'm fighting to keep my head up.
"The banker's accounts were flagged," Patterson says. "When they ran his financials, they found irregularities and his credentials were used for things after the time they know he was dead. They traced some payments back to our accounts, and now they're reviewing everything."
"Irregularities," Sal repeats as he looks back at me. "Rafe, you told me this was handled."
"It was," I say. "The banker kept his records separate. He knew how to move money without leaving trails."
"And yet here we are."
I don't respond. There's nothing to say.
The banker's paranoia kept us insulated for years, but it also made him the single point of failure.
He was paranoid about everything, including a punishment from us.
When he died, he took all of his safeguards with him, and now we're scrambling to rebuild systems that should never have depended on one man.
"There's more," Patterson says, and I feel my shoulders tighten. "Some of his ledger pages are missing, and there's suspicion that the FBI has them following a raid at the home of Enzo Caruso." This time, everyone looks at me and I feel the heat of their stares.
The room goes quiet. Every man at the table knows what that means.
Enzo is a wiry opportunist who's been trying to muscle into our territory for months.
If he has ledger pages, he got them from the banker or the black market.
And if the Feds have them now, we're looking at evidence we can't control.
"What's on the pages?" Don Salvatore asks.
"We don't know," I say. "The banker sold them before he died. Probably trying to pay off debts or buy himself protection. But we have no way of knowing what he gave them."
And this part is my fault. I threatened him when I couldn’t control his movements, and he used the smarts he developed over years of working for me to get a few steps ahead when I wasn't looking. That's on me.
"Guess."
I meet his gaze. "Who knows… Shell accounts. Stash house addresses. Employee names. Anything he thought would keep him alive."
Don Salvatore leans back in his chair and steeples his fingers in front of himself. He's silent for a long moment, and the tension in the room grows heavier with each passing second. Finally, he speaks.
"This pharmaceutical company was supposed to give us legitimacy. It was supposed to provide cover for our operations, not expose them. Taking it over cost us resources, time, and political capital. And now you're telling me it's compromised."
"It's not compromised," I say. "It's under scrutiny—there's a huge difference." I'm not ready to admit defeat right now, and it's not because I'm surrounded by men who would laugh in my face if my uncle came down on me.
"Explain the difference," he says sternly, and I sit a little straighter.
"Right now, they're just looking. And as long as we stay ahead of them, they won't find anything. As long as they find nothing, we're not compromised and we can still recover. You have to understand that Lombardi planned all of—"
"And how do you plan to stay ahead of them?" he asks, cutting me off. Not a man for excuses, he wants real, practical responses, and I don't have a whole lot to give him at this point.
I glance toward the door. Beyond it, down the hallway and around the corner, Riley's sitting in my office with Feodor standing guard.
She's doing everything I've asked her to do and she's been at it for days.
And she's our solution—she has to be. Everything hinges on having those ledgers decoded and rebuilt so we'll pass scrutiny, and our Christmas shipments can go through.
"I have someone working on it," I say.
"Someone," Sal repeats as he raises an eyebrow at me while narrowing his eyes.
"She's good."
"She?" His telling glance around the room reveals his misogyny. Never one for promoting women, he'd rather every person on his team be male, but I know Riley is the right person. Mostly because she's already in neck-deep and doing well.
"A bank teller. She understands financial systems. She's been working through the banker's records for almost two weeks now, and she's made more progress than anyone else could have."
Patterson shifts in his seat. "You're trusting our entire operation to a bank teller?"
"I'm trusting it to someone who doesn't have a choice," I say. "She's motivated. She's capable. And she's already saved us twice."
Don Salvatore watches me for a long moment. Then he nods slowly. "How much time do you need?"
"Two weeks. Maybe less. The dead man's switch triggers on Christmas Day. If we can rebuild the records and stop the countdown before then, we'll be clear."
"And if you can't?"
I press my lips into a line while everyone else around the table remains silent because they know what that means. Our asses will get handed to us along with arrest warrants.
"You have until Christmas," Sal says. "After that, I'm pulling the plug on this entire operation. The pharmaceutical company gets liquidated. The accounts get closed. And we move on."
"Understood," I grunt, but I’m not about to give up yet.
He stands, and the rest of the board follows.
They file out of the conference room one by one, but every fucking one of them manages to give me a nasty look as they pass my seat.
Patterson lingers by the door for a moment, looking at me as if he wants to say something, but then he shakes his head and leaves.
Uncle Sal is the last to go. He stops beside my chair and places a hand on my shoulder.
"I know you're doing everything you can," he says quietly. "But this family doesn't survive on effort. It survives on results. Get me results, Rafe."
"I will."
"Good man…" That tiny vote of confidence carries him out of the room, leaving me alone in the silence.
I sit there for a moment, staring at the empty chairs, the scattered papers, the view of the industrial district beyond the windows.
The crushing weight of what I'm facing seems to pin me down, and I feel the exhaustion creeping in at the edges.
But I force myself to stand and walk out into the hallway.
The corporate office is quiet this time of day, most of the staff at lunch or in meetings of their own.
I pass the break room, the copy room, the rows of cubicles where accountants and analysts work through spreadsheets and reports.
None of them know what this company really does or that the man sitting in the corner office is a criminal.
Riley's sitting at my desk when I walk into my office, her eyes locked on the dual monitors in front of her. Feodor stands by the window with arms crossed, and he glances at me when I walk in but doesn't speak.
And Riley doesn't look up. She's focused diligently on her work, the way she has been ever since I fucked her two nights ago.
I can see the tension in her shoulders, the way her jaw tightens every time she pauses to read something on the screen.
I feel like it gets more intense every time I see her, like she retreats inwardly to avoid having small talk with me.
It's almost painful to watch her become a husk of herself all because I made her come.
"How's it going?" I ask.
She doesn't answer right away. Her fingers keep moving, typing commands I don't understand, pulling up files and cross-referencing data. Finally, she leans back in the chair and exhales.
"It's going," she says, "slowly."
I walk around the desk and look at the screen. Lines of code scroll past, interspersed with spreadsheets and transaction logs. It's a mess, disorganized and incomplete, and I can see why she's frustrated.
"The accounts are frozen," I say. "The Feds have ledger pages from the banker. They're investigating the company."
Her eyes finally meet mine and I get to see those green flecks in her hazel eyes that I admire. "I know. Feodor told me."
"I need you to find out what's on those pages."
Her expression doesn't change. "How?"
"Hack into the federal database. Find the files they recovered from Enzo's property. Figure out what the banker sold and what they know."
I expect some rebellious comment, some snarky or rude, demeaning way of refusing my words, but she starts laughing. And it's not a light chuckle. It's a deep belly laugh that sounds genuine and not forced at all.
"You're joking," she says.
"I'm not."
"Rafe, I can't hack the federal government." Her expression sobers and she sits straighter, narrowing her eyes at me in what I've come to respect is her way of saying she thinks I'm stupid.
"You hacked the bank. You forged federal shipping permits. You've done everything else I've asked."
"That was different." She stands and crosses her arms. "The bank was one system.
The shipping permits were backdated files.
But you're asking me to break into a federal database.
Do you understand what that means? Do you understand the security protocols, the firewalls, the monitoring systems they have in place? "
"I understand that we need to know what they have."
"Then find someone else to do it. Because I can't. I'm not that good."
Her words are blunt and definitive, and for a moment, I feel the anger flare in my chest. She's refusing me. She knows I can make one call to end her sister's life and she's looking me dead in the eye and telling me no. No one tells me no.
But then I see the fear in her eyes and it's not fear of me. She's afraid of getting caught and crossing a line she can't come back from.
I step back and exhale slowly. "You're sure."
"Look, if I try to hack the federal government, I will get caught. And when I get caught, they'll trace it back here. To you. To this office. Is that what you want?" One eyebrow rises in a protest and question at the same time.
I don't answer because she's right. I know she's right. But the frustration gnaws at me anyway, the feeling of being cornered with no way out.
"Fine," I say. "If we can't stop the Feds from digging into the ledger pages, at least we can make sure they don't find anything else when they look at our accounts."
She sits back down with a defeated sigh and I turn to go.
"Stay with her," I say to Feodor. "I'll be back in an hour."
He nods, and I walk out of the office, closing the door behind me.
If we don't rebuild the financial records before the year-end audit, the money laundering will show up in the ledgers.
The illegal drug movements will be visible.
The shell accounts will collapse under scrutiny.
And none of it will matter whether the banker sold me out on those leaked pages or not. I'll bury myself with my own records.
Riley's my only chance. And she's already told me she can't do the one thing I need most.
The elevator doors open, and I step inside.
As they close, I think about the way she looked at me when she refused.
The defiance in her eyes. The certainty in her voice.
She's not afraid of me anymore, not the way she was when she first arrived.
She's learned to push back and stand her ground, to challenge me when she thinks I'm wrong.
And despite everything, I respect her for it.
But respect doesn't solve my problem. Results do.
And I need results before Christmas.