Nineteen
Ciro
Luca steps into my office without knocking, carrying a glass of scotch in one hand. The door clicks shut behind him, muting the noise from the rest of the office.
He stops a few feet inside and crosses toward my desk. “We started without you.”
He sets the glass beside my keyboard with a soft clink.
I rub a hand over my mouth and glance at the clock in the corner of the monitor. Nearly an hour gone. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
Luca stays where he is, one hand sliding into the pocket of his slacks while he looks over the screens again. His attention catches on the timeline running across the bottom monitor.
“You’re still digging into the back end?”
I drag the cursor across another transfer entry. “I told you I would.” The muscles in my neck ache from sitting here too long. I lean back slightly, eyes still on the screen. “It isn’t surface level.”
A faint smile pulls at the corner of his mouth. “How far back did you go?”
I tap the edge of the desk once with my thumb, thinking about the numbers sitting in front of me. “Far enough to confirm what we already suspected.”
Luca picks up the scotch again, swirling the amber liquid slowly before taking a drink. Ice shifts softly against the glass while he studies me over the rim.
His expression sharpens, but he lets the silence sit for a second instead of pressing.
“Don’t make Dante wait too long,” he says, lowering the glass. “He’ll assume you found something useful.”
I glance back at the highlighted transfer dates glowing against the dark screen. “I usually do.”
Luca huffs out a quiet laugh and straightens away from the desk. “That’s what worries him.”
He leaves the door open when he goes, and I take a moment before I move. I save the files, encrypt the working folder, and close the archive. Before I shut my computer down. This stays with me for now.
I pick up the glass Luca left behind and head down the corridor toward Dante’s office.
When I step inside, Luca and Matteo are already there.
Luca leans against the credenza near the window with a glass of scotch, jacket off, sleeves pushed back, while Matteo sits in one of the leather chairs opposite Dante’s desk, his posture loose in a way that never quite disguises the fact that he notices everything.
Dante stands behind the desk, pouring another round. “You’re late.”
“I was working.”
“On your project?” Matteo asks.
I nod, hoping for no further questions.
Dante takes a sip from his glass. “And?”
“I’ve started it.” They don’t need to know I spent all afternoon digging into the early financials.
Luca exhales a quiet laugh. “That’s not an answer.”
“That’s all I got.”
Matteo watches me over the rim of his glass, his focus steady. “You went further back than you planned.”
“I’m starting at the year they incorporated.”
Matteo studies me. “How was Chiara’s first day?” he asks.
“It went well.”
“That’s it?” Luca asks.
“It’s her first day.” I reach for my glass and take a drink, letting the burn settle while the conversation shifts naturally back toward Chiara. “She’s loving the work.”
Matteo leans back in his chair. “What is she doing?”
“She mentioned Heather has her working through P and Ls.” I shrug slightly. “That’s all I know.”
Dante studies me over the rim of his scotch before lowering the glass slowly onto the tablecloth beside his plate. “Did she hold her own?”
“Sounds like it,” I say. “She’s into it.”
Luca glances over from beside Dante, his expression sharpening with interest. “No hesitation?”
“None.”
Matteo notices the shift in my expression immediately. His mouth curves faintly while he reaches for the bottle near his elbow and pours more scotch. “You look satisfied.”
“Heather will bring up any issues with HR,” I say, holding his gaze. “I’ll be ready for that when it happens.”
That seems to satisfy Matteo enough that he eases back again, but Dante’s attention lingers another moment before something else pulls it away entirely.
“Amal had a fire this morning,” Dante says.
Luca straightens almost immediately. “Where?”
“South San Francisco. Secondary processing.”
The mood in the office changes fast.
Matteo’s attention sharpens, all trace of amusement gone now. “Damage?”
“Enough to take the building offline.”
Luca exhales quietly and rubs a hand across his jaw. “That’s their cutting and polishing line.”
“It was.”
I rest my forearms against the arms of the chair, already recalculating timelines in my head.
Dante hates Amal. They’ve been trying to force their way into our market share for years, pushing lab-grown stones that undercut pricing, pressure suppliers, and chip away at traditional contracts any way they can.
But his hate comes from a mistake he made with their founder. He’s never forgiven himself for that.
“Will insurance cover the damage and downtime?” Matteo asks.
Dante gives a small shrug, unconcerned.
He doesn’t hide the satisfaction in his voice this time, and honestly, none of us are surprised by it. A disruption like that doesn’t just hurt production. It rattles clients. Delays shipments. Forces people to start asking whether they need contingency plans.
“They won’t recover quickly,” Dante says.
Matteo watches him carefully for a moment before speaking again. “Were you behind it?”
The question lands heavily enough that even Luca stills beside him.
Dante’s expression barely changes. He shakes his head once. “No.”
Luca studies him another second. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
The answer comes clean and immediate, but nobody at this table is na?ve enough to pretend the thought itself is outrageous. Every one of us understands leverage and pressure points. What happens when competition stops being theoretical and starts costing people money.
Matteo holds Dante’s gaze a second longer before finally lifting his scotch glass again. “Good.”
Still, the tension never fully leaves the room.
“The fire is not good for them.” Luca rotates the scotch slowly in his glass. “It’ll affect their output significantly.”
Dante’s attention shifts toward me briefly before he nods again. “Delays work in our favor. If clients start scrambling, Amal looks unstable.”
“We wait,” Luca says. “Then step in where it matters.”
Matteo glances toward me, already knowing where this conversation ends. “You’ll have the numbers.”
I reach for my glass again, the ice shifting softly against the crystal. “I always do.”
I check my watch. Later than I planned.
“Ellory is in New York this week. I hate going home when she’s not there. Anyone want to grab a bite?”
I finish the scotch and set the glass on Dante’s desk. “I need to get home. I want to hear how Chiara’s day went.”
Matteo’s mouth curves. “Really? Interesting.”
Luca lets out a short laugh. “You are so whipped.”
I pick up my jacket. “Unlike the three of you, at least I won’t be sleeping alone.”
Luca groans. “I always sleep alone. But that doesn’t mean I won’t have plenty of company later tonight.”
“I don’t want to hear about your fetishes.” Dante just shakes his head. “Get out.”
I step into the corridor and run back to my office for my wallet and keys. The executive floor has quieted, offices darkening as the evening settles in.
Chiara will be waiting at the house.
The rest stays with me—the transfer patterns that don’t line up, the fire at Amal, the missing years in the archive. None of it fits cleanly yet.
Whatever we were told isn’t enough.
I head for the elevator anyway and Victor.
Victor meets me at the curb, and on the way home I think about what I learned this afternoon.
If the business changed after my parents died, it wasn’t accidental.
Someone consolidated control and put Tom at the top.
They pulled scattered ownership under one structure, cleaned up the instability, and made sure fewer people had access to the pieces that mattered.
Whatever happened in that window after my parents died reshaped more than a balance sheet.
And I am the only one looking at it from that angle.