Chapter 19
CASSIA
The answer has been in front of me for three days.
I just didn’t see it until now.
I left Dante sleeping at dawn, slipped out of sheets still warm from his body, and came straight here. The study has become my second home this week. Maybe my first. The bed we share is where I rest; this desk is where I prove I belong.
Stacks of vendor invoices cover the surface, organized by date, by amount, by authorization signature. My highlighter is dry. The coffee in my mug went cold hours ago. My eyes burn from staring at columns of numbers, but I can’t stop.
Not when I’m this close.
The pattern clicked this afternoon.
Forty-seven invoices over seven years. All from vendors I’ve never heard of despite auditing the family’s books for years. All billing fifteen to twenty percent above market rate. All authorized by the same signature.
Fabio Romano.
I pull another file from the stack. Crescent City Logistics.
Registered in Delaware eighteen months ago.
No physical address. No website. No employees listed.
Just a bank account that’s received $2.5 million in payments for “shipping coordination services” that, as far as I can tell, were never rendered.
Gulf Maritime Supply. Identical registration agent. Identical phantom structure. Another $1.2 million over three years.
Southern Hospitality Holdings. A carbon copy. Again.
The routing is elegant, I’ll give him that.
Payments flow from the family accounts to these shell companies, then bounce through Cyprus, Panama, the Caymans.
By the time the money lands in its final destination, it’s been laundered so clean that tracing it requires the kind of forensic deep-dive no one thought to do.
Until I did.
I sit back in Dante’s chair and let the numbers settle. The leather still holds his scent. Cedar and smoke and something underneath that makes my stomach tighten every time I breathe too deep.
Eight percent. That’s what I thought at first. Then twelve. Now I’m looking at fifteen to twenty across forty-seven invoices, and every time I peeled back a layer, it got worse.
Close to a decade of skimming. Conservative estimate: four to six million dollars. All authorized by a man who’s been sitting at family dinners, attending family meetings, stood at Salvatore Santoro’s funeral with tears in his eyes.
Fabio Romano. Thirty-two years of service. Trusted captain.
Traitor.
My husband deserves to know. The thought sends heat through my chest, low and steady. Not the fire from last night, his voice cracking on let me show you what you are to me, his hands so careful it wrecked me worse than rough ever could. This is quieter. The need to protect what’s his. What’s ours.
But I need to be certain first. I need evidence he can’t question.
That’s not everything.
Elena’s payment. The two million dollars someone wired to make her disappear.
I pull up the routing information I traced from her account and lay it next to Romano’s shell company structure.
Not identical. The accounts are different, the timing is separate. But the architecture matches. Cyprus first, then Panama, then the Caymans. The same three-hop pattern. The same careful misdirection.
Someone who knew how to hide money taught him that route. Or someone built it for both purposes.
Romano didn’t just skim from the family.
He paid Elena to sabotage the wedding.
The same hand, the same method, two different operations.
But why?
Stealing makes sense. Greed is simple. But paying two million dollars to destroy an alliance between the Santoros and the Neris? That’s not greed. That’s strategy.
I have the records showing Romano is stealing. I have the trail connecting him to Elena.
What I don’t have is who he’s working for.
I need more.
I’m cross-referencing authorization chains when the floorboard creaks.
My head snaps up.
The entrance is empty. Then a figure steps into view.
Marco Santoro.
He’s hovering at the threshold like he’s not sure he’s allowed to be here. Which he isn’t. This is Dante’s study. The inner sanctum. Not a place for the youngest brother to wander into uninvited.
“I found something.” He speaks low, uncertain. “I don’t know if it matters.”
I set down my highlighter. Study him.
He’s carrying a folder, gripping it tight enough that his knuckles are white.
“Come in.”
He crosses the room and hands me the folder. Inside: printed call logs. Encrypted communications from a phone number I don’t recognize.
“What am I looking at?”
“Romano’s personal phone. Not the one the family issued him.” Marco’s jaw is tight. “He’s been making calls. Twenty-three of them over four months. To numbers that don’t trace to anyone in our network.”
I flip through the pages. The timestamps jump out first. Late night calls. Early morning. The kind of schedule that suggests secrecy rather than convenience.
“How did you get this?”
“Does it matter?”
I look at him. A long, searching look.
The youngest Santoro brother. The one who walks the perimeters while his brothers make decisions. The one I’ve seen at the edges of every family gathering, watching, waiting, burning with ambition no one seems to notice.
“Why bring this to me? Why not Dante?”
His mouth presses into a line.
“Because Dante would ask how I got it. You’ll ask what it means.”
He’s right. Dante would interrogate the source. I need the substance.
I turn back to the call logs. Start tracing the numbers through my mental map of the family’s contacts.
One number is a Chicago area code. Another traces to a law firm I recognize from the Benedetti case files Dante keeps in his bottom drawer.
My pulse quickens.
“These calls,” I say, measuring each word. “The timing. They’re all within forty-eight hours of major family decisions. The warehouse expansion. The dock negotiations. The wedding.”
I flip to the most recent entry.
Two days before Elena ran.
Marco goes still. “You think he’s reporting to someone.”
I meet his eyes. “I think Romano isn’t just stealing from this family. I think he’s been informing on them for years.”
The silence stretches between us.
Marco’s jaw works. His nostrils flare. Then his chin lifts, just a fraction, and his shoulders pull back.
“I knew something was off about him,” he says, voice rough. “How he watches. How he’s always positioned to hear things he shouldn’t. I’ve been saying it for months.”
“Who did you tell?”
“No one who listened.”
I understand that. Being right and being dismissed. Seeing patterns no one else wants to acknowledge. I’ve lived that my whole life.
“You did good work.”
His lips part. His throat bobs on a swallow. Then his frame goes rigid, hands curling at his sides, and the look in his eyes burns so raw I have to look away.
“I’ve been doing good work for seven years.” The words come out rough. “No one bothered to notice.”
I hold his gaze. “I noticed.”
He doesn’t know how to respond to that. Neither do I. So I just nod, and he nods back.
“Figure out what it means,” he says. “Then tell Dante. He’ll listen to you.”
He’s gone before I can respond. Slipping out like he was never here. Like he didn’t just hand me the final piece of a puzzle that’s been driving me mad for days.
I look down at the call logs. Then at the shell company records. Then at Elena’s payment routing.
Fabio Romano. Embezzlement. Espionage. The Benedetti connection, confirmed.
I have everything I need.
I’m organizing the evidence into a coherent presentation when the air shifts.
I don’t hear footsteps on the hardwood or the door opening. I just feel it. A presence. Someone watching.
I look up.
Romano stands at the entrance.
The numbers fire through my skull like a survival reflex. One, two, three. They can’t help me here.
My blood turns to ice.
He’s backlit by the hallway lamps, his face half in shadow. The smile on his lips is pleasant. Professional. The smile of a man who’s spent thirty-two years perfecting the art of appearing trustworthy.
“Working late, Mrs. Santoro?”
My hands are trembling. I flatten them against the desk. Force my voice even.
“Just finishing up.”
His eyes move to the papers spread across the surface. The vendor files. The authorization records. The folder Marco left, now buried under other documents.
Can he see what I’ve been looking at? Can he tell?
“The accounts must be engaging,” he says. “You’ve been in here for days.”
I meet his eyes. Don’t blink. “Dante asked me to review the quarterly reconciliations.”
“Of course.” His smile doesn’t waver. “Don is lucky to have such a dedicated wife.”
The way he says “dedicated” makes my skin crawl.
Or maybe I’m paranoid. Maybe I’m projecting guilt onto a man who has no idea what I’ve found.
But his eyes linger on the desk a beat too long before he steps back.
“Don’t work too hard, Mrs. Santoro. The family needs you healthy.”
He turns and walks away. The squeak of his shoes on the marble echoes down the hallway.
I don’t breathe until the sound fades.
My hands are shaking so hard I can’t grip the papers. Did he see anything? Does he know? Has he been watching me the same way I’ve been tracking him?
I need Dante.
I stack the files. My fingers fumble the pages twice before I get them into the folder. I press it flat against my chest and check both directions down the hallway before stepping out of the study. My feet carry me faster than I mean to go.
The compound is quiet at this hour. Most of the staff has gone to bed. The guards are at their posts, but they don’t question me as I make my way through the house.
I’m the Don’s wife. I belong here.
The folder in my arms holds it all. Every piece that confirms Fabio Romano has been bleeding this family dry and selling their secrets to their enemies.
Now I have to trust Dante with it.
I find him in the library, standing at the window, silhouetted against the moonlit gardens.
He turns when he hears me enter.
“Cassia.”
Just my name.
I close the door behind me. Cross the room. And hand him the folder that’s going to change everything.
“I found him.”