Chapter 6
Chapter Six
ENZO
I sit in the town car, even though I have my own vehicle, and wait for Lyndall outside the leafy green street in the West Village.
It is the time of year Dad is upstate, wheeling and dealing with the rich who don't just use the Hamptons for vacation season but stay year-round.
When these people move on for the winter, it is skiing in Europe or heading to the other side of the equator to some island paradise.
Dad does spring and fall in Chicago, the rest of his time in the New York area.
I rub a hand over my face and stare at the page on my computer I have been staring at for the past ten minutes.
Information readily available on Edoardo Costa is sparse, but there is stuff on the Rebecci family. There is stuff on Dom.
But I'm fucked if I can concentrate.
Still, it is not going to change.
Today was an interesting first day as the CEO of Barwon Industries. And I'm not talking about the whole mess Louie has gotten himself into.
Lola.
How the fuck did she get so pretty?
Sure, she has always been pretty, but not hot pretty, not that pretty which is also sexy. And I'm still trying to work out if pretending to be a wrong number who keeps in touch is a smart idea or one of the dumbest I have ever had.
I check the time.
Normally, I wouldn't be sitting out here on the street in Manhattan in a car on my laptop when I could be home accessing a more powerful database—not that what I can do on a laptop is weak. But I don't have the power or the speed to do what I want in a car.
I check my watch again.
Twenty more minutes until Lyndall should be done with her violin lesson.
Dad should be the one picking her up or sending a car, but he doesn't do shit like that.
Her mom died, so she is stuck living with Dad.
Lyndall might be fifteen, but she knows what she wants, and she does not want to live with our father.
I can't help but compare her to Lola when she was growing up.
Lyndall is rebellious, where Lola was the good girl personified. They are worlds apart in almost every way.
Of course, if Dad had his way, he would ship Lyndall off to the farthest place he could get away with the second her mom died. If he didn't get another son, then he wasn't interested, and that hasn't changed one bit.
Dad isn't happy that she disobeys him. She is a good piece of stock, real estate, call her whatever he might. She is money in the bank down the road if he needs it, and a way to secure future ties he might want.
The moment she turns seventeen or eighteen, he will start shopping her around as bride fodder.
Something I'm sure she is aware of.
He could at least pretend to have an interest in her life. But he doesn't.
Lucky for her, the semester is almost done. She will be spending a few days with me then.
Of course, sometimes she and Dad get into big fights, and she just runs away, so when she turns up on my doorstep, all I can do is take her in and ferry her about.
Despite all her rebellion, my sister is a gifted violinist. Lucky for me, she loves playing, and this teacher is one of the best. He is convinced she could get into the top orchestra or even be a concert violinist. But she would have to pass her school exams and apply to Juilliard, the elite arts school she dreams about.
Dad says it is nice having someone prestigious in the family, but it is a waste of money. But I say screw that. I have plenty of money, so if I need to, I will put her through myself.
It is going to be a fuck ton of money, just like these lessons, but it will be worth it. Just like everything I do for her is.
And I do a lot. Dad says I do too much. He can go fuck himself since I'm basically just doing what he should be doing himself.
Lyndall is such an afterthought to him, and it riles me.
My blood simmers whenever I think of it.
And the thing is, he has always been this way. It is not grief over her mother's demise. He was like that the moment he got confirmation he had a girl and not a boy.
After all, I'm not willing to be shaped in his image, so he decided the new wife he got pregnant would birth him another male heir.
My heart fucking bleeds every time the piece of shit looks the other way when it comes to his own fucking daughter.
Growing up, I got all the attention. She never had a chance.
Which Dad took as me betraying him like a Judas—his words—when I walked from the family business.
Still about fifteen more minutes to go, so I decide to get started on the paperwork Louie emailed to me.
There is the matter of digging into the whys and hows of the Rebecci thing. And then finding out what it is that Rebecci needed to fuck over Edoardo.
But that is going to be a delicate, intricate ball for us to unravel, and my gut tells me it might need not just Cade's help, but Syndicate help.
Shit, something like this has the potential to land on the table as Syndicate business if those names Rebecci wanted are the targets.
And if Lola is one of them...
My heart squeezes.
"Stop right there. You don't even know what the fuck is going on," I mutter, opening the first document.
First things first. I need to see how fucked Louie is and why he got himself so fucked.
The how and why can tell me a lot.
Panic means open doors and mess. Something small that snowballs is easier for me to follow the crumbs.
As I read, one thing becomes clear. Louie, who didn't want to touch family money, molested the capital for Barwon.
In fact, he gutted so much that the whole place should have collapsed in a cloud of bankruptcy.
He could definitely hide that behind expanding too fast, getting an expensive location, and taking up the building.
The kind of capital he has been handed paid for that, even if he didn't use a family-owned building.
But to someone looking to see what happened after the place went belly up in my little fantasy scenario, everything makes sense.
Too much money burned too quickly.
It would need more money.
Barwon, I realize, dropping my fantasy scenario, wouldn't go tits up. It is too good a startup, the product a guaranteed moneymaker, and it is also designed well enough to be able to pivot into different arenas.
It is clever enough I'm shocked I didn't come up with it.
Of course, me coming up with it would mean I was doing something completely different for a living.
So, someone else would buy, invest, or take over. It would survive.
Maybe there was some of that in Rebecci's thinking?
But I dismiss it. The Rebecci family isn't into tech. They are into good, old-fashioned murder, power, and illegal shit. They don't have time to play in this.
They did, however, sink money into it. Dom did, anyway, which means the Rebecci family was involved.
So, Louie was right about the information gathering.
It fits with the mafia more.
I frown as I open the next email because what I see gives me pause.
Dom Rebecci paid him a lot of money, laundered money designed to go through the final step of investing and getting it squeaky clean on the other end. Because the final step is just that, a final step away from the original source.
The money Louie received should have been clean. Except, it wasn't.
I can trace it back to various sources on this laptop, which isn't using the dark web, just a regular network and minimal tracking resources.
The payments Louie received match amounts that have gone missing here and there, some stolen, and some I happen to know are payouts because I have looked into Rebecci.
Except, Rebecci isn't named. The name the money comes from is bogus, and since it is not exactly clean, it could open up potential trouble of the legal kind.
It is just what I need, on top of everything else.
Louie might be na?ve in some ways, but his accountants shouldn't be. And his fucking family is rich enough I know he knows when to spot trouble.
So, again, how fucked is he that he didn't notice or decided it was worth it regardless?
Shit. He entered into this thing with Dom in a panic, my least favorite of scenarios.
Me
You still at my place, dickwad?
Cade
About to leave to see Vi.
I sigh, rub my temple, and quickly put things into an email and send it to him. It is only basic encryption, but it will do.
Me
Sent you an email.
There is silence for a full minute.
Cade
Fuck, dude. How dumb is Louie?
Me
He's not criminally minded, just likes gambling.
Cade
And here I thought Jack was a dumbass.
Me
Your brother and Louie could be best friends.
Cade
No, thanks. They'd lead each other to an early grave.
I laugh, but I know he doesn't mean it.
Jack has done fucked-up things and lost his girl to his brother through his own idiotic behavior. We taught the kid a lesson, but Jack has also grown a lot.
And Cade loves his little bro.
I'm fond of the prick, too.
Not that this helps.
If Louie gets caught up in an investigation, then I will, too.
Me
We need to get this clean.
I look over it.
Cade has more power right now than I do.
I press call. "How far back?"
"Man, this friend is a mess. But I can send you your safeguard program. You're on your laptop?"
"In a car."
"Make the tweaks and send it. I will put it in. His shit goes back at least two years."
"That is how long Barwon has been flying." I frown. "We should make sure the time right before is clean, too."
"I will look at all of it. I will be quicker here. Just update the systems, and I will put them in place."
I get started as soon as he sends me the program. I want to clean all of the money earned by the company since it started, so over the past two years.
I send it to Cade.
"Got it," he says.
Next, I start going over exactly what Louie did to Edoardo.
"Fuck me..." And I start to laugh.
"What?"
I send Cade all the things I find. Because Louie is great at keeping a trail of what he does, but not so good at self-preservation.
"Fuck," Cade says. "That is a long list. And he is still around?"
"Somehow."
"It is not really funny," Cade says.