Page 86 of Ruthless Vow
DANTE
“I found him.”
Three words. And I know, before she opens the folder, before she spreads the papers across the table, that everything is about to change.
She’s standing in front of me in the library, hair loose over her shoulders, that folder pressed against her chest like a weapon she’s about to hand me. Her eyes are sure. Aren’t afraid. They’re certain.
Whatever she’s found, she believes it down to the bone.
And she came to me.
She spreads the papers across the surface. Shell companies. Phantom invoices. Seven years of blood money laundered through Cyprus and Panama. Her finger traces the routing path, and I don’t need a goddamn accounting degree to see what she’s built here.
Every thread connected. Every dollar tracked.
“How much?”
“Conservative estimate? Four to six million over seven years.”
Seven fucking years. Someone has been bleeding my family dry, and I never noticed.
“And this.” She pulls another sheet forward. “Elena’s payment. The two million that made her disappear. Different accounts, same routing architecture. Same hand.”
I freeze.
“You’re telling me whoever’s been stealing from us also paid your sister to sabotage our wedding.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
She doesn’t answer. Just turns to the final page and slides it toward me.
One signature. Over and over. Authorizing every inflated invoice, every phantom payment, every dollar that vanished into offshore accounts.
Fabio Romano.
The floor drops out from under me.
Thirty-two years. He was at Papa’s funeral.
Cristo.
And the whole time, he was selling us to our enemies.
Goddamn him.
“There’s more.” Cassia’s voice stays steady. She pulls out a final set of documents. “Call logs. Encrypted communications from a personal phone. Twenty-three calls over four months to numbers that trace to Benedetti-adjacent contacts.”
The Benedettis. Our rivals. The family that’s been circling like vultures, waiting for weakness.
The son of a bitch hasn’t just been stealing. He’s been informing. Feeding them our plans, our vulnerabilities, our secrets. Every move we’ve made for God knows how long, they’ve known about in advance.
“Marco found these,” Cassia says. “He brought them to me.”
My head snaps up. “Marco.”
“He’s been suspicious of Romano for months. He gathered the call logs on his own. Brought them to me because.” She pauses. “Because he knew you’d question how he got them.”
