Page 28 of Renata Vitali (The Five Syndicates)
But it was getting harder and harder to temper my feelings.
Love cannot live where there is no trust.
Edith Hamilton
The edges of my black eye faded by prom night, but the damage had been done. The regulars at The Landing Strip saw the ugly bruise, and they talked. Meanwhile, the girls helped plant seeds of doubt about Angelo’s sanity.
Coupled with the fact that he was increasingly prone to violent outbursts, even in public, word spread. Angelo had gone insane. Gone was the quiet, reserved man who ruled back when my mom lived. The De Luca curse had seized him, people whispered. Yes, my black eye had confirmed.
See, syndicates always embodied loyalty, honor, and family. Angelo had already been chipping away at these values, and rumors of him beating me pushed them over the edge. They reached a new high.
I knew Angelo knew this, because he’d been lurking around the household, eyeing me up every time he could. He stopped visiting me at night a few days ago. He stopped leaving the house a few days before that.
Which was how I knew my next task would bring him over the edge. The last push before all the dominoes fell. It was less of a task and more of a list filled with bank account info and routing numbers. The De Luca coffers.
You know what to do.
And I did.
Whether it’s the United States government, the Girl Scouts of America, Pee Wee football, or the De Luca syndicate, organizations only exist when money funds them. So, the day of prom, I drained the accounts.
Cris transferred the funds to new accounts we had set up last week when I brought him into the fold of my coup. The offshore accounts with the rerouted money belonged to holding companies I’d registered under Angelo’s name.
Thanks to offshore privacy laws, I was able to transfer the money from the offshore accounts to new accounts with no one knowing. For all they knew, Angelo still had the money in his dummy accounts.
Cris tucked the computer we bought for this away in his backpack. “I’ll have the laptop destroyed just in case they decide to track the IP address. I logged on through Angelo’s private WiFi network, so it’ll trace back to him if someone decides to go looking.”
I slid a tie around my neck. “Tomorrow, payroll will come, and our accountants will realize everything’s wiped clean. If someone looks, it will be traced to Angelo. If no one looks, either way, people won’t get paid. Those who aren’t already questioning will have his head.”
“What will you do?” He watched as I finished adjusting the tie. “Dude, are you going to prom? We just wiped nearly a billion dollars. I kinda want to go to Vegas and hit a high roller’s table.”
“First, Vegas is Rossi territory. They don’t like us.”
“No one likes us.”
“I’ll change that.” I slid my feet into my Testonis and turned to face Cris. “Second, that money is not for us.”
“I know. It’s to rebuild the syndicate once Angelo is gone. Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
People would lose money, turn against Angelo, and rally with me when I tell them I can use my home access to get the money back from Angelo.
Bye, bye, Angelo.
“Third, yes, I’m going to prom, and you should, too. We’ll both need to act like nothing is out of the ordinary. I had an extra suit dry-cleaned for you.”
Cris was adjusting his tie when he finally asked the question I’d been waiting for him to ask. “How’d you get the banking info? That shit’s locked tighter than the Pentagon.”
“If we get through this, I’ll tell you.”
Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Normal.
Two syllables. Adjective. Conforming to a standard.
Synonyms: usual, typical, or expected.
