Chapter 5 - THE GHOSTS OF WALL STREETThree weeks later, the penthouse looked different.
The blood stains on the marble were long gone, replaced by stacks of encrypted hard drives, international banking records, and forensic accounting sheets that stretched across the massive mahogany dining table like a roadmap to hell.
Enzo hadn't lied. He gave me full access to his underground financial intelligence network—a ghost army of hackers, forensic accountants, and fixers who could trace a single dollar bill from a Swiss bank account straight into the pocket of a New York City councilman.
Cerberus rarely left my side. He slept across my feet while I worked into the early hours of the morning, his scarred face resting peacefully, no longer haunted by the ghosts of his past.
"You've been staring at that same shell corporation for four hours," a deep voice broke my concentration.
I looked up to see Enzo walking out of his private study, wearing a charcoal dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, a cup of black coffee in his hand. He set the steaming mug down beside my laptop without asking.
"It's not just a shell corporation, Enzo," I said, pointing a slender finger at the glowing screen. "Look at the transaction timestamps. Every time Marcus transferred funds out of the port authority account, a matching micro-transaction went to a private equity firm registered under a Cayman Islands trust."
Enzo leaned over my shoulder, his chest brushing lightly against the back of my chair. His closeness sent a sudden, electric jolt through my spine—a dangerous distraction I couldn't afford, yet couldn't entirely ignore.
"And who owns the trust?" Enzo asked, his breath warm against my ear.
"That's the interesting part," I said, clicking open a deeply buried encrypted folder my hackers had just decrypted an hour ago. "It’s not Marcus. Marcus was just the middleman, the cleaner. The ultimate beneficiary... the person who ordered my father's workshop burned down to cover up the port expansion embezzlement..."
I turned my head to look up at him, our faces only inches apart.
"...is your own uncle, Senator Julian Dante."
The room dropped into a silence so profound I could hear the digital clock ticking on my screen.
Enzo didn't flinch. He didn't gasp. His dark eyes narrowed into thin, dangerous slits, but a slow, terrible smile spread across his mouth—the look of a wolf realizing his own pack had turned on him.
"Well," Enzo whispered, his fingers resting lightly on the back of my chair, trapping me in the best possible way. "It looks like family dinner this Sunday is going to be very interesting."
"You knew?" I whispered, my heart hammering against my ribs.
"I suspected," Enzo replied, his voice a low, steady rumble. "Julian always thought the syndicate was too soft under my father. He wanted control of the municipal contracts to fund his gubernatorial campaign. But I needed proof. Ironclad, unarguable proof."
He reached down, his thumb gently tracing the line of my jaw, tipping my face up toward his.
May you like
"And you just handed me the knife to cut out the rot," Enzo murmured, his gaze locking onto mine with an intensity that burned hotter than any fire.
"Then let's send an invitation," I said, not backing down an inch. "Let's invite the Senator to dinner."
