Chapter 4 - The Price of Curiosity
I ducked behind a row of heavy metal cabinets, my back pressed against the cold steel, my lungs squeezing out all the air they held.
"She’s Gaetano’s shadow," Osvaldo’s voice followed, sounding much older and much less kindly than it did on the 47th floor. "If she finds the records for the 2021 shipment from Palermo, she’ll see the discrepancy. She’ll see that we’ve been rerouting the container fees through the Delaware docks."
"Gaetano won't notice," Renato sneered. "He’s too busy staring at the back of her head. The man has gone soft since his father died. He looks at her like he wants to buy her a house, not use her to hide the money."
"He isn't soft, Renato," Osvaldo warned, his voice dropping into a harsh whisper. "He’s obsessed. There's a difference. If he finds out we used her father’s old firm to clear the black accounts before the old man died, he’ll kill us both. We need to move the files tonight. The charity ball is our cover. Everyone will be focused on the cameras and the politicians."
"And the girl?" Renato asked.
A pause stretched out—long, terrible, and filled with the scent of cheap tobacco.
"The girl can be handled," Osvaldo said softly. "Renato, you dance with her at the ball. Keep her away from the office. If she stays in the ballroom, she stays alive. If she leaves... drop her in the river with the rest of her father’s old ledgers."
The sound of their footsteps receded toward the service elevator at the back of the floor.
I stayed hidden in the dark for five full minutes, my hands shaking so violently I had to bite my own knuckles to keep from crying out. My father hadn't died of a stroke. He had been used by these men to clear their dirty money, and when he became a liability, they had cleared him too.
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And Gaetano Gentile? The man who paid my mother’s rent?
He had hired me because he knew exactly who I was from the very beginning.
