Chapter 13 - The Poisoned Ledger
The private study fell into a dead, suffocating silence as the teenage girl confidently laid the leather folder onto the bullet-scarred mahogany desk.
Allessandro dismissed the rest of his dangerous crew with a single, sharp flick of his wrist, leaving only the fiercely loyal Luca in the room.
Emma meticulously walked the two hardened mafia veterans through the incredibly complex web of financial deceit she had independently uncovered.
She pointed directly to a series of heavily encrypted offshore accounts that had been quietly draining the Romano empire's lifeblood for the past six months.
Luca leaned over the desk, his dark eyes scanning the complex numbers before widening in pure, unadulterated shock and growing rage.
The specific authorization codes required to move those massive sums of money belonged entirely to Marco, their trusted head of international logistics.
Marco had been personally hand-picked by Luca five years ago, making this treacherous betrayal a deep, incredibly personal insult to the underboss.
Allessandro did not scream, nor did he violently flip the heavy desk in a fit of predictable, uncontrollable rage.
He simply closed the leather folder with a soft, definitive click that sounded exactly like a coffin being permanently sealed shut.
He looked up at Emma, feeling an overwhelming wave of genuine, fatherly pride wash over his cold, calculating heart.
She had just effectively saved his empire for a second time, proving that raw intelligence was always infinitely more lethal than any loaded weapon.
Allessandro gently told Emma to return to her studies, promising her that the terrifying situation would be handled with absolute, total finality before the sun set.
Once the heavy oak doors clicked securely shut behind the brilliant girl, Allessandro turned his terrifying, dead gaze toward his trembling underboss.
Luca immediately drew his heavy, suppressed pistol from his tailored suit jacket, completely ready to personally execute his traitorous protege.
Allessandro shook his head slowly, formulating a much darker, significantly more painful plan for the man who had dared to steal from his family.
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They were not just going to simply kill Marco in a dark alley.
They were going to aggressively use him as a bleeding, desperate pawn to lure the psychotic Lorenzo Moretti out of his fortified Boston stronghold.
