My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 539

Chapter 539

But no matter how many times I looked at it, the message stayed exactly the same. My face felt alarmingly hot before I could even recover, another notification appeared.

Raph: Use your impressive college education to calculate those odds.

Raph: Goodnight, ballerina.

Raph: Before I say something even less responsible.

• 18

Raphael

Me: Before I say something even less responsible.

I locked the screen and shoved the phone deep into my pocket, my fingers tightening into a hard fist to hide the twitch in my hand.

The blood was rushing straight to my groin even thinking about it. If I didn’t shut down, it will cause a highly visible hardware malfunction right in front of my brothers.

I had six screens running and bright light made the screens harder to read, numbers covered the walls, bank transfers, shipping routes, property records, corporate ownership structures, tax filings, insurance documents, port manifests, satellite images.

Vincenzo sat at the head of the table, one hand resting against his jaw. Adriano occupied the chair beside him. Luca was sprawled back with his boots on another chair.

They were looking at the same thing I was. A river of money, hundreds of millions all flowing in one direction.

I tapped a key, another graph appeared, “The numbers don’t make sense.”

Luca frowned, “It looks like they’re disappearing money.”

I pointed toward the graph, “Three years ago the Syndicate’s cash reserves began shrinking. The year after that, several legitimate businesses stopped expanding. The year after that, payroll costs increased. Torricelli is bleeding money. We don’t even need anything to destroy them, I could just fucking bankrupt them in a minute, they wouldn’t even know what had hit them.”

I switched screens, hundreds of layers appeared and eventually everything led to the same place.

A small island.

I enlarged the image, nothing but trees, docks and a few buildings, security fencing, private roads, but there was no public access, no permits, no digital records, no employee records.

Nothing.

Which was impossible, everything left records, “The money ends here.”

Vincenzo stared at the island, “What is it?”

“I don’t know.”

1/3

+15 Bo

Adriano frowned, “You don’t know?”

“No.”

That made everyone look at me because I usually knew or eventually found out.

I leaned back, “I traced every account I could access, the island exists, the trail money exists, the construction exists, the supply shipments exist, the fuel deliveries and security contracts exist but whatever happens there doesn’t.”

Vince frowned.

I looked at the satellite image, “I checked government databases, corporate databases. I checked healthcare records, I checked shipping declarations, customs, insurance filings. It is a fucking black hole.”

Vincenzo’s eyes narrowed, “Research?”

“Maybe.”

“Weapons?” Luca asked.

“Could be…”

Adriano raised an eyebrow, “Drugs?”

“More likely…” I shrugged, “The point is not what it is. The point is that Torricelli is spending a fortune keeping it alive even if it means, he lost everything.”

The money mattered the most in our world.

I tapped another key and the graph shifted, “Without the island his cash reserves become healthy again, without the island his expansion projects restart, without the island his political spending doubles, without the island he becomes significantly harder to pressure.”

Vincenzo lit a cigarette and watched the screen through the smoke, “So the island matters.”

I reached across the table, stole a cigarette from Luca’s pack, and lit it myself. The nicotine hit my bloodstream almost immediately, taking the sharpest edge off the irritation that had been building in my chest for the last hour.

I exhaled slowly and looked back at the island on the screen.

“It’s the most important thing Torricelli owns,” I said. “Which means it’s the most important thing we don’t understand.”

“If it matters that much,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “I’d love to blow it up.”

I took another drag from my cigarette, “No. We don’t destroy things we don’t understand.”

Adriano looked disappointed.

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