Chapter 4 - Someone at the Table Was Selling Him Out
The storage unit contained seventeen boxes.
Most held books.
One held a war.
Lucy opened it.
Ledgers.
Recorded conversations.
Contracts in Russian, French, Italian, and Spanish.
Her father had documented everything.
Dante opened the first ledger.
“Can you read this?”
“Yes.”
“Start.”
Lucy translated.
After twenty minutes, Enzo stopped pacing.
“Jesus.”
Carlo Bellini had been diverting money from Moretti-controlled companies for years.
But money was only the beginning.
He had manipulated negotiations.
Changed contract language.
Paid translators.
Created disputes between Dante and foreign partners.
Every manufactured conflict weakened Dante.
Every conflict made Bellini richer.
Lucy turned another page.
Then stopped.
“What?”
Dante asked.
“This is different.”
“How?”
“It mentions my father.”
She read silently.
Dante waited.
Lucy’s eyes hardened.
“My father discovered it.”
Dante came beside her.
“What happened?”
“He threatened to expose Bellini.”
Enzo asked quietly, “And the gambling debt?”
Lucy stared at the page.
“It wasn’t gambling.”
Dante understood first.
“Bellini invented it.”
Lucy nodded.
Her father had died believing he had destroyed his daughter’s future.
But the debt had never existed.
Fifty thousand dollars.
Eight months of scrubbing floors.
Years of fear.
All built on a lie.
Lucy closed the ledger.
“I want Bellini.”
Dante looked at her.
“That sounded almost like something I would say.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
Lucy faced him.
“He destroyed my father.”
“And he tried to destroy my organization.”
“Then we agree.”
Dante studied her.
“No.”
“No?”
“You want revenge.”
“And you don’t?”
“I want proof.”
Lucy stared at him.
“That is disappointingly reasonable.”
Enzo laughed.
Dante looked at him.
Enzo immediately stopped.
Dante picked up the ledger.
“Bellini believes these records were destroyed.”
Lucy understood.
“So we let him keep believing that.”
“Exactly.”
“How?”
Dante looked at her.
“You’re going back to work tomorrow.”
She stared.
“As a maid?”
“Yes.”
“That’s your plan?”
“My traitor thinks you’re invisible.”
He stepped closer.
“Let’s not correct him yet.”
The following evening, Lucy carried coffee into another meeting.
Bellini sat three seats from Dante.
He smiled when he saw her.
Lucy lowered her eyes.
Invisible again.
Bellini spoke Italian quietly to the man beside him.
“She knows nothing.”
Lucy poured his coffee.
Then he added:
“Felix will be handled tonight.”
Lucy’s hand remained perfectly steady.
Across the table, Dante watched her.
She gave him the smallest nod.
Bellini continued.
“After that, we move against Levanov.”
Dante lifted his cup.
“Lucy.”
She stopped.
“Yes, sir?”
“How’s my Italian?”
Every man at the table looked confused.
Lucy understood immediately.
She answered in flawless Italian.
“Better than Mr. Bellini thinks.”
Bellini dropped his cup.
Dante smiled.
May you like
“Now,” he said, “we can stop pretending.”
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