Page 31 of Wicked Mafia Mistake
Seeing him like this hits me in the chest. My mind falls back to Sloane and how betrayed she sounded. It’s hard to have any sympathy for anyone willing to harm their child for the gain of power or money.
"Then explain it to me. Because I just watched a man I've never met grip your daughter's arm hard enough to bruise and her entire body went cold. I watched her sit in that chair and hold herself together while you told her you traded her future for a business deal and called her life's work silly. So explain it to me, Harrison. I'm listening."
He flinches as he pours another damn drink. Much longer and that shit will take him out. That happens and he won’t have to worry about debts or any other problems.
Silence carries for a long while.
"The debts aren't just money, Mass." He picks up his glass and sets it down without drinking. Picks it up again. Drains it, the whiskey disappearing in one swallow, and sets the empty glass down with a crack against the desk. "Lorenzo's family holds leverage. Business records. Transactions that would put me away for life if they surfaced. The marriage contract isn't a deal. It's the only play I have left."
"How much?"
"It's not about the amount."
"How much, Harrison."
"Twelve million in outstanding obligations. But the leverage is worse. The Ferraros have documentation of three operations I ran through their channels in the early years. Before the Syndicate. Before I had protection. If those records go public, Ilose everything. The house. The business. Sloane's inheritance. All of it. If it goes public my international business will come under scrutiny or worse. Much worse."
“Your precious luxury hotel chain will survive. But will Sloane? They set you up years ago and waited in the wings until they were ready to collect.” My stomach churns with bitter rage. “They’ve had plans for your daughter for a while now.”
His face turns ghostly white but he says nothing.
“Since when did you become a damn coward, Whitmore?”
Still no response.
I process the numbers. Twelve million is significant but manageable. The Syndicate has moved larger sums. I can restructure his debts, negotiate terms, create a payment schedule that keeps the Ferraros at bay.
But the leverage. That's the real chain that will drag him to the bottom of hell.
"I can cover the money," I tell him. "I'll restructure the debts through the Syndicate. We'll create a trust that pays down the obligations over time. Luca can build a financial shield that makes the Ferraro claims unenforceable."
"And the records?"
"We retrieve them. Or we make them irrelevant. Luca's people can find anything digital. But if it's physical, Kon's team can acquire it."
Harrison shakes his head slowly, his gaze dropping to the empty glass. "You think I haven't thought of that? Lorenzo's father has dead man's switches on everything. If anything happens to therecords, copies go to the feds. If anything happens to Lorenzo, the copies go public. The only scenario where those documents stay buried is if Sloane walks down the aisle."
“There’s something you’re not telling me.”
The room goes quiet. Harrison taps his thumb against the antique desk scarred with decades of ink stains and whiskey rings. I give Harrison a moment to consider his options. I turn my attention to the photos on the credenza that stop about ten years ago. Sloane is in braces with a gap-toothed grin in one. In another she’s in a school uniform squinting against the sun. Then one of Sloane at fifteen, baby blue eyes so innocent and full of hope. She had no idea of what would come. None of us did.
I remember that time of her life. The night she was attacked she was about that age.
"You don't have children, Mass." Harrison's voice drops. Tired. Old. "Sometimes the best you can do is choose the cage with the strongest lock that will keep them safe."
My jaw tightens so hard my teeth ache and I feel the pressure all the way to my temples. My mother's face surfaces. The way she looked the last time I saw her, sitting in a room she didn't choose, married to a man she never wanted, trapped in an arrangement someone else signed. No one came for her. No one stepped up and stopped her father from doing exactly what Harrison wants to do to Sloane.
I wasn't old enough to save my mother then, but I can damn sure step up for Sloane.
Mine.
"Harrison." I flatten my palms on his desk and lean forward until he has no choice but to look at me. The wood is warm under my hands, worn smooth from years of his fists and his elbows and his whiskey glasses. "Do you remember what happened to Sloane when she was fifteen?"
The color leaves his face. His hand tightens around the empty glass, his knuckles going white.
"I pulled a man off your daughter in a hallway in this house. I made sure he never touched another woman again. And now you're handing her to a man who looked ready to do the same thing to her the second she didn’t fall in line with his demands."
"Lorenzo isn't?—"
