Page 35 of Ruthless Contract
CHAPTER TEN
ROME
––––––––
“Give me a minute to catch my breath,” the man told me. “I feel like my lungs are on fire.”
He inhaled deeply, swiping his hand over his face. I watched, waiting, ready to get this shit over with. Finally, he started talking again.
“Pasquale paid my team to watch you and find a time to end you,” the guy continued. “We were taking too long. So, he told us we had forty-eight hours to finish the job. Wanting to get the rest of the payment, we watched you leave your house tonight and followed.”
“You’ve been watching my house?” I asked, wondering why the hell my cameras hadn’t picked up on anything.
“Yeah. From our business down the street. We own the sandwich shop. Marlo & Sons.”
That’s why.Damn.
“I like your sandwiches,” I admitted. “My favorite is the Panino con la Porchetta.”
“T-thank you. It’s our bestseller. But our shop hasn’t been doing well. That’s why I took the job.”
I didn’t give a damn why he’d taken the job. If he’d succeeded, he wouldn’t have given a damn about my family or me. So fuck him, his shop, and his family.
“There’s more...” the man said, another cough escaping him.
“What?”
“I... I overheard a conversation between Pasquale and a member of the Corradini family while they were dining at my shop.”
“The Corradini family?”
What was my cousin, who was against mafia business, doing with a mafia family?
“Yeah. They meet at my shop often. Pasquale is the Corradini family’s Consigliere.”
For a moment, I just stared at him.
Pasquale?
What the fuck? My cousin, the lawyer who hated my casino because it would make people believe the Cattaneos in Italy were returning to their mafia roots, was actually the Consigliere for a mafia family.
That bastard had spent months preaching about protecting the family's reputation. Every argument we'd had about the casino came back to the same bullshit. He claimed he didn't want the Cattaneo name tied to organized crime.
He claimed he was trying to protect the family from returning to old habits. Apparently, that had all been a lie.
“What did you say?” I asked, needing to hear that shit again.
“Pasquale works for them... the Corradinis,” the man repeated. “I've seen him meet with them dozens of times. They usethe back room of the shop whenever they don't want people overhearing.”
What the fuck?
Everything suddenly made sense. The hypocritical fucker was fighting so hard to stop me because he was secretly serving as Consigliere for a mafia family. Not just any mafia family. The Corradinis.
The very family that was trying to establish its own casino empire in Italy. The same family rumored to be behind the collapse of two major casino chains. The same family that had offered to buy my casino for an absurd amount of money after construction began.
An offer I’d turned down, angering their don. But since their family hadn’t wanted problems with the DeLucas, they hadn’t tried to take down my casino. Yet, I’d told Davide and Anthony to remain on high alert, just in case they tried something, not knowing that Pasquale had been their way of trying to take us down.
I glanced toward the lab behind me, jaw tightening. I'd spent months believing Pasquale was acting out of principle. Turns out, he wasn't trying to stop the casino because he hated organized crime. He was trying to stop it because he was working for my competition.
