I tried to stay quiet, stay still, to not wake Tessa. But my hand brushed too sharply against the sheets, a soft rustle that broke the silence. Her eyes fluttered open, and her gaze found mine, searching, soft.
The remnants of sleep clouded her eyes, but they cleared as she focused on my face. “What’s wrong?” she murmured, voice barely above a whisper.
“I just figured out the rest of the ledger,” I said, my voice low, precise. “Who’s been siphoning the money.”
“What?!” she said, instantly jolted out of her half asleep state. “Who?”
“Cosimo,” I said, letting the name hang in the air, heavy with accusation. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.”
“Your cousin?” she asked, her voice tinged with disbelief. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
I explained how my grandma hadn’t left anything to Cosimo, and now my money was going missing. How the timing was too convenient, how he just happened to be asking questions atthe right moment, casually probing for information, pretending ignorance while lining his pockets. Every gap in the ledgers, every unexplained sum, screamed his involvement, and I could feel the pieces falling into place in my mind, each one pointing straight to him.
“I can’t believe it,” she said, her voice shaky, disbelief lacing every word.
“I wish it weren’t true,” I murmured, my eyes fixed on hers. “I’m not looking forward to what I have to do.”
She cringed, but didn’t ask what I was going to do to him. Then, she changed the subject. “Thanks for helping me with the last clue. I would have never figured it out without your help.”
“I think you would have,” I said. “I just sped up the process a bit—I’m around Cosimo more.”
“Now what?” she asked, her voice tentative.
“I need to make a call. Go back to bed.”
I leaned down and pressed my lips to hers, a brief kiss that tasted of both command and possession. Her eyes widened, caught between surprise and trust, and I felt that familiar coil tighten low in my chest—the part of me that wanted to claim her, tether her to me completely. Even this small contact reminded me how much of her attention, her world, belonged to me.
I walked downstairs and into an unused office, somewhere I could have a private conversation. Tessa’s cleaning had turned the room near spotless—now, the only faults were those of aging.
I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and dialed Rocco’s number, letting it ring once, twice. My mind ran over the details again—the ledgers, the missing money, Cosimo’s careless probing. Every piece of evidence pointed to him, and I wasn’t about to let him slip away unnoticed.
“This better be good,” My brother said, not bothering to hide the irritation in his voice.
It was four a.m. He probably had been asleep. I didn’t soften my tone. “Cosimo,” I said, each syllable deliberate. “He’s been siphoning money from us. Every missing sum, every gap in the ledger—it all points to him.”
There was a pause on the line, the kind that made me grit my teeth. I didn’t care that I’d woken him.
“What are you on about?” Rocco said skeptically.
So, I told him everything from the past few months.
“Wait, the girl who’s your maid found the ledger?”
I didn’t flinch. “Yes,” I said, my voice low, precise. “Tessa noticed a lot of inconsistencies while cleaning.”
There was a pause on the line, and then Rocco’s voice cut through, sharp with disbelief. “Why do you care about her so much?” he asked, suspicion threading through every word. “She’s just your maid. You’re putting a lot of faith into things she found.”
“She’s nothing,” I lied, the words feeling like acid on my tongue. “Just some debtors brat. The documents she found don’t lie, though.”
I let the pause hang, letting him imagine her as insignificant, even as my mind traced every detail about her—how careful she was, how observant, how utterly mine in ways no one else could see. My chest tightened with a low, possessive heat, but my voice stayed steady, controlled.
“Ok,” he responded. “Lets take care of it.”
Rocco and I pulled up to the strip club. We were here to pick up Cosimo, under the guise of needing help with interrogating some guy we found sniffing around our drug storage.
But that was a lie, obviously. Every detail about this “mission” was fabricated—just another way to get Cosimo out where we could confront him. He had been careless, greedy, and now itwas time to make him pay for thinking he could take from me unnoticed.
