Page 169 of Merciless Daddy

“This family has resources,” I said. “We will cover the payroll. We will cover the operation. We will rebuild the restaurant.”

“And when Gianni attacks the next place?”

“We cover that too.”

“That is not a plan.”

“No,” I said. “It is what family does while we make one.”

She looked at the list again. Her jaw worked once.

Then, beneath the table, her hand found mine.

Her fingers threaded through mine hard enough to hurt.

“Daddy,” she said.

I turned my palm and held her hand properly.

“May I help?”

Every instinct I had wanted to say no. Not because she was incapable. Because I knew the dangerous speed of her mind when guilt got hold of it. She would build a bridge from useful to expendable and call it strategy.

But she had asked, and I knew she could help.

“Yes,” I said.

Her breath moved out.

“You can help Angela trace Halberd’s loan structures. You can identify clean routes for bridge payments. You can use the companies your father put in your name to get money to the workers before the freeze hurts them.”

Her fingers tightened.

“But,” I continued, “helping does not mean making yourself the payment.”

She looked at me.

The room held still around us.

“You hear me, little one?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

I watched her eyes. The answer was true enough to count.

It was not true enough to soothe me.

Yelena and Angela took over the library before noon.

Laptops. Secure tablets. A legal pad filled with Yelena’s narrow, furious handwriting. Angela on the screen at first, then in person after Pietro brought her through the south route.

By one o’clock, they had found the first opening.

Halberd had frozen the Caruso payroll account because it was visible. It had not frozen a dormant consulting company tied to one of Yelena’s clean fleet subsidiaries. Gianni had ignored it because it had no obvious operational value.

He had underestimated the daughter he intended to own.

“He’ll see it eventually,” Angela said.