Chapter 164

Luca

Night fell and the calls kept coming.

Enzo had mobilized every contact we had in three states.

Men I’d paid for years to keep their ears to the ground.

Men who owed me favors they’d never wanted to collect.

By the time the grandfather clock in the hall struck midnight, I’d spoken to so many voices I could barely keep them straight.

Some of them lied.

Some of them tried to stall me.

But fear is a powerful motivator, and eventually, someone broke.

I stood in the library, the doors shut tight against the house’s noise, and listened as Enzo’s contact told me exactly what I’d suspected:

That the Carillos hadn’t just come to collect the debt.

They’d come because Anna had promised them something she couldn’t deliver.

Leverage.

A guarantee that if they let her keep laundering their money, she’d use my companies to push through shipments no other syndicate would touch.

I pinched the bridge of my nose and exhaled slowly, tasting bile at the back of my throat.

My mother, my own mother offeri