บททั้งหมดของ Sold to the Mafia king: The De Luca Bride : บทที่ 71 - บทที่ 76

Ricci returned the next afternoon with the kind of controlled energy that told me before he said a word that he'd found something worth the hours he'd spent buried in paperwork. He laid a fresh folder on Luca's desk, thinner than the one from before, but somehow heavier in the way it settled between us."The holding company," he said, "is called Valmora Partners. Registered eleven months before the fire, based out of a shell office in Catania that exists only on paper. No employees, no operations, nothing but a mailing address and a single bank account.""That's not unusual for a shell company," Luca said. "Half the legitimate businesses in this family operate through structures just as empty.""No," Ricci agreed, "but most shell companies are built to hide ownership behind layers deliberately designed to frustrate anyone looking. This one wasn't. Whoever registered Valmora Partners used a notary who keeps meticulous records and doesn't particularly care who asks to see them, provided

 Ferraro's call came through earlier than promised, his assistant's voice clipped and nervous on the line when she reached Ricci's office the next morning. He wanted us to come alone again, and this time his tone, relayed secondhand through Ricci, carried an urgency that hadn't been there before.We found him already standing when we arrived, no decanter of amber liquid waiting this time, no careful performance of composure. He looked like a man who had spent the night reconsidering every decision that had led him to this study."I retrieved the file," he said, sliding a single sheet across the desk before either of us had fully sat down. "The rental agreement. The property, the dates, everything."I picked it up, scanning the address printed in flat, unremarkable type, and felt something cold settle into my chest even before I recognized the street name. It was close to the harbor. Close enough to the warehouse district that Luca's men had searched

The relief of the courtroom lasted exactly as long as the drive home. By the time Luca's car turned through the mansion gates, I had stopped replaying the magistrate's words and started thinking about the one person who still had no hearing, no lawyer in his corner, and no one standing in front of a judge saying his name."I want to see Chris today," I said.Luca glanced at me from the driver's seat. "You've been on your feet since dawn.""He's been in a room with the shutters closed since the bell tower. I won the thing I walked in to win. He hasn't."He didn't argue. He only changed the route, and forty minutes later we were climbing the dirt road into the hills where the safehouse sat among olive trees, a low stone building that Luca's men watched from two sides. Only two of them knew what was inside. Luca had been careful about that. No one else in the household knew Isabella was alive, not the staff, not the guards, and not Vincent, who had been told only that a witness from the