Chapter 23: Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King: Chapter 23

Glass doors sweep open and admit us into the office. An ordinary company building that looks like any of the countless others popping up from the New York gridlock. Olivia marches half a step behind me, her back straight like a soldier marching to battle. She has no idea that I am the one she is about to go to war with.

I’ve thought a lot about my options. Atlas said he had given me a perfectly reasonable solution. I refuse to see it like that. I refuse to hand over anything or go groveling to the feet of Salvatore Mori for some kind of handout. Hell, I don’t know if Salvatore Mori will even side with me in the end. There are no guarantees, no fond friends to turn to. Even if I do end up with Salvatore on my side, I don’t know if it will be enough to dissuade the rest of the pack from culling us.

Culling me , my brain corrects.

Nadia and Harper will not be anywhere near this. I’ve already made up my mind about that.

I sit down at a table of men in suits with concerned, leathery faces. They’re corporate lawyers and accountants, those that keep this ship sailing above board when it comes to federal scrutiny.

I used to feel comfortable at tables like this. Meetings. Now I feel like an animal stuffed into a suit and to talk numbers and policies when its natural instinct is to bite. Olivia opens a thick binder and thanks the familiar faces seated at the table for joining us.

Olivia clears her throat.

“Thank you for taking the time,” she says, as if taking this meeting was optional. “We’d like to make you aware that some of our work may be impacted over the next few weeks. We—”

“I need two teams,” I say, interrupting her. “The first will be made up of those of you on the corporate accounts. I’m transferring full control of the business to my brother, Elijah. I need everything put into his name.”

In response to this I get dead-eyed stares. Olivia’s mouth moves without managing to get any sound to come out.

“I—” she says, clearly flustered. She glances nervously at those in the room as her smile falters, “That’s—no, that’s not what we discussed—”

“Effective immediately? When no one so much as picks up a pen, I say with a full measure of sarcasm, “I assume someone should be writing something down?”

Motion finally sweeps the room as the lawyers start to crack open laptops and clean off their glasses, a sense of urgency being whipped up as they realize this is a genuine request and I’m not off my pain meds again.

Olivia gawks at me, stunned into silence, as I veer this steady train off its tracks.

“My brother will have full corporate control of all businesses and their associated accounts. As for the rest of you, you’ll be going over my personal and family estate. I need a new will drawn up and authorized.”

That shocks Olivia back into the world as if I’ve slapped her. I think she’s about to jump out of her chair.

“Mr. Caruso, the family already has a long-established inheritance precedent in the event of—”

“I need it revised.”

I see her jaw twitch, the purse of her mouth, as she anticipates what I’m doing. Shuffling everything that is mine— everything —over to Nadia and Harper, in as many different fail-safe ways that I can get it to them. Elijah can survive comfortably off his own accounts and the businesses, those on and off the books, while Nadia takes the rest. The lion’s share of everything that has been handed down to heir after heir of the family business.

“Are you insane?” she whispers. “What are you doing—are we planning to lose?”

“I’m planning for the future. Whether I’m in it or not.”

“What about our future?” she demands, making a grand gesture, as if my decision encapsulates the entire world. “What you’re trading away isn’t just money in a bank account, it’s—it’s a safeguard that’s been handed down—”

“Elijah will have more than enough to keep things running smoothly and to pay what needs paying—”

There’s a loose shuffle of papers, questions being tossed across the room as they draw up the necessary contracts. I twist the ring around my finger again, feeling clear. Painless. Elevated and numb all at once.

Olivia stares at me, her jaw set, her eyes dark and glimmering. The unspoken truth in the air is that I am trading away everything. Money that should go back into the family—it will now go to Nadia, to Harper. Traditionally, widows only take so much of the cut, not so different from a life insurance policy, while the bulk of the don’s assets filter back into the family for the next head of the family to utilize as he sees fit. That’s the way of it. But not this time.

“What would you like me to do, sir?” Olivia asks, through clenched teeth.

“It doesn’t matter what I want you to do,” I say, shrugging her away, “You don’t work for me anymore.”