Page 57 of Only Fools Rush

Ciel shook his head. “I’m finding three other corporations that trace back to him, but the others are still unknown. I’ll have to keep looking.”

“But we know he was connected with Don Vincenzo.”

“Yes. Your father was making huge payments to Tommaso, and it looks like some funds were going from Tommaso back to your father.”

Obi sat straighter. “Luciano was paying Tommaso. For his help in covering his tracks?”

My lips thinned as I locked eyes with Obi. “This is how he stayed under the radar of the other Families and of our own. It has to be. He paid Tommaso to help him and then filtered money through Tommaso so it wouldn’t show up in his financials. The other Dons didn’t know what they both were doing.”

This is exactly what we thought we’d find. But Tommaso was also paying my father. Why? For drugs? For help with trafficking? Something else?

“There has to be more,” Ciel said. “There are still dozens of other corporations that belong to someone else. Some of these were making pretty big payments to your father.”

I bit my lip, pacing behind the desk, trying to get all the pieces to slot into the place. It felt like we were missing something big. “My father was involved in a lot of shit. There have to be others. Important people.”

“Look into the other Dons,” Obi said. I nodded alongside him. “Whatever we cannot trace back to the Italian mafia might be tied to?—”

“The government,” I finished for him. That was another huge part of this puzzle, one that loomed over our heads like an unseen ax about to drop. “My father was selling guns to the CIA. These are the records. Payments received.”

Obi nodded. “Exactly my thought. This could be proof of their connection.”

We hadn’t had the time or energy to even consider what my father was doing with the US government—or why. Shit. It was just another layer to peel back.

Eventually this had to make sense, didn’t it?

Ciel gusted a breath. “That’s going to take some more time, especially if the government is involved. They would do everything they could to cover their tracks.”

“Damn.” I rubbed the back of my neck as I sat on the edge of Ciel’s bed. My hand ran over his ridiculously soft comforter in the time I took to process. “If we still had those boxes from my father’s study, we could cross-reference the information. See if we can find more connections to help narrow it down.”

We had to leave all that behind when we ran from my father’s house. Which got me thinking…

“I’ll look through your father’s laptop again,” Ciel said.

The thought smacked me across the face. I sucked in a breath and looked to Obi. “Max left those boxes out for me to find. It showed us what my father was doing. But do you think there’s another reason he wanted me to see the truth?”

“What do you mean?” Obi asked.

“He obviously knew my father was stealing drugs from the Russians, trafficking people with the Albanians, and selling guns to the CIA. He killed him for it. Do you think he knew that Tommaso was involved too?”

Obi’s eyebrows knit together. “So then why form an alliance with Tommaso if he knew?”

I swallowed. “To take him out.”

He wanted to be a trojan horse. He wanted to get involved with Tommaso to take him down from the inside out.

It sounded insane in my head, but it also sounded exactly like what I would do. And if I had this thought, I knew Max did, too. Max was ten steps ahead of us.

“Which is exactly what we did,” Ciel added. “We paved the way for Max to take full control over the Tommaso Family.”

My blood went cold while my brain raced. “Max said something to me that night at my house.”

“What?” Obi asked.

“He was talking abouthisfather, and he said something about‘There wouldn’t need to be Five Families. Just us.’” I looked at Obi. “What do you think he meant by that? Especially after allying with the Tommasos?”

His look said he was thinking the same thing I was. “Volpe wants New York.”

I nodded as my mouth went dry. “He wants to take control of all the Five Families. The whole mafia. I think he knows something more—something we’re not seeing yet.”