Page 17 of The Mafioso’s Bride

“They all belong to Moretti loyalists—Corsini traitors, but the ownership and accounts are separate. We are looking for payments that lead to Lombardi or…your father.”

Her attention moves between the columns. “Can you put all three sets together?”

“Why?”

“I want to see the dates in one list. The company headings keep separating them.”

I open a new sheet and combine the records. “Oldest or newest first?”

“Oldest.”

I sort the rows by date. Giada leans closer, one hand braced on the desk. Her shoulder nearly touches mine. The memory of the warmth of her body pressed against mine returns with enough force to distract me from the screen.

She studies the list without speaking. Her fingertip follows the dates in the air. She counts once under her breath, then starts again at the top.

“Can you show the cents in their own column?” she asks.

I separate the last two digits from each payment. “What do you see?”

She looks through the reorganized rows again. “The payments are thirteen days apart. October fourth, October seventeenth, October thirtieth. Then November twelfth and November twenty-fifth.”

I check the next dates. She’s right.

“The company names rotate,” she continues. “So do the cents. Forty-two, eighteen, sixty-three, then forty-two and eighteen again. If the same pattern continues, the next payment should end in sixty-three cents.”

I scroll down to the next entry. Sixty-three.

Weeks of reports sit behind those numbers. My men divided the records by business and reviewed each company alone. Giada asked for the information in the order she needed, then found what none of us saw.

“Those aren't three separate sets,” she says. “They're one set with the company names rotated. People can label a payment anything they want, but a repeated pattern follows rules.”

Her sentences come faster as she explains the rotation. This is the same delight she gives tardigrades, focused now on records that have stalled my search.

I pull the second chair beside mine. “Sit.”

Her expression closes at the sharpness in my voice. “I shouldn't have looked.”

“You should have.” I turn the monitor fully toward her and soften my tone. “What else do you see?”

Luca

“Dante’s wife invited you to lunch tomorrow.”

Giada sits beside me at my desk, her attention fixed on the payment records she reorganized yesterday.

“Why?”

“Polina wants to meet you.”

“Does she expect me to accept?”

“No. She asked me to extend the invitation. The answer is yours.”

Her fingers press into the knees of her trousers. “Will you be there?”

“No. You’ll have lunch alone.”

She considers that. “I’ll go.”