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“You didn’t do this.”
“Do you know why he’s fixated on me? Is it because he saw us kiss?” I shook my head. “Wait, no, I met him before I met you. This doesn’t make sense."
"That's the piece I've been trying to dig out. I was given intel that he was tracking and keeping tabs on a woman who worked at Baines Data and Technology.”
“Oh God.” I breathed. All this time I was convinced this was happening to me because of sheer dumb luck, not because I might actually know anything.
“In the course of investigating him, I've seen what he's been up to since his father was arrested several months ago. Your name came up on his computer searches. Searches on your family. And I needed to know why. I thought you were involved with him."
I started to sit up and winced when my hand hit the edge of the tub. "I am not."
"Well, I know that now, but at the time, I didn't. So I needed to get close to you."
"Did you break?"
He furrowed his brow. "What do you mean?"
"You said everybody breaks under torture."
He shook his head. "No. But it was only a matter of time. Another four days, five, hell, maybe another month. Or maybe only hours, depending on how high the pain was. Anything can happen. Your brain sometimes just breaks."
"So Massimo… he just was looking me up?"
His gaze softened to something that looked a lot like pity. "As far as I can tell, he seems to have formed an attachment to you. He wants you. Maybe something you know."
"You mean he's fixated on me."
He nodded. "Yeah. Wherever you met him, his obsession grew from that, I think."
I leaned back against the tub, closing my eyes and trying to force all of those memories aside. "I met him, I don't know, five months ago, maybe. My future brother-in-law had some property Massimo wanted to buy. There was an exchange. It was basically easy. I happened to be in the office trying to grab Travis so that we could surprise my sister for her birthday."
"And he saw you then?"
"Yeah. I didn't see him again until the night I met you at the bar, and I honestly didn’t even recognize him at first. I literally don’t even know the guy."
“I have a theory about that. The Syndicate is having a sort of all-hands meeting in a few weeks where the top echelon will meet in person. Massimo has been making moves against some of the mid-tier players, bottlenecking everything around him before you get to the top. I think he's trying to take them all out in one fell swoop. To get access to that meeting, he would need money. A lot of it.”
“Is this why you started stalking me?”
He rolled his eyes. “I was hardly stalking.”
I lifted a brow.
“Okay fine. Light stalking. I needed to know your connection to him. Best way is to surveil. When I couldn’t find an obvious connection, I needed to get closer.”
I've been tracking his bank transactions. There's also a Ledger that supposedly holds information on all members of the Syndicate from top tier to bottom level runners. For years, most people thought it was a fairy tale. But as it turned out, Antonio Igno, Massimo's father, was what you’d call the record keeper. He had a record of every favor owed, every transaction, and the amount of those transactions, as well as the accounts they went to.”
“All in one place? That hardly seems wise.”
“I mean I understand. But still. I’m obviously not involved. I know nothing.”
“Actually, I think you know something without knowing something. These people are more paranoid about electronic transactions. They use them, but with anonymous numbered accounts. That Ledger pointed to exactly who the numbered accounts belong to, how much is in there, and what the money is marked for. A few months ago, intelligence agencies captured Antonio after someone had stolen the Ledger from him. We recovered the Ledger in pieces only to find that decoding it required a cipher. Eventually the cipher was recovered, but there's a third missing piece of the Ledger that ties all the names to the accounts, and I think Massimo has it. And now I'm planning to take it from him.”
“So, you're basically antagonizing him?”
“Let's just call it drawing him out for now. I think there's something he wants you for. Specifically, something you know. Some information you have from Baines Data.”
I shook my head. “I don't know anything. You can see the full list of clients that Baines has. All my bosses have access to them. You don't need me.”
