Page 71 of Her Dark Salvation

“That’s why he was there,” I whispered, more to myself than Marco. “Because of Vinnie.” I didn’t want to entertain another explanation.

He ran his hand up and down my back. “You okay?” he asked, voice gentle and concerned.

I let out a tremendous, shuddering breath, rested my head on his chest, and relaxed into his arms. “Yeah, I’m fine. Now.”

The irony that I was taking comfort in the arms of the man who was the reason for the FBI agent was not lost on me. I didn’t care. I nuzzled my face into his chest and breathed in the safety of his scent.

“He didn’t harass you, did he?” Marco grumbled.

“No.”

“Good.”

“He was fishing for information.”

“That’s what he does.”

“I think he was trying to intimidate me.”

He squeezed me closer. “That’s also what he does.”

“I told him to get lost.”

His chest rumbled with laughter. “Mia bellissima Anna. Good girl.”

I indulged myself a moment longer, taking comfort in his closeness and letting it calm my nerves. But I’d come there for a reason, and it was time to rip off the Band-Aid.

I pulled back and held up my printout. “It’s here,” I said and turned the first page toward him so he could see the chart. “Proof.”

His eyes darkened. “Proof of what? What am I looking at?”

I pointed at the chart. “This graph distills the results of the first Monte Carlo analysis I ran on the model of your European office. The black points represent expected profits under various scenarios, and the red line represents your actual profits.” I glanced up at him.

“For the past… year, the black points are all above the red line.”

“Exactly. The model predicts are consistently higher than your actuals. The previous year, the pointssurroundthe line, see? Those are normal variations—stochastic noise—deviations you’d expect in this type of simulation. But then about a year ago, the red line started to move away from the point cloud in a meaningful way. Slowly at first, but uniform behavior like that isn’t noise. That’s true financial movement.” I dropped the papers and looked up. “Someone is stealing from you, Marco.”

He tensed, taut as a bowstring. An ominous energy surrounded him, made worse by a trick of the light. It highlighted his eyes, and for a moment, made them look like they glowed a devilish crimson. “You’re sure,” he ground out through clenched teeth.

I nodded and lifted the papers. “Look here. The movement is even more pronounced now. There’s been a serious gap for the past six months.”

“Why the growth?”

“No idea.” I dropped my arm and the papers to my side. “My guess? Whoever’s doing this figured you hadn’t noticed. Thought they could get away with more. Or…” I chewed my lip, not wanting to vocalize my rampant paranoia.

“Or what?”

“Or they wanted to expedite an endgame. Whatever that is.”

The fury in his eyes and the pain contorting his handsome face punched me in my chest and bruised my heart. Despite his conviction that it hadn’t been the economy, Marco hadn’t believed someone he trusted was stealing from him. Not really. And the truth was devastating.

“The model output a lot of data. I haven’t gone through it all yet, not in detail. Once I do, I can run additional simulations to characterize the drain. I’ll start on Monday, but it’ll take time before I can nail down exactly how this is happening. But I—I thought you’d want to know.”

He turned away and rested his hands on his hips. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

“I’m sorry, Marco.”

He looked over his shoulder and gave me a terse nod.

---