Page 81 of Mafia and Gold Digger

Oh God, this thinking on your feet gig is much more difficult than I anticipated. I start to reply with another made-up story. “Oh, it’s because he likes to dress up as a fluffy bunny rabbit for me when we’re having sexy time in the bedr?—”

“Excuse us,” Saint grabs my arm and hauls me away. “You’re taking this too far,” he grits out at me.

I put a hand on my hip. “Look, I’m doing my best. You know that I’m a bad liar. And my brain keeps freezing with everyone staring at me and waiting for answers.”

But he just continues to glare at me.

“It’s you who insisted on having this party in the first place, Saint,” I bluster. “I told you it was a bad idea…”

“Just cut it out from now on, Emerald,” he growls. “Because otherwise, I might just have to kill you.”

“No, you won’t, fluffy bunnykins.” I beam him a syrupy smile. “Because then nobody will ever believe that our fake engagement is real.”

CHAPTERTWENTY-FIVE

SAINT

Even after the pool incident, I’m still determined to convince people that our engagement is real. Because that’s the only way I can keep Emerald and her siblings safe—and I’m determined not to let them down.

I shake my head. Why the hell am I even thinking about this right now? I’m supposed to be working, and being a heartless asshole serves me well in my particular line of work.

I need to focus. More money’s been taken from the casino. Money’s been siphoned off from the casino bank accounts and sent to offshore accounts in Switzerland, then gone by a convoluted route through Cyprus and Malta to Italy. We still don’t know who the traitor is or if it’s going to lead to the Feds coming down on the Imperiosi.

There’s no doubt that the whole thing has a sophisticated set up, but all the leads I’ve followed keep coming to a fucking dead end. Several of those leads confirmed that the Italian involved with the Croatians was indeed an Imperiosi man, but that’s where the trail died and stayed that way.

I’ve also had a guy, Dale, doing a forensic investigation on the casino’s IT systems. He’s been identifying vulnerabilities in the cybersecurity system and analyzing digital evidence to try and reconstruct how the money could have been taken in the first place.

It’s taken him a while—it’s been far from straightforward—but he’s convinced some of the money is being siphoned off by a hacker called Kevin Anderson. This Anderson guy used to work for the NSA, so he’s obviously a smart guy. I just hope he’s the guy I’m looking for.

I feel adrenaline surge in me at the thought of finally tracking down who’s responsible for this whole shitshow. Dale gives me the location for the hacker, and as soon as I have that address, I’m over there like a shot.

The hacker lives in upstate New York. Normally, I’d stake out the place to make sure of his movements before moving in, but this whole problem and the associated dangers have been going on for far too long now, and my patience is worn thin. So, I do the next best thing to get intel on the hacker—I ask his neighbor.

After watching Kevin go out for a run, I take the elevator up to the third floor of the apartment block. I’ve searched who else lives on this floor, and I’ve selected the lady opposite him as the best option.

Knocking at her door, I wait until I hear her approaching. Moments later, I meet the stare of a woman who must be around seventy-five.

She frowns at me as the door creaks open. “Yes? Can I help you?”

“Mrs. Wilkins?”

“That’s right,” she clips.

“I’m looking for some information on your neighbor, Kevin Anderson.”

She crosses her arms over her chest. “The man’s a scumbag. He beat his kid once. DCFS were around like a shot, and the kid got taken into care. He was only nine. I just hope the poor kid’s happy and safe now.”

Just as I thought, the old dear knows everything that goes on with her neighbors. “Hmm, he sounds a bad sort.”

“He sure is,” she huffs. She peers at me from over her thick glasses with a quizzical look. “Who, again, did you say you are?”

I spy a small dog behind her and immediately know she must be an animal lover. “I’m from animal control. We had an anonymous report that Kevin might be mistreating an animal.”

She runs her beady eyes over me, from head to toe, taking in my all-black outfit. If she doesn’t believe the animal control line, I’ll tell her it was a slip of the tongue and I’m actually an undertaker and Kevin has called me in to arrange a funeral. I just won’t mention that it’s his own.

“Animal control, you say?”

“Yeah.”

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