Page 112 of Betrayed in the Dark
“Please take a seat.” She gestures to the chair before her desk and leans forward, her elbows bracing the hard surface.
Angelo looks between me and her before taking a seat and tugging on the collar of his shirt like a kid who just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
Only the cookie jar, in this case, is a shit ton of money that’s missing from the Alaries’ bank accounts.
Madeleine displays one of her infamous deadly smiles. The one that says, “You’re fucked,” and not in a good way.
“What can I help you with?” he asks as a bead of sweat rolls down his temple, which he quickly wipes away.
“How much did you take?” she asks, cutting straight to the point of this meeting.
“Take?” His eyes widen as he swallows, shaking his head. “I don’t believe I know what you’re referring to.”
She leans back, clasping her hands before her. “Are you sure about that?”
“Perhaps if you told me more specifically what you’re looking for, I’d be more helpful to you.”
A moment of silence passes as she stares down the man. “Fine. Since you want to play games, I’ll play one with you. How about a riddle?” Her lips curve into a dangerous smile as she takes pleasure in seeing Angelo squirm in his seat. And I can’t deny that I’m pretty fucking turned on watching her revel in her throne. “Who has the brain of a rat, the personality of a snake, and has stolen close to two million dollars from my family’s business?”
“I…I don’t know.” He shakes his head adamantly. “I’ve never stolen a penny from your family.”
I’ll give it to the man; he won’t back down without a fight.
And I’m guessing from the look on Madeleine’s face that that is exactly what he is going to get.
Her hands slam down on the desk, her eyes narrowing on him as she leans forward. “You would dare to lie to me?”
“I would never,” he rushes out, appalled.
“Eli.” She jerks her chin toward him.
“You got it,” I respond, stepping toward Angelo.
The man cowers in his seat, waving his hands before him. “Wait! Wait, this is just a misunderstanding!”
I yank the man from his seat and force him against the glass wall, holding him up by his neck. “Speak!”
“I didn’t take any money!” he gasps, his cheeks turning crimson as he struggles for breath.
Madeleine swivels in her chair, scrolling through her phone. “I thought you might say that. That’s why I asked Alex to look into you.”
His eyes nearly bulge out of their sockets as he realizes how fucked he is.
There’s almost nothing Alex can’t uncover.
“It seems on November first, you had a seven-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar transaction sent to an anonymous account in the Cayman Islands directly from the casino funds.” She looks up at the man. “Probably assumed we’d be a little too busy that day to notice, huh?”
November first.
The day after, the Alaries almost lost everything to a couple of psychopaths.
The day after, I jumped in front of Madeleine, taking a bullet for her.
My grip tightens around the man’s thick neck.
“You son of a bitch,” I growl, my face only inches from his.
“Then, on November twenty-fourth, the day the whole family celebrated Leo and Scarlett’s engagement, there was, conveniently, another transaction wired to the same account—this time for eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars.” She scrolls through her phone. “There were several smaller transactions after that, and oh look.” She turns her phone to face him. “My brother was even nice enough to send me a video fromour security cameras showing you stealing portions of players’ winnings under the table in cold hard cash. You probably thought we wouldn’t be able to trace that money, right?”
