Page 84 of Little Deer
Ada shakes her head. “I only knew that a contract had been struck, not to who. Gregorio did not want me to know, and no matter how many times I tried to find out, I was never successful. It wasn’t until Dante left and told me himself that I realized what he was doing.”
“Can you tell us what role you’ve had to play in his schemes?” Pietro asks. He glances at Dante quickly, before his gaze moves back to her.
Ada tenses, and shame covers her face. My heart clenches as I watch her. I also note that Dante’s face hardens, but he simply gives his mother’s shoulder another comforting squeeze. Whatever it is, he doesn’t hold it against her.
Nico and Sofia’s statements earlier that Dante would kill for his mother echoes in my head, but it’s not so loud this time, not so frightening. If Ada is here, then that means that he’s wanting to protect her too.
Ada takes a deep breath, blowing it out slowly, seeming to gather her courage to speak. Finally, she looks at Nico and says, “I am very sorry for my part in this, Nico. To betray you this way is unforgivable and I will understand whatever punishment you must give me.”
The tension in the room shifts, and when I look at Nico, his own face is hard. Dante is watching him with a cool expression, but the warning in his eyes is clear.
Hurt my mother, and you won’t like the consequences.
A shiver of fear moves through me, but Massimo simply lowers his arm from the back of the couch to pull me in tighter to him, offering a silent comfort. I settle into him, breathing him in, as I wait for Nico to respond.
Nico finally says, “Ada, you have nothing to fear from me. Just tell us what you know. When this is over, you’ll have a place here if you want it, or we’ll set you up wherever you want to be.”
Ada eyes him, though I can tell she’s not sure she believes him. Hell, I don’t blame her. Nico is fucking scary. Finally, she gives a small nod and looks back at Pietro who is waiting patiently.
“My job started years ago. I…I did something that Gregorio found out about, and he used it to blackmail me. At first, I thought he would kill me, because I was doing something that went against him if he looked closely enough into it, but he was too caught up in whatever schemes he was working on. So the deal was I helped him, made sure that no one found out, and I lived and continued to have a job. He also threatened Dante, but I don’t know that he meant it. Still, I could not risk it. Dante was only a child.
“He told me that he had a business venture that he was starting, and there were some logistical things that he wanted me to oversee and record for him. But it had to be in code and had to be concealed. No one could ever know about it. If they did, I would pay with my life, and Dante would pay with his. He could marry and have a legitimate son, and no one would miss a bastard child.” There was bitterness in her last statement. My heart breaks for her.
“You had no choice,” Pietro says with a knowing nod. “A parent must do what they must to protect their children.”
Ada nods, relaxing slightly at the implication in Pietro’s words. “It started out with just keeping track of inventory inledgers that I had to hide in a hidden safe in my room. I was required to do my job during the day and then work on these at night after Dante went to bed. He knew I was good with numbers, math in general, and before I moved to America, I did accounting back home for my father’s business. It was a much smaller scale than this, but I quickly figured out that whatever I was tracking wasn’t anything good.
“The better I got, the more he gave me to do. Nothing really with money, other than a cut of the business. I figured out within a year he was having me track the people he was sending through the pipelines and routes that they got set up. I was horrified, tried to refuse.” She trembles, clenching her hands tightly into her lap. “He beat me and then went into Dante’s room and held a knife to his throat. Dante tried to fight him, but I told him to stop, and told Gregorio that I would do whatever he wanted, but to leave Dante alone.”
Dante’s body is rigid. “I remember that night.”
Ada looks up at him, shame in her eyes. “Until then he had left you alone. You were showing promise in your training, as much as I wanted to keep you from it, but it kept him from harming you. That night I thought he would actually do it. So I agreed and I haven’t fought him about it since.” She looks back at Pietro. “You understand, yes?”
Pietro nods, face grim. “I understand it very much. You are not to blame for protecting your son, Ada.”
Her eyes flash gratefully. “I worked on the books for many years since, calculating profits, losses, and the secret accounts that Gregorio kept with all the money he was making. I figured out pretty quickly that he was skimming much more money than the agreements were for, but I kept my mouth shut.” She took a deep breath. “I just made a separate ledger for those amounts and hid them away.”
“Wait, you were able to hide those all this time?” Nico asks. She nods. “And how did he not find them?”
“He only ever wanted the main ledger. He knew I was smart, but he never counted on me being smart enough to realize what he was doing. I hid the ledgers in a small hole behind one of the paintings in my room. He would at times search my room, making sure I wasn’t hiding a bug or squirreling money away, but never found anything so he would leave it be for a while. Eventually he would do it again, but they got less frequent as he got more involved in his businesses and working with Nico’s mother.”
“Did you see or hear them meet?” Alessio asks gently.
Ada nods. “She was over at least once a month. I wasn’t often around, but the few times I was, it struck me that she was far too calm and lucid to be drunk or on the drugs he told me she was always dousing herself with. She was very angry once that he had dared to change a shipment without consulting her. He slapped her hard across the face, told her without him she would be nothing. She surprised me though. She grabbed the gun on his desk before he could react and she put it right against his temple. She threatened that if he ever struck her again, it would be him that would die and she’d take over. She had men in her life that could make it happen. It wasn’t until later that I learned it was the other families that she was talking about. Esposito was frightened of that. Of the possibility that they would cut him out. Things were tense for a long time between the two of them before they finally got back to normal. But I also noted that his portions weren’t as large as they were before when it came to profits and what he was skimming. I didn’t know if that was his own caution or her getting back at him. I figured out quickly that it was her doing the majority of the books for the entire ring as a whole.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t kill her,” Nico mutters, frowning. “Gregorio has no respect for women, either, which is why he fits in with the others so well.”
“She had control of the main books,” Ada explains. “She was the money person, and she refused to give those up to him. He knew that if she was dead, he had nothing. But he waited to get revenge.” She looks at him. “Until you killed your father and he saw his chance to take it over fully.”
Nico stills, eyes darkening. “Gregorio was the one to give Dante just that hint of what was going on so I would look into it.”
Ada nods. “He didn’t want Dante to know it was coming from him, so he paid off some men to make sure that the payment and the women who were being sent through that night would be intercepted by you. He paid them really well, too, to make sure that they wouldn’t tell you anything about him being involved. When you didn’t come after him and killed your mother, he knew he was alright. So he worked with the De Lucas and Gallos to move the routes, hide them again, so you wouldn’t find out, and he assumed the books and all parts of it. Leonardo and Giovanni tried to fight that, Seamus as well, but at the time he was so overwhelmed with grief for your mother he didn’t push too hard.” She swallows hard. “I was given the books and told to make them work. I was responsible for paying out the payments, making sure that Gregorio got more than his fair share and keep things running smoothly. The last few months though, things have been tense, and he’s been stressed. Something about you sticking your nose in and screwing things up. He had a deal with Leonardo to marry Dante to his daughter, but that was in jeopardy since you married her. The routes have been halted for the last couple weeks, and he’s been demanding that Leonardo get them back up and running with Seamus’s help because of his contacts and the money they’re losing.”
“Have you heard anything about him having a buyer for a woman? Either the Conti’s or the Bianchi’s?” Dante asks her gently.
She nods. “I heard him on the phone with the Bianchis the other night. They were pissed about not getting the merchandise they were promised. He’s trying to smooth it out but it’s not going as well. They are demanding a replacement or they want their money back, and Gregorio refuses to part with a single penny. He told Leonardo that since he lost it, he was in charge of getting it back.”
“Fuck, so they are going to try to make a move to get Lucy, and probably the rest of us, back,” Sienna gripes. “Why can’t they just accept that we don’t want anything to do with them? We got out, we don’t want their twisted version of family.”
