Page 18 of The Lies We Tell

“Yes.”

The guilt rose unexpectedly, but he pushed it back down. He had a responsibility to keep his family safe, even from someone as seemingly harmless as Tessa. A deep dive into her phone would set their fears aside when Maeve found nothing of concern.

“Got it,” Maeve said with a nod. “Download and destroy.”

“Thank you. Do you have time for a little side project?”

Maeve reached into the bottom drawer of her desk and pulled out a cable, using it to connect the phone to the computer. “What kind of side project?”

“Tessa offered information on her father in exchange for trying to find her mother.”

Maeve glanced up at him, brows raised in question. “And you said yes? Interesting.”

“I didn’t say anything. I doubt she knows much anyway.”

“But you’re considering it. Very interesting indeed,” she murmured when he nodded, ignoring him when he glared at her. “Finding people who might not want to be found is probably something Sienna would be better at. Or faster, at least.”

Shaking his head, Matteo stepped around her desk toward his office door. “I don’t want the others to know about this yet. I don’t need to give Luca more reasons to lecture me over this. So let’s keep it between us for now.”

“Will do.”

“Has Antonetti reached out?”

“No, but the men we have sitting on his house and hotels say he appears to be scrambling to replace the men we killed. So he could be planning a strike.”

“He’ll find himself disappointed in his results.”

“Of course he will. Davide sent over updated numbers for Q4. I put them on your desk along with Luca’s reports for the casinos. No new movement on the sale of Gallo Industries,” she added before he could ask. “It is only the first of the year, after all. Everyone is still sluggish from the holidays. But as soon as I know something, you’ll know something.”

“What am I going to do without you?”

She smiled, tapping a few keys to copy the information from one device to the other. “Flounder and drown. Oh, I almost forgot. Callum called last night. He had better luck in Frankfurt than he thought he would. There’s an updated list of known Antonetti contacts on top of the stack on your desk.”

“No one will ever match you, Maeve.”

“I know. You’ll be fucked without me.”

Chuckling, Matteo let himself into his office and crossed to his desk. He picked up the list of names and quickly scanned it. Most of them he recognized, but a few were unknown. He didn’t like not knowing things. He’d have to put calls in to his own contacts in Belgium and Greece and see if the Quinns knew anyone in Spain to get more information on these new additions.

He knew exactly where he wanted to start. Jurgen Braun. Matteo had run in overlapping circles with Braun during his time in Germany. He’d never had occasion to use Braun’s services, but the guy was like a Swiss Army knife. Any tool, person, location, vehicle, or equipment you needed for a job, he could get it for you or tell you where to find it.

Braun was a neutral party, unaffiliated with any group or organization. All he cared about was getting paid. And he got paid well for his information and connections.

The guy was richer than anyone had a right to be. He could have retired ten times over by now, but when Matteo had run into him the previous Christmas at a party in Berlin, he’d been working. Bringing together a Russian arms dealer and a French trafficker.

Braun dealt in information and favors, and if he knew Antonetti well, he’d know who might be the best people on Antonetti’s list to go after, and who they might not even know about yet.

Matteo wasn’t interested in dragging this out. It had been a long eight months already, and he would not have a repeat of the near failure bringing down Gallo Industries had been. As grateful as he was for Sienna’s inside knowledge that kept them from flailing around in the dark, her involvement had created a lot of complications too.

Least of which had been letting Drago poke too far into his business and then escape from the Gallo villa during their raid. If not for that mishap forcing him to go to Syracuse and take care of the boy himself, Matteo wouldn’t be sleeping across the hall from a woman ten years his junior with a body he couldn’t stop thinking about.

Shaking Tessa from his thoughts, he reached for the receiver of his office phone and dialed the number scribbled next to Braun’s name. It rang three times and then went to voicemail. Matteo left his name and number and then asked about Braun’s selection of wines. Code for a desire to solicit services.

Hanging up, Matteo turned his attention to the rest of his work while he waited. If he were Braun, he’d ask around before returning a call from an unknown entity. Matteo had plenty of friends across Europe who would vouch for him. That was the game. That was the part of all of this his father had never understood.

Power could no longer thrive in the vacuum of Sicily. If they wanted to outlast the zealous politicians hell-bent on eradicating the Mafia and their way of life, they needed to think bigger. They needed to go beyond Italy and establish alliances and understandings across Europe and even into Asia and the Americas.

Matteo had tried to explain this to his father many times before, but Lorenzo had never been interested. This is the way it’s always been done, his father had said. If you can’t handle it, tell me, and I’ll name Dom instead.

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