Chapter 13 - The Fall of the Don|
Matteo didn't step away. He shifted his body, completely blocking Elena from his father’s view.
"You knew," Matteo said, his voice dropping into a terrifyingly calm register. "You knew Elena was my daughter twenty-five years ago."
Carmine chuckled dryly. "Of course I knew. Do you think anything happened in this city without my permission? I let Isabella take her because a child is a liability. But now... now she’s a threat."
"She doesn't care about your empire!" Matteo shouted, his fists clenching at his sides.
"She carries the ledger's location in her head!" Carmine snapped, his eyes flashing with sudden rage. "She knows the secret to thirty years of my life! She dies tonight, Matteo. And if you stand in my way, you die with her."
Carmine signaled his guards. "Kill them both."
"Wait!" Elena cried out, stepping out from behind Matteo.
The guards hesitated, their guns leveled at her chest.
Elena held up her mother's old recipe notebook. "You want the ledger? The ledger in that binder is useless without the encryption keys written in this book! My mother didn't just record the numbers, Carmine. She changed the offshore codes every five years using her recipes!"
Carmine’s eyes narrowed slightly. "You're bluffing."
"Try reading page forty-two without the salt-to-butter ratio," Elena said coldly, her fear suddenly vanishing, replaced by a cold, burning white rage. "You won't get a single dollar out of those Swiss accounts. It will all be frozen forever."
Carmine stared at the small notebook in her hand. Greed flickered across his aged face. "Hand it over, girl."
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"Come get it," Elena said.
She swung her hand back and threw the notebook straight into the dark corner behind the heavy steel vault door.
