Stalking Ginevra (Morally Black Book 4)

I step into the interrogation room, a concrete box thick with the scent of tears. Bianca Tarrantino hunches over a metal table and chair bolted to the floor. She’s a trembling, pleading mess, responsible for a financial drain that threatened to ruin my establishment.

Between Vitale, Lorenzo, and a team I dispatched to her mother’s apartment, we’ve identified burner phones, bank details, and blueprints for a heist on the Demartini Casino vaults.

This woman pretending to be a victim is no innocent, but an equal participant.

The door swings shut, and I soak in the slow burn of victory. I’m so close to catching Victor Bellavista that I can almost feel the warm spray of his blood. He should have stayed in the shadows, content with the amount he scammed from my casino, but I can’t forgive the stunt he pulled with the bomb.

Ginevra is safe, which is all that matters. I’ll return to the penthouse the moment I’ve wrung Bianca of her secrets.

“Let’s see how many fingers I get to amputate before you tell me what I need to know,” I say.

Bianca’s head jerks up, her eyes wide with terror. Mascara-colored tears stream down features twisted with anguish.

“Please, Mr. Montesano,” she wheezes. “I’ll tell you everything, but you need to protect me from Victor.”

Before I can reply, the door opens, and Teresa Carlini and her son, Leo, stumble into the room. I’ve kept them in our basement cells since after the set of interrogations, not wanting them dead until I’d found that Bellavista bastard.

Without the makeup, Teresa’s skin has turned jaundiced, her hollowed cheeks and dark circles under her eyes casting a sickly shadow. Her hair clings to her forehead in greasy clumps, making my former head of procurement barely recognizable. Leo is as pale as death, his cracked lips trembling, his bloodshot eyes darting from me to Bianca. He grips his mother’s arm, as if she’s the only thing keeping him upright.

“Were you working the counterfeit casino chip scam with Bianca?” I ask.

Teresa frowns. “What are you talking about? No!”

I turn to Leo who shakes his head.

“Because Bianca was his accomplice on the inside,” I add.

The pair turn to the younger woman, their features etched with disbelief.

Bianca’s sobs grow louder, but it looks like neither of them are in the position to give two shits about her distress.

“You were supposed to be family!” Teresa screams, her voice cracking. “How could you work with Victor behind our backs?”

“I didn’t have a choice!” Bianca cries.

“What the hell does that mean?” Leo rasps, advancing on her with clenched fists. “You were in on the casino chip scam the whole time?”

I lean against the wall, watching the family drama. They confessed to the procurement scam easily enough, but swore ignorance about the chips too quickly for my liking.

“Victor blackmailed me,” Bianca stammers, her gaze flicking between Teresa and Leo. “He has a tape.”

Leo’s features contort, his lip curling with disgust. “With who?”

“It’s complicated.” Face crumpling, Bianca erupts into choked sobs.

“Enough.” I step forward, pulling out my gun, and pointing it at Bianca’s head. “This family has had enough grace. You, start talking. Now.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” she says, her tongue darting out to lick her lips. “I first spoke to Victor when I had dinner with Mr. Napolitano.”

I nod. Joe Napolitano was the former head of procurement and one of the traitors we burned alive in the crematorium. It doesn’t surprise me that he had dealings with Bellavista.

“Wait,” Leo rasps. “You were fucking Joe?”

“Focus,” I snap.

Bianca takes a shuddering breath and clutches the edge of the table. “That night, he made me have a three-way with his wife. A week later, Victor sent me the footage, saying he would tell everyone if I didn’t get close to Antonio at BV Holdings.”

Her words dissolve into incoherent sobs. I make a slow count of ten for her to regain some composure before hurrying her along. “What were your orders?”

“To tell him I needed some chips for a private game.”

“Stop crying and tell Mr. Montesano how to find Victor Bellavista!” Teresa screams.

Bianca wipes her eyes and hiccups. “Victor always emails me his latest number.”

I flick my head at Lorenzo, who walks to the corner of the room and picks up a laptop. He places it on a table, flips it open and slides it in front of Bianca.

“Find it,” he says. “Now.”

Trembling, she taps on the keyboard, bringing up a series of emails with attachments. She double-clicks the latest one, firing up a spreadsheet filled with strings of numbers.

“What the hell is that?” I ask.

She shivers. “It isn’t very sophisticated, but no one’s going to look too closely at petty cash requests.”

My lip curls. How many other documents are circulating the casino, communicating ways to drain us dry?

She reads out the number, which Vitale enters into his phone to send a request to the nerds at Mortis House. If we can trace the burner phone before Victor changes his number, then we have a shot at pulling him into our net.

Leaning over, I grip the back of Bianca’s chair. “Call him and say you’ve found a stash of genuine chips you want to sell.”

She flinches, swallowing hard. “What if he realizes it’s a setup?”

“He will if you keep sniveling. Play it cool, and maybe you’ll survive the night.”

She nods, and Lorenzo slides a phone across the table. Steeling her features into a hard mask, she dials, but the call goes straight to voicemail. Hesitating, she glances up at me with pleading eyes, so I give her a curt nod to continue.

“’Hey, Victor,” she says, her voice steady despite her shaking hands. “I’ve found something you might be interested in. These chips are genuine and still activated. Get back to me.”

She ends the call, placing the phone onto the table as if it might explode.

“What now?”

“Wait for him to respond, and help set up an ambush in exchange for your life,” I say.

The walk back to the penthouse feels longer than usual, weighed down by unfinished business. Silence stretches, pressing down on my shoulders. Victor might find Bianca’s proposition too good to be true and set up a counter-ambush the way he did with Larry Zambino.

I’ve never encountered anyone so slippery.

When the elevator doors slide open, I step into the penthouse, expecting to find Ginevra crashed out on the sofa. It’s empty, and the place looks untouched, save for the faint scent of hot chocolate. My chest tightens. I hoped she would wait up.

“Ginevra?” I call out, but there’s no answer.

I cross the living space, passing a spotless kitchen. The dining chairs are exactly where I left them, and across the room, the sofa cushions are still smooth and undisturbed. Everything’s too still, like the whole place is holding its breath.

She’s probably having an early night.

Continuing toward the bedroom, I force down a roiling sense of dread. Ginevra and I are in a good place. We’re married. In love. She wouldn’t leave the moment I turned my back.

Would she?

The thought coils in my gut like a python. Its thick tail of paranoia wraps around my neck, threatening to pulverize my rational thoughts. Ignoring it, I pause at the bedroom door, telling myself I’ll find her curled up under the covers.

My cock stirs at the prospect of Ginevra clad in my shirt, her auburn hair spilling across my pillow like a halo. After connecting so deeply with her at the treehouse, she has to be there, waiting.

I turn the knob, push open the door, only to find an empty bed. On its surface is a letter, scrawled in her handwriting.

Cold dread spreads across my chest, inching toward my heart. Crossing the room, I pick it up and read:

I could never love a man like Bob Brisket.

My grip tightens, crumpling the paper. Before I can fully process her words, my gaze lands on the groin protector on the bedside table, placed atop a stack of catgirl manga. Next to it, a tablet plays one of the strip club videos on repeat.

It’s the one where I removed my helmet and exposed my face to the camera.

She knows. Knows I’m Bob Brisket. Knows I set her up. Knows I’m the Machiavellian bastard who engineered her fall from grace.

Dropping to my knees, I squeeze my eyes shut, collapsing in on myself with a choked gasp. My chest splinters with the weight of my betrayal, letting in a tight fist of guilt that squeezes my heart.

I’ve lost her forever. There’s no coming back from such an elaborate stunt.

She’ll be back in Victoria Gardens, crying on her mother’s shoulder, telling her she was right never to get involved with a Montesano. And this time, I won’t disagree.

I could have sent a bunch of flowers after her father had died, offering my condolences and support. Wormed my way back into her heart with kindness and charm. But I was so determined not to be the simp she’d left in the dust that I plotted her downfall.

Now, it’s all backfired.

Winning her back will take more than groveling. It’ll take something monumental.

I’m about to call Reaper, but my phone rings. I pull it out of my pocket, finding an incoming call from the casino.

“What is it?” I bark.

“Montesano,” a voice says through a changer. “You have disrupted my operations for the last time.”

I go still, the edges of my focus sharpening. “Victor Bellavista.”

He laughs, a mocking, mechanical sound that grates on my nerves. “Correct. And you’re about to compensate me for your meddling with a hundred million dollars.”

A simmering heat builds under my collar, and I tighten the phone. “Or I could just kill your associates and continue draining your accounts until you’re left with nothing.”

“Check your email.”

The line goes dead, leaving the threat hanging in the air like the blade of a guillotine.

“What the hell is he planning?” I open my email app.

An unread message sits at the top of the inbox, its subject line reading, Evidence.

As if a bastard like that will trick me into opening a potential virus. I would laugh at his audacity, but I’m still reeling from losing my wife. After forwarding the email to my team at Mortis House, I fire up the surveillance app. It was careless of me to leave Ginevra in a penthouse containing evidence of my misdeeds.

Making a mental note to ask Cesare for advice on initiating Stockholm Syndrome, I scrub through the security videos. Carla from room service enters the penthouse, pushing a trolley laden with silver cloches, and a bottle of champagne chilling in an ice bucket.

When the two women exchange tight hugs, my eyes narrow, and I turn up the volume. Carla encourages Ginevra to eat a grilled cheese sandwich before handing her a complete change of clothes.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I snarl at the screen.

My phone rings, interrupting my viewing. It’s Reaper.

“Did you open the email?” he asks.

“The one I forwarded for a virus check?” I growl, my gaze still fixed on the screen where Ginevra settles inside the room service trolley. “No.”

“Open it,” Reaper says. “It’s clean.”

“What’s inside?”

“Benito—”

“Fine.” I pull the phone away from my ear and tap Victor’s email. There’s no content, just a video attachment. I press play, and freeze.

Ginevra lies unconscious on the floor of a dark room. She’s wearing the room service uniform, with blood pouring down her temple.

I stare at the screen, my veins pulsing with murderous fury. Carla delivered Ginevra into the clutches of my enemy. How the hell did I not know she was working with that bastard?

Victor Bellavista can corrupt my employees, steal from my casino, and bomb my hotel, but taking my wife crosses a line he and anyone connected to him will regret.

That bastard has gone too far, and I will tear down the world and reduce it to ashes to get back my wife.