I roll a heavy shoulder. “My reports say sometimes they are still breathing when they are tossed overboard.”
“Mother fuckers!” Kon, slams a fist down on the edge of my desk before belting out a string of Russian slurs and curses.
"It gets thicker and deeper. He's been laundering money through children's charities. Orphanages, specifically. Takes donations meant for kids and funnels them into his operations. Three of those orphanages have reported missing children in the past two years. No bodies. No leads. Just gone." I let that sink in. "And his treatment of his own people makes the Castellanos look like saints. And these are the people Enzo is trying to forge an alliance with. Imagine what they'd build together.”
The men fall silent as they mentally move that puzzle piece into place.
“What a sick fuck.” Rowan pushes out of his chair and leafs through the documents and images. “And he was going to hand his daughter over to a politician's son to lock down political cover while running all of this underneath.”
I nod. “Last month, one of his lieutenants questioned a shipment route. Enzo had the man's wife and daughter brought to his office. Made the lieutenant watch while his men?—"
"Enough." Rafael holds up a hand, his jaw tight with barely contained fury. "We understand what kind of man we're dealing with."
"The territory he controls is strategically valuable. He's moving in, like we suspected, and trying to strong-arm his way through our territory. Ports, shipping routes, three major distribution networks. If we take him off the board, we take back what is ours and absorb his infrastructure. We also eliminate a cancer from this city in one move." I gather the documents back into the folder. "But we need more. His inner circle is loyal out of fear,not respect. We need more people willing to flip. Someone with access to the real evidence that will let us move without starting a war with his allies. My guy inside is feeding me verbal intel, we need solid evidence."
"The Castellano alliance," Kon says quietly. "If he secures that before we move?—"
"Then taking him out becomes significantly more complicated. He doesn’t really need Ilona. That was just an easy way to tie them together. There are other ways," I add. "Which is why we need to accelerate our timeline. My informant says he's gathering strength, turning people against us, positioning himself for something big. He's not going to wait forever to make his move against us for taking Ilona either."
Rafael rests on the arm of a nearby chair, processing all the details. "What do you need from us?"
"Eyes on his properties. Pressure on his lieutenants. And someone needs to reach out to the Castellanos before Enzo's offer becomes too attractive to refuse. Let’s pull in the men of Genesis. They carry even more weight."
I look at each of my brothers in turn. "Enzo Marchetti is a dead man walking. He just doesn't know it yet. But we do this smart. We do this clean. And when he falls, no one mourns him."
Rafael rises, his presence commanding even in motion. "Is this all you have?” He points at the files on my desk.
“No. I have three times this on my computer.”
“Okay, send it to me so I can get a few people working on it.”
“Harlon will be very curious to know what Enzo’s been up to in our combined territory,” I add.
Rafael nods. “We have work to do. Kon, take point on the Castellano situation with Luca. Drake, squeeze his financial networks. Massimo and Rowan, I want surveillance on every property we've identified."
"One more thing," Rafael adds. "The Harrison Foundation charity gala is tonight. Governor Harrison and his wife are hosting. Enzo will be there."
The name Harrison lands like a spark on dry tinder. The same Governor Harrison whose son Bradley was supposed to marry my wife.
"Good," I say. "Then we attend. All of us. With our wives."
Drake catches my meaning first. "You want Enzo to see Ilona on your arm. In front of the same family he tried to sell her to."
"I want Enzo to see exactly what he lost and exactly who took it from him." I lean back in my chair and let the smile form slowly. "And I want the Harrisons to see that the woman they tried to buy is no longer for sale. Let them all watch Ilona Valentina walk into that ballroom and know that every alliance Enzo promised them died the moment she took my name."
Rafael considers this for a beat, then nods. "Strategic. Visible. Sends a message without firing a shot." He glances around the room. "Dress sharp tonight, gentlemen. We're making a statement."
Rafael pauses at the door, looking back at me. "And Luca? After you send the file to me, I suggest you delete everything you have on your new bride. Whatever you needed it for, you don't need it anymore."
I respect Rafael. More than almost any man alive. But he's wrong on this one.
Ilona's file isn't a standalone document I can drag to the trash and forget. It's woven into the larger Marchetti dossier, cross-referenced with her father's operations, his bodyguards' rotations, the gaps in Enzo's security that her patterns revealed. Every piece of intelligence connects to another piece. Pull one thread and the whole web loses structural integrity. Months of work compromised because of sentiment.
I don't make operational decisions based on guilt. That's how men get killed.
Beyond that, the file sits on a secured server behind three layers of encryption that I built myself. Ilona has no reason to access my classified systems and no way to breach them even if she tried. The risk of her stumbling across it is so close to zero it doesn't register on my radar.
I've managed secrets far more dangerous than this one for far longer. Containing information is what I do. It's what makes me valuable to this brotherhood.