Chapter 20 - The Audit of Betrayal
“I said, sit down,” Roman repeated, and the quiet, absolute authority in those four words carried the physical weight of an avalanche.
Slowly, reluctantly, Matteo pulled out a chair and lowered himself into it, his eyes fixed on the manila folder. Santino remained standing, his hand twitching slightly toward his inner coat pocket before he caught Marcus’s hand resting casually on the butt of a Sig Sauer across the room. He froze, letting his hand drop back to his side.
“Five years ago,” Roman began, his dark eyes locking onto Matteo’s face with a gaze so piercing it seemed to strip the flesh from bone, “when my father died on that operating table in Zurich, and I was spending every waking hour fighting the commission just to keep our family name from being carved up by the Italian syndicates... someone let the wolves in through the back door.”
Matteo’s jaw tightened, a microscopic twitch of muscle near his left eye betraying his sudden spike in adrenaline. “Roman, what are you talking about? That was a chaotic period. Sterling made a hostile play against the shipping boards; we all lost millions trying to hold the line—”
“You didn't lose millions, Matteo,” Roman interrupted smoothly, sliding a single sheet of paper across the marble table until it stopped right in front of him. “You made millions.”
Matteo looked down at the paper. It was the secondary routing code—the bank transfer manifest bearing his signature and Santino’s counter-signature, authorizing the systematic liquidation of Vale Global’s logistics assets and funneling the kickbacks directly into an off-shore Cayman account controlled jointly by Viktor Sterling and Arthur Pendelton.
The color drained entirely from Matteo’s face, leaving him looking like a corpse carved from wax. Santino leaned over his shoulder, his eyes scanning the numbers, and cursed under his breath, stepping back as if the paper were coated in poison.
“This... this is an old fabrication,” Matteo stammered, his voice losing its polished veneer, cracking with sudden panic. “Sterling had access to our letterheads, he could have forged—”
“Sterling is dead and buried in an unmarked grave outside Milwaukee,” Roman cut him off, his voice rising just enough to shake the dust from the ceiling rafters. “And the original hard drives containing the encrypted transaction logs were pulled from the municipal courthouse archives last night by someone who knew exactly where to look.”
Roman stood up slowly, leaning his knuckles against the table as he loomed over them like an impending doom.
“You sold out my father’s dying trust to line your pockets,” Roman whispered, pure venom coating every word. “You partnered with the very man who tried to choke our city out of existence. And worst of all... you thought you could sit at my table, drink my bourbon, and watch me build an empire over the very graves you dug.”
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Santino looked wildly around the room, realizing the trap was completely shut. He slammed his palms down on the table, desperation turning his voice shrill. “We kept the family afloat while you were busy playing soldier, Roman! If we hadn't made that deal with Sterling, the commission would have stripped us of every asset we owned!”
“You should have let them strip us,” Roman replied softly. “Because now, you’re going to strip yourself of everything else.”
