Snapping Point||Book 1

54.

Romano De Rossi

"Who is the unfortunate person to get screwed in here?" I gave Ottavio a look of feigned irritation as tossed my joke around and walked through the door. "Your room reeks of latex and lube." Then it hit me—he was tangled up with one of my sisters, and she might just be the unfortunate one. Regretting my words, I quickly shifted gears. "What was so urgent you could not wait? Got a lead for me?"

We both made our way to a corner of his chaotic lobby, where he had a makeshift office setup: office chair, desk, file cabinet. The yellow and neon sticky notes on the side wall added a playful touch, but the bizarre pictures of corpses and guns plastered on the front wall turned it sinister. His variants were unnervingly extreme.

We did most of our personal tracking here. Ottavio, who'd been a wizard with databases since he was a kid, always came through. While I handled the conventional methods, he could get into any system and track any activity. It's how I got Xenia's bank account details, how I knew Luciana had fucked that man in Paris. Damien P. Domingo. I knew his name well, though I'd never admit to Ottavio that I still remembered it—that my supposed forgetfulness never lost that minor detail.

Ignore that Luciana could look me in the eyes and lie about not sleeping with that man— even Ottavio would shake his head in shame at her denial. We hadn't just seen the messages between her and the forty year old man confirming what she'd done; I'd also watched a videotape he recorded, that was after snuffing out his life and snatching his phone.

Ottavio had cracked the device wide open, stripping the files down to nothing and leaving me to sift through the debris. In a moment of weakness, I had wanted to invade his privacy the way he had invaded mine by screwing my woman. What I found only shattered me further. It was my wife—though not with that title at the time—on top of another man, moving like her life depended on the orgasm, while the bastard moved his phone from angle to angle. Though I couldn't stomach it to the end of the video, I unequivocally knew what her infidelity looked like, had seen it raw, and I could picture it all over again with Lorenzo.

Fuck that.

The point was, Ottavio could dissect a file until it was simple enough for a tech novice like me. When he gestured at his system, I noticed tiny red and white lines on the screen that revealed an audio. It was a recording, not live, but it indicated that my decision to wire Amato's office had paid off. Something valuable had to have come from it for Ottavio to need my attention at all.

Aside from the endless sex Amato had in this office, his meetings took place there as well. Bugging his space was a goldmine for information. You could gather intel on a multitude of things just by listening in.

"Settle in," said Ottavio from behind me.

Plopping into the chair, I put on the headphones and clicked play. My father's voice came through first, followed by Amato's groan.

Ottavio tapped my shoulder and lifted the headphones off my ear for a second. "Try not to break my computer in a fit of rage. There's a lot on there that could knock you off your feet."

I maintained my composure, fixating on Ottavio's move to meticulously drag the longest line to a specific minute. The voices on the line demanded my attention next.

"He'll catch onto us faster than a rat in a cheese factory and spill it all to Morelli," that was Amato growled out words. "Yeah, I know he's your blood, but if Morelli catches wind of our deceit and cover-up, he won't trust us an inch. My status as Consigliere will take a hit, and you'll be in the firing line too. We might want our sons to take up these positions, but retirement ain't in the cards just yet."