Page 101 of Vicious Little Princess

I spun my phone and showed her the text that had come in.

She moved in close and frowned, reading it over.

Carlo:Here’s that intel I promised you. Sorry for the delay. I wanted to give you the necessary time to deal with the complications of the Angelo Simone situation before forwarding this. And to give you all the necessary time to stabilize as this will challenge that. I trust that you will handle it appropriately. Ensure you do, Nico. A great deal hangs in the balance. You must proceed carefully. That necessary show of force to push back the Leones and Marchettis notwithstanding—that was a smart move.

“What intel?”

I took my phone back and opened the attachments that had come along with it. “Here.”

She looked through it all, her eyes widening as she did, as she connected the dots and put together what I had.

The very thing that had kept me awake most of the night.

And the thing that had made it a hell of a struggle to even look Milo in the eye before we’d left, and before I’d sent him out to finalize the last stages of prepping for the upcoming operation within a couple of days.

Evidence that had been kept buried for years at the request of the three families alliance, so as not to rock the boat.

Particularly for the Marchettis.

Fuck, no, particularly for my father.

It was yet another attempt to control me and keep me in line.

They’d known well that if I’d discovered this back then, things wouldn’t have progressed as they had, certainly not when it came to the power structure within the Marchetti Syndicate.

I’d been wrong about my father becoming unhinged due to losing my mother.

Seeing this now, it was clear that had occurred before she’d even fallen sick for those couple of years.

It had started during the war between the three families years ago.

It had shifted something in him.

And Leo had taken full advantage of that to infect my father with his reckless and heavy-handed approach to every fucking thing. His ruthless and risky way of doing everything.

“DNA evidence,” Caterina mused to herself, as she scanned everything available. “Even transcripts of verified phone calls between Marco and Leo back then. The latter caught on surveillance that Carlo had sent to himself before it was destroyed when the house was blown to smithereens. Obviously, to wipe evidence of the kills.”

“Or so they thought. Carlo had been so suspicious of it all, that he’d sent in his own forensics team to check it out before anybody else got in there, before the Marchettis wiped everything—the soldiers under my father’s command.”

“According to this, Carlo even still has the gun in his possession that was used that night at the house.”

I grimaced at the mention of the house again.

Because thathousehad been Milo’s family home.

Thatgunhad been used to murder his father, Enzo, and his mother, Rosa.

I scrubbed my hand over my face. “It’s here clear as day. The evidence is undeniable. Leo Marchetti murdered Milo’s parents.”

“Yeah,” she murmured, handing my phone back to me. “This is… it’s horrific.Shit.”

“Milo wanted answers desperately back then, but my father instituted a cover up, telling us both that it had been a mistake during the war, that the Benzinos were to blame, that the Bardi house being blown up had been accidental collateral damage.”

“When, in fact, Leo had stormed into the house and murdered them both with a bullet to the brain, and the explosion was just to hide that fact.”

“Leo wanted the position of Underboss so badly that he orchestrated it. And my father wasn’t innocent in it like I’d always thought. The way he portrays himself… that deal with Malcolm Lynch… I’d believed that to be an anomaly. Until he allied with Santino, I thought I could get him back on track if I could just remove Leo’s influence over him, but… it was all bullshit from the beginning.”

“It’s why it’s a good thing that you escalated, that when the marriage directive came down from on high, you chose to fight against the entire system instead of trying to save it.”

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