Page 132 of The Fates We Tame
“It’s got all the stuff from your old phone on it,” Vex says. “That way you can get rid of the phone you have now given we don’t even know whose name the contract is in.”
Sophia looks to me, and I nod. “Thank you, brother. Was her data still on it?”
Vex glances at me while Sophia looks at her phone. “Yes. There’s an unsent message, a video, to Alessio. I saved it to the device.”
Sophia’s brow furrows. “You went through my messages?”
“Of course I went through your messages. Went through everything you have on there,” Vex says without apology. “We’rean MC, not a mall repair shop. Needed to know what kind of risk you put us in.”
“And?” I ask.
“You need to watch it, but you should sit down first,” Vex says.
Sophia ignores the advice and presses Play on the video. “Ale. Answer your damn phone. I’m being followed. Chased.”
The video footage is chaotic. Seeing Sophia without her facial injuries is a shock. Seeing the fear in my girl’s eyes has my gut in turmoil.
“Dad knows I’m on to him,” she continues. “Those spreadsheets I was talking about earlier? Dad’s been syphoning off money from the investors. It’s a lot, Ale. Like, a hole so big, I don’t think he’s going to be able to close the gap. He told me to meet him for lunch at the house. And when I got there, he had two of those stooges from the Aglieri crew with him. Mickey Junior and Tony. I overheard him saying it was important to find out what I knew so they could follow through on making it look like I was at fault. I considered running for the front door, but Uncle Carmine was in the hallway, so I went to the bathroom and escaped through the window. Ale. I think Aglieri’s men are following me. I don’t know how I’m?—”
The rest is hard to watch. The sound sickening. It was difficult enough seeing the extent of her injuries. Knowing how they happened was the stuff of nightmares.
There’s a loud scream.
Crunching metal.
The phone flies through the interior of the car at such speed it’s impossible to make sense of what we’re seeing.
Then nothing.
“Oh, God. I think I’m going to be sick,” Sophia says.
And while I take care of my wife, I make a vow that I’m going to kill her father.
35
SOPHIA
Alessio was right.
And with Vex’s help, I found the most recent files I was looking at on my laptop before the accident. Which seem to show that for every contract my father had with his business partners, he skimmed fifteen percent off the top.
And there is an account, registered in Switzerland, in his name. There are photographs of a laptop screen and papers on a desk that I recognize as Papà’s office from my visits to their home.
They were uploaded to the cloud some time on the Sunday before my accident.
Did I stumble across them, or had I gone snooping around his house for evidence? I’m not sure I’ll ever know, but the ends are the same.
“Fuck,” Theo mutters as he looks over my shoulder. I’m seated at the small table in his room at the clubhouse. I realize it’s late, and I’m exhausted.
“That’s one way of saying it,” I reply.
“Your father knew.” Theo’s statement is undeniable.
“It makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, from the date stamp, it looks like these photographs were uploaded to the cloud the weekend before my accident.” I lean back in my chair. “When I spoke to Alessio the night he gave you the key to my stuff, he told me how I called him the day of the accident. That I’d been working on something that was confusing me. Something to do with spreadsheets and numbers. It must have been this.”
I reach for my phone and message Alessio.
Me:Ale, were we at our parents’ house the Sunday before my accident?
