Page 112 of Corrupted Seduction

“Nothing—that is exactly what they did, Amadeo. Nothing. It was like I didn’t exist. They didn’t beat me; they didn’t starve me. They…nothing-ed me.”

Something in my chest felt like it was cracking—must have been some strange-ass heartburn. It couldn’t have had anything to do with what she was telling me, if for no other reason than because I just couldn’t fathom Heidi being ‘nothing’ to anyone. No fucking way.

And yet, nothing about her screamed “I’m lying here”. She’d been unloved. Left alone. Invisible.

“All right,” I said. I think she could have asked me for the whole fucking world in that moment, and I would have found a way to serve it up on a goddamned silver platter. “I’ll look into Grayson Thomas,” I conceded, not that I was getting on board with the kid moving in with her.

“Thank you,” she said. There was something raw in her voice, exposed. I’d dragged something out of her she hadn’t wanted to offer up, and I can’t say it left me with tingly good feelings here.

“But the kid isn’t leaving this house until the shit we’ve been dealing with is squared away. And on that topic, we need to have a conversation.”

“A conversation about what?”

I sighed, hoping like hell Raven had been right about the whole trust thing.

“I need to know where the rest of the money is, Heidi.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

Amadeo

A row of seats had been set up, side-by-side. Nearly every seat had been filled. The buttery scent of popcorn filled the air.

You’d think I’d just walked into a movie theater, not the surveillance room in the estate.

“Popcorn,” I asked Greta as I closed the door. “Really?”

She shrugged without turning around. “Like you don’t want some?”

Vito and Aurelio chuckled. Even my father smiled.

Well… I could eat.

I shoved my fingers into the bowl and snagged a handful, watching on the central monitor as Sinclair’s middle-aged secretary typed away behind her desk. Her phone rang. She answered it, muttered something, then stood up.

“Mr. Sinclair will see you now,” she said, looking straight at us. Well, looking right into the tiny camera on the lapel of Antonio Verdi’s Armani jacket.

The picture shifted as Verdi stood up and turned toward a set of double doors.

It had taken us four days to lay the background we needed and secure this appointment. I took a deep breath and hoped like hell Antonio Verdi did not fuck this up.

“All right, boys,” Greta said, adjusting her position like she was settling in. “It’s showtime.”

My father looked over at her from the opposite end of the row of seats, shaking his head while the corners of his lips twitched.

All eyes returned to the screen as the camera—and Verdi—approached the double doors. The sound was coming in clear; we could hear every footstep as he crossed the marble floor and opened the office door.

Beyond it was an enormous glass-walled office, sparsely but tastefully furnished. A man sat behind a wide glass desk on the far side of the room, right in front of the windows that overlooked the city from the fifty-fifth floor.

The man, Nathaniel Sinclair, stood up as Verdi approached, not rounding the desk, but stretching his hand out across it. The man was about the same height as Verdi with dark hair and eyes, and the way he wore his high-end suit, he was born in it, born to it. Plenty of money. Plenty of power.

They shook hands, exchanged pleasantries. Then it was down to business.

“Tell me how I can help you, Mr. Verdi,” Sinclair said, watching Verdi with shrewd eyes.

“I’ve recently acquired a vacant property,” Verdi explained. Then, just like we’d coached him, he offered up the location of the property and the basics surrounding the future build there.

Sinclair nodded at all the right times, but it was clear he was waiting for something, the particular reason Verdi had sought out his firm and had managed to wrangle a meeting with the CEO.

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