Valentina's POV
The dominoes were falling, toppling with the speed I had only dared to hope for during the long, sleepless nights of the last seven months. The drive I had stolen while Massimo was on his way back to the apartment had just dismantled the family's political shield in one fell swoop.
I thought about the stone room on the island.
About Caruso sitting three feet from me with the flat patient eyes of a man who had already solved the problem and was waiting to present his answer.
"He built it himself," Moretti said. "Thirty years of handling Domenico's money gave him the access and the expertise to construct something that ran alongside the main operation without touching it. Clean. Patient. The kind of thing that only becomes visible when you know the exact shape of what you're looking for."
"He was skimming," I said.
"Skimming implies small amounts," Moretti said. "Over thirty years, the secondary channel moved approximately forty million euros."
Silence.
