Wicked Liar by Faith Summers

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Dominic

The last time I got this many shocks to my system, I lost my father and my eldest brother.

As far as things have gone over the last ten days, I definitely wasn't expecting Candace to drop a bomb on me like the one she hit me with yesterday morning.

This ten-day roller coaster began with me finding out two men who were supposed to be dead were very much alive and in L.A plotting in their secret meeting with the next leader of the Circle of Shadows. Now I'm here, and so much has happened in this short space of time.

Once again, I have my priorities mixed up. It's one in the morning, Candace is upstairs asleep in my bed and I'm sitting in my office behind my computer investigating Richard Fenmoir. And that motherfucker, Jacques Belmont.

I should be looking through Alfonse's files like I promised Aiden not even a handful of days ago. I should be focusing on that because of the current situation. I should have at the very least checked in with Aiden, but I haven't.

When Candace's parents were murdered, their deaths shocked all of us.

Thirteen years ago we didn't have any names. Nothing but what she told us, which wasn't anything we could work with. She told us about the tattooed man and the masked men who came into the house. But all we saw was the one guy who would have raped and killed her if we hadn't come along. She was fifteen years old, and the fucking incident screwed with her.

Seeing that guy the other night with the same tattoo and hearing about this Richard Fenmoir was enough to send me into overdrive to help her.

That is why I spent the last few hours checking things out.

All my damn life I've never once gone against my instincts. Over the last ten days, the one constant I've had through this time is my pure dislike for Jacques. It's not like me to be so uneasy about a person. There was just something about him that didn't ring true to me, and my first reaction to him came from simply hearing the asshole's name.

Last week when I looked him up I thought he was too clean. Then Candace hit me with the one thing that dirtied his clean ass.

Massimo can tell me Jacques would be an asset to the Syndicate all he wants, but when I look at the fucker I see a snake. My instincts tell me that Jacques is not who he says he is, or what he wants us to believe he is. So, I'm sure as fuck following instincts when it comes to him.

Earlier, the first thing I did was call Gibbs. He sent me what he could on Richard, which wasn't a lot but made me suspicious as fuck.

The most prominent thing that caught my attention was when he traced the account the money came from it was closed and there were no details of the account holder that we didn't know. Which was just the name on the account. No personal details like a date of birth, or address. Nothing. It seemed to be a burner account. The same way people get phones they use for a single purpose and ditch them when they're done so they can't be tracked, criminals do the same with bank accounts.

A transaction of such a large sum of money coming from what looks like a burner account is enough to put Jacques in the negative for me.

I understand why Candace was being objective. Jacques is a businessman who deals with people all over the world, so we don't know how Jacques knows Richard. All we both know is twenty million dollars is a fuck load of money, and it is something you would investigate. But... what poor Candace doesn't understand when it comes to the criminal underworld is you suspect everybody until they can prove to you that they aren't guilty.

She was just acting like a normal person would. We are, however, far from normal and I wish like hell she didn't think selling herself to Jacques was the only way to get answers.

She was desperate. I understand that. She had to have been fucking desperate to think that plan of hers would work. Candace is an intelligent woman, but she doesn't know how to deal with men like Jacques.

She hardly knows how to deal with men like me.

I give her credit for the plan she came up with. If I didn't turn up and ruin things she'd be sleeping in Jacques' bed now, but I can bet any money he wouldn't have told her shit. That plan of hers was sketchy as hell and there's no way she would have thought about what she was going to do after he bought her.

She was going to wing it. I already know she would have gone through with the whole ordeal even if she came up with nothing because she loved her parents that much. She would have tried anything she could to find out why they were murdered.

Desperation did that to her.

Desperate was how she looked on stage when she took her clothes off and that's the moment that motherfucker placed his bid on her. He saw she was desperate too.

I know he wants her. The prick wants her bad, and I'm furious as fuck about it. He's not going to like that he didn't get to have her. But that's the least of his worries.

I think it's time Jacques Belmont and I have a little chat, man to man. I'm not going to sit here another night hacking something I know I won't find. The information I seek is not going to be anywhere online.

I'm going to do the thing Candace knew she would have to do and ask him about Richard Fenmoir. It's just going to be different coming from me.

I'll ask him, and he better pray that twenty million was a mere business transaction for one of his services, or his ass is not joining the Syndicate.

My phone starts vibrating on the desk. I answer straight away when I see it’s Aiden. He would only call me if he found something.

“Hey man, sorry I haven't checked in," I apologize first.

"Don't worry about that. I found something."

"What?" My grip tightens on the phone.

“Are you near your computer?”

“Yes.”

"Go to the files"

I switch between screens and bring up Alfonse's files.

"I'm there. What now?"

"I'm about to show you what you can't learn at M.I.T." He chuckles.

I can't resist the smile. "Okay, school me."

“Go to the last one on the main folder.”

I do what he says. “I’m there. Now what?”

“Click it and scroll to the last document in that folder. There should be three hundred documents in there. Go to the last one and tell me when you get there. Don’t click on anything until I say.”

I’m intrigued now to see where this is leading. I follow his instructions precisely.

“I’m there Aiden.”

“Okay. Click on it.”

It’s a Word document labeled Miscellaneous Items. I click on it and all I see is a table listing a food order for a business meeting.

“It's stuff about food,” I tell him.

“Good, you’re on the right track. Close the document and wait for fifteen seconds, then tell me what you see.”

I close the file and glue my damn eyes to the screen as I wait fifteen seconds, counting down eagerly, waiting to see what’s going to happen. I expect something dramatic, but when the screen just flashes my expectations drop.

Then it rises again when I realize what just happened.

Fuck. I assumed it was the computer flickering but it fucking wasn’t.

“Did you see it?” Aiden asks.

“The flash. I saw it.”

“Good. I think you know what to do here. Wait another fifteen seconds, then click on the file again.”

I wait for another fifteen seconds, click on the file, and what comes up next is not what I saw before.

The background of the screen turns gray and another little folder pops up with a lock in the centre.

“It’s a ghost file,” I rasp. Another fucking secret file hidden within the shit.

“It sure is old friend. I can’t open it though so here's where M.I.T takes over." He laughs. "It’s set on a fifteen second flash window, and guess what?”

"What?"

"The whole fucking file is riddled with them. Haunted by ghosts. I found at least ten. That's the first one."

This guy interests me more and more. “Aiden how the hell did you see this?”

“Thought you might be distracted by the pretty girl,” he chuckles. “I heard you won, anyway I thought I’d look over a few things on the file and I saw that. I’ve seen it before. Someone really clever did that shit. Couldn’t have been Alfonse but I think because he played the middle man to many he had access. What you’re looking at here is his access where he would have tapped in his password.”

“I should be able to hack it,” I reply. I’m assuming it has the same encryption code I’ve been seeing across the file.

“Good man. Call me when you do."

"I will."

He hangs up and I start hacking.

Moments later confirm I was right about the encryption. It’s the same wacked up code I found before.

The file opens for me within seconds of decrypting it and I’m in. Right inside is five documents. Just five and I fucking bet these five files are going to be key to me.

I open the first one labeled employee list and as the document flashes open my eyes glue to the names at the top listing the managers.

Federico Santana and Tobias Navarro.

Holy fucking hell. I recognize those names. Federico is a cartel guy who’s into human trafficking. I’ve heard his name come up a few times because of our ties to cartels we have alliances within Ecuador. Tobias is also linked to human trafficking and a twisted motherfucker who's known for working with the worst of the bunch.

For my purposes, I’m thinking of the initials F.S. and T.N.

Fuck.

Motherfuckers…

I think I’ve just found the last two members of the group who signed the contract.

I bring my hand to my head and sigh. Holy hell. This is it.

That's all of them now.

Mortimer Viggo, Riccardo Balesteri, Levka Volkov, Karl Grunberg, Bradford Ferguson, Federico Santana, and Tobias Navarro.

Mobsters and international criminals who want the Syndicate gone. I'm certain Karl, Bradford, Federico, and Tobias are all part of this group, the Order. They all fit together, and they've been linked to doing dirty work for crooked government officials.

So, who is the king?

Fuck…

What a fucking mess.

And fucking Alfonse. We had that man in our homes. Fucking dog. He tried to screw with us in a way that left us blindsided and who knows who else he screwed with. The man was a spy who played all sides so I could find all kinds of hell in here.

With a haggard sigh, I look through the names on the list of employees which are arranged in alphabetical order. My interest piques when I catch another name I recognize.

Peter Dawson. He was a small-time asshole who lived in Stormy Creek. He was always in trouble with the law or somebody higher up the food chain. He’s on this list.

Christ.

I grab a pen and my notepad to scribble down Federico, Tobias, and Peter as names I recognize. I’ll start checking out those people first.

I scan down the list and my blood freezes right there in my veins when I get to the employees whose surnames start with R and see the names, Lucas and William Ricci.

Lucas and William Ricci.

What the fuck?

Lucas Ricci as in Candace's uncle and William Ricci her father?

My eyes fucking dart to the door. Candace isn’t there but I look anyway as shock suffuses my brain.

I've just spent hours checking out Richard and Jacques. Now I've found this.

What the hell is this though?

Her father and uncle's names are on a list with men known to be human traffickers?

Returning my focus to the document I look again, checking if what I’m seeing is right.

Is it really them?

I click on William's name first when I hover over it and it highlights in blue. What I’m presented with next is his fucking picture, name, date of birth, and his Stormy Creek address. There’s no fucking mistake that it’s him.

But what the hell does this mean in relation to everything else? William Ricci died thirteen years ago, so what I’m looking at isn’t something recent. All it does is unearth more shit.

When I think of William, of course, I think of the promise I made to him. At the time I made it I resented him, but I know he was just looking out for his daughter. That aside, I remember a man who was a good friend to my father. William was a man who loved his family. There was nothing he wouldn’t have done for Candace and his wife Elizabeth. They followed us to Stormy Creek when we lost everything. William and his wife still took care of our family the same way the Ricci’s did for generations before.

Was that a lie? A ruse to get close the way everyone else did and screwed with us?

But why? It makes no sense. We didn’t have anything during that whole time. Right up until William’s death, we were still poor.

Unless if it wasn’t about us. After all, Alfonse worked for many others. Maybe this had nothing to do with us at all.

So that leads me to the other thing that makes no sense and never has. Not to me, anyway. It's what actually started my night. I was looking for Richard Fenmoir, but really, I was looking for him because of Candace's parents' death.

I think what I've found is part and parcel of the reason.

I just don't know how it fits, or if Richard Fenmoir is relevant now that I know this.

What I know is William is dead, but Lucas is alive somewhere, at least to my knowledge. I need to find him.

This document tells me he and William worked for people who want the Syndicate gone.

Maybe this was why William died.

What the hell did he get himself into? And what secrets lay underneath it all.

What the motherfucking hell was William truly up to?

We know William took a job. Was it really human trafficking? This list points to that for him and Lucas, although I can’t imagine either of them getting mixed up in shit like that. Clearly, I’m wrong.

I always had a feeling something was going on in that house. My instincts told me so.

There was something about how Candace looked.

She always had a twinkle in her eyes. Then one day it was gone.

Something took it away.

Is there more than what she's told me?

The past and the present are colliding again.

Fuck…