His Mafia Prince
Chapter 280: Facing the Truths

Chapter 280: Facing the Truths

{TYLER}

We arrive back home with a new purpose.

Miles has managed to pull the mansion together enough for us to stay there, and although. I can’t help feeling an initial sense of dread as we walk into it again, but I shake it off.

The place has changed—and somehow hasn’t. It looks like it was always supposed to look, I think. The furniture, rugs, and paintings are all back in place, and there are huge vases of artistically-arranged flowers in almost every room, filling the air with their scent.

The mansion is old-fashioned in style, but not dated. Just...classic.

I like it a lot.

Sasha takes his time walking through, getting the tour from Miles, who mostly points out the new security features. I’m more interested in interior decoration.

"Well, baby bird?" Sasha asks me once we’re alone. He lifts me by the waist and spins me around in the empty ballroom in which we ended the tour. The floor is restored, shining parquet, and I’m already planning the kind of parties we could hold in here. A masquerade ball...

Of course, I remind myself, we’re only staying here for a short while.

"It looks amazing." I smile down at Sasha, still hoisted in his arms. "But be careful—"

"I’m perfectly well," he tells me, scowling. "—of my outfit," I finish, and grin at his face.

He sets me back on my feet and tugs my clothes straight for me.

"We’ll be safe here," he tells me afterward, running a hand through my paling-pink hair. It’s faded since Venice; the color I bought at a dollar-store equivalent wasn’t exactly salon quality. It’s more cotton candy than magenta now, but Sasha loved it so much that I’ve decided to recolor it for him.

I like it as a fuck you to the people who want us dead, as well. See how much I care about their threats? Pink hair tells them exactly how much.

Sasha’s hands are still on me, massaging my shoulders in light circles. "While you went wandering, Miles told me he’s located the bank and branch."

Once we knew there was a key inside the pendant, it was easy enough to find out the kind of key it was: a safe deposit box key. Dr. Bonaventura opened the pendant and dug it out so carefully that he was even able to put it back together afterward.

The safe deposit box key had a three-digit number engraved on it, the same three digits that appeared in the middle of the number string in Angelo’s diary.

Once we took them out, there were enough leftover numbers to identify a high-security depository bank. Turns out the numbers were written backward, but that was as clever as Angelo had gotten.

And now, apparently, Miles has confirmed everything.

I feel the smile disappear from my face. "Okay. Well. Good."

"So we can go check it out tomorrow," Sasha says. "Or," he adds, touching his lips to my forehead, "whenever you’re ready."

I don’t want to look in that box. I know it’ll just be more disappointment; nothing will be in it, or it’ll be money, or diamonds, or something equally useless to me now. But there’s no point dragging this shit out. "Tomorrow. We’ll go tomorrow."

Sasha takes a long look at me, then nods. "Tomorrow."

***

Once we make our request to access the safe deposit box, there’s a flurry of activity in the bank, and we’re taken to see the manager in his big swanky office. Marble urns flank his desk, almost funereal, and there’s a large oil painting behind him in the style of Vermeer.

It might actually be a Vermeer. It’s that kind of bank.

I’m prepared to start arguing with the bank manager about accessing the box, but he just checks my passport—my real one, this time— and smiles in the same smarmy way I’ve come to expect from people who suddenly discover I’m a super-rich motherfucker.

"So pleased to be able to accommodate you, sir," he says. I bet I’m the first person with pink hair that he’s ever called sir. "I’ll take you down myself."

Sasha rises from the chair to follow me, but the suit frowns.

"I’m so sorry, sir," he says to Sasha, "but only named people may enter and view the contents of the safety deposit box. The Instructions were quite clear."

"No," Sasha says calmly. "I will accompany my husband. And his name is Mr. Tyler Adonis."

The bank guy frowns deeper and opens his mouth, and I can tell he doesn’t understand how much danger he’s in right now.

"If you could give us a moment alone," I say over the top of whatever unwise statement he was about to make.

He’s all smiles again in an instant. "Of course. Please take as much time as you need to discuss." With that, he leaves us alone with the maybe-Vermeer.

"I’m coming with you," Sasha says simply. "Listen to me." I take both his hands in mine.

"I’ll stand to the side if you want. I won’t look into the box—"

"That’s not what this is about."

"No, your safety is what it’s about. Angelo was a schemer, he had so many secrets, baby bird. He was mixed up in terrorist activities, for Christ’s sake. Who’s to say that safe deposit box isn’t fixed with an explosive?"

"No, babe," I say. "He wouldn’t rig something up if there was any chance it’d hurt the person he wanted to open the box. He just...wouldn’t do that. He meant for somebody to open that box."

"He could try," Sasha says, with an arrogant lift of his head. I only love him more for it.

"Apart from all that," I go on, "you’re supposed to be trusting me now. You can’t tell me you’re willing to dangle me as bait in front of the Irish but not let me go alone into a secure room in a bank."

That, finally, seems to reach him. After a moment, he gives a sigh and a nod. "Alright."

"Thank you." I lean in, standing on my toes to kiss his cheek. "Love you."

"I love you, too. And I want you to be damned careful opening that box, even if you think it’s fine. Please. Open it facing away from you, at the very least."

I think about Sasha’s advice when I’m there in the silent room, the walls gleaming with row on row of bronze-gold plates on the front of each deposit box, all of them hiding wealth and secrets. Angelo’s safe deposit box is in front of me on a plain table. There are chairs, but I’m standing up, ready to bolt if I need to.

The box is small. I know good things come in small packages—like me—

I swivel the small, flat, metal box so the flap will open facing away from me. I put the key in the lock carefully and deliberately, and turn it. The box unlocks.

Nothing blows up.

Using the key, I gingerly ease the lid back. By the time it’s halfway up, I’m pretty sure nothing is going to explode, that no gas is suddenly going to fill the room, and that it’s not laced with a Novichok agent.

When the box is fully open, I walk around the table and look into it without touching it.

There is only one thing in there, and when I see it, I understand why the box itself was so small. There’s no letter, no explanatory note. Just an old CD-ROM in a plastic cover.

I take a chance and pick it up, turn it over. There’s no label on it and nothing to suggest what it might contain. And there’s definitely nothing else in the box. I’ll have to put this thing into a computer to find out what’s on it.

I don’t even think we have a computer at home that takes disks. "Dammit, Angelo," I mutter. "Way to be fucking infuriating."

***

Back at the mansion, where we have instinctively made our home base in the kitchen again, Sasha stares intently at the disk lying between us on the table as though he can transmit its contents into his brain by glare power.

"And he never said anything about it?" he asks for the third time.

"Honey, if I knew what was on it, I would have told you already. Believe me."

We’re waiting for Miles to come over. He has a laptop that will hook up to a CD-ROM external drive, and the laptop has various encryption programs on it, just in case. Angelo was never what I’d call technology-forward, but I also had no idea he was secretly a member of an Irish terrorist group, either, so you never know.

I can’t stand sitting around waiting, so I go try to figure out our fancy new coffee machine, and feel my way around the still-unfamiliar kitchen..

For just a moment, I feel a warm glow at my back, as though Sasha’s snuck up behind me, about to hug me, but when I glance over my shoulder, he’s still at the kitchen table.

Huh. Weird.

Miles, when he arrives, refuses a coffee, which is probably smart, based on the way mine tastes. Miles is all business today, after answering my questions about how everyone’s doing.

Sasha puts a comforting hand over mine on the table because he knows what I’m doing.

Procrastinating.

"Okay," I say glumly. "Let’s do it."

Miles makes sure his laptop isn’t connected to the internet before he picks up the disk and prepares to put it in the drive. "Just so you know," he says casually, "I’m kind of expecting this to destroy the computer."

"Miles," I sigh, "can you just get on with it?"

We all hold our breath as he slots it in. The light on the drive lights up and it begins to whir and buzz—a good sign, based on Miles’s expression—and then he opens the drive from the desktop, and clicks into the disk.

His face goes into frown mode.

"What is it?" I ask. "Has it fucked everything up?"

"No," he says slowly. "It’s just...they’re pretty old files. If they’re still compatible, I can open them—but I might need to save them in a different format..."

Sasha and I wait impatiently as he works, saving the files from the disk to the hard drive and then finding the right program to open them. After a few minutes, I see a file pop open on the screen. It looks like a standard spreadsheet.

"This is just the first one listed on the disk," he explains, turning it around to show me and Sasha. "See anything interesting?"

I find myself frowning as I scan it myself as well. "It’s a list of names and numbers...oh wait, and..." I trail off as I start reading the notes next to the first name. "Oh," I breathe. "Oh, shit."

Sasha pulls the laptop sharply towards him, reading intently.

Miles’s eyebrows go up. "Okay," he says, disconnecting the external drive and putting the CD back into its plastic case. "I set it up so you can just double-click the files from the desktop and they’ll open. So I think my job here is done?" He looks at me. I’m still too shocked to take it in right away. "Tyler?" Miles prompts me.

"Thanks, Miles," Sasha says dismissively. "We’ll call again if we need you. You can leave this here with us." Once Miles has left, Sasha finally looks at me.

I lean in to take another look. It’s not a note to me. It’s not any kind of explanation for what my Angelo did in his life, or a message about what he hoped I would do in mine.

But it might just be better than any of those things.

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