The Don Called Me Nobody Chapter 10

The Don Called Me Nobody Chapter 10: The File

Six days later, they put me in a chair with my hands on the table.

I want to say I didn’t see it coming.

The dining room. Sal at the head, because Dominic had recused himself – Camilla had made sure the captains asked

him to. Four captains. The family’s lawyer. Camilla in gray, hands folded, sad as a funeral.

“Miss Costa,” Sal said. “A concern’s been raised. Comms records show that the night before the exchange, at 11:42

p.m., a message went to Volkov’s line from inside this house. It read: The Don prefers the bridge. Confirm.”

“Yes. Sent from Camilla’s device. I saw it.”

“That’s not what the log says.” He slid a page across.

I looked at it.

Device of origin: RUIZ, N. – HOUSEKEEPING.

“That’s not right.”

“It came straight from the system.”

“Then the system’s wrong, or somebody made it wrong-”

“We’d love proof,” Camilla said gently.

And that’s when I understood what she’d actually done. Not a lie. Something smarter.

She’d waited for me to become a Costa again. Because a cleaner sending a message is a firing. A Costa sending a message to Volkov is treason. In this house, treason has one sentence.

And Dominic’s letter had said any harm to me was harm to his house. She wasn’t trying to hurt me.

She was trying to make Dominic choose between his own word and his own captains, in front of all of them, and burn

the whole house down while he did it.

“There’s more,” Camilla said. “Miss Costa has a personal relationship with the Don that she never disclosed. There’s video of them on the bridge. It raises questions about how she came to sit at his right hand, and about whose interests she was serving when she moved that location.”

“Get out,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“You sat in a car and watched me walk a nineteen–year–old off the bridge where my father died, and then you got on the phone.” I stood up. “How long have you owned the comms room, Camilla? Since your promotion? Since Sal started signing off on your hotel receipts?”

Sal’s head snapped up.

“Effective now,” he said, too loud, “Miss Costa is confined to the house pending the table’s verdict Thursday Give me your phone.”

Bianca was waiting in the boiler room.

“Give me your other phone,” she said.

“Bianca-”

“Phone.” She was shaking, and it wasn’t fear. “Nina, I run the keys. Do you know what the keys know? Everything. The

keys know everything.”

She scrolled.

“One. The comms log entry has an edit stamp. Somebody opened it in the admin panel at 11:42 the night before the

exchange, from the fourth–floor terminal. Key card required. Card ending 0-4-4-1. That’s Ferro.”

My chest went tight.

“Two. The location message. Same card. Same terminal. Twelve minutes earlier.”

“Bianca-”

“Three.” She stopped and looked up. “Seventeen ‘security conferences‘ in eighteen months, Camilla Ferro, all approved

by Sal Bruno. Same hotel, ten minutes from here. Two of them on nights this house was on lockdown and she was

supposedly in the building.”

I stared at the screen.

“I’ve had that for a year,” Bianca said. “I never used it because I’m a coward and I like breathing. But they’re going to

put you in the ground on Thursday.”

“This could get you killed.”

“Then it gets me killed.” She shoved the phone into my hands. “Thursday, Nina. This time, don’t you dare stand against

the wall.”