74 The Mafia Boss Wanted a Wife Who Could Cook—What She Brought Was Beyond Priceless...

The peace didn’t last quite as long as we would have liked.

It was two days before Christmas. The estate was glittering with fairy lights, and the kitchen was crowded with flour, sugar, and the scent of gingerbread baking in the oven when the front security gates buzzed insistently.

On the monitor by the back hallway, security footage showed a sleek, black town car idling outside the main gates. A man in an expensive grey trench coat stood in the swirling snow, staring directly into the camera lens.

Everett Sloan.

The man whose front company had tried to rob Costa Global of six hundred million dollars.

Leonardo stepped into the hallway, his coat already half-buttoned over a dark sweater, his jaw set in stone. Behind him, Julian appeared from the stairs, his face instantly darkening.

“Stay inside,” Leonardo told Julian, his voice cold and flat.

“Dad, I’m coming with you,” Julian said, stepping forward.

“No,” I said, walking out of the kitchen with my flour-dusted apron still tied around my waist. I pulled a thin leather portfolio from the console table. “Julian stays here with his brothers and sisters. You and I are going out to the gate together, Leonardo.”

Leonardo looked at me, hesitation flickering in his eyes. “Abigail, Sloan is dangerous. He’s backed into a corner.”

“Which is precisely why he brought a lawyer and a federal marshal in his back pocket,” I replied calmly, tapping the portfolio. “Or rather, why we invited the federal marshal to meet him.”

Five minutes later, Leonardo and I walked out through the heavy double doors into the falling snow. The cold air hit us instantly, but neither of us flinched.

Everett Sloan stood by his idling town car, looking less like a billionaire financier and more like a rat caught in a cellar. Beside him stood two federal agents in dark jackets and a local police inspector.

“Costa,” Sloan sneered, his breath pluming in the freezing air as he forced a tight, unpleasant smile. “I see you’re still playing family man in your little stone castle. Too bad the federal grand jury in Manhattan doesn't care much for domestic bliss.”

Leonardo didn’t even break his stride. He stopped three feet from Sloan, towering over him with terrifying physical presence.

“You’re trespassing on private property, Everett,” Leonardo said, his voice dangerously quiet.

“Not for long,” Sloan laughed, pulling a Manila folder from his coat. “We have an emergency federal injunction freezing all Costa Global shipping ports effective immediately due to unverified corporate fraud—”

“You mean verified corporate fraud,” I interrupted, stepping out from behind Leonardo’s shoulder.

Sloan blinked, his eyes widening slightly as he recognized me. “Who the hell are you?”

“Abigail Costa,” I said clearly, opening my leather portfolio and handing a certified document directly to the federal marshal standing beside Sloan. “And that is a complete forensic audit proving that every single fraudulent loan origination document submitted under Vanguard Logistics Partners originated from IP addresses registered to Everett Sloan’s private residence in Greenwich.”

The federal marshal scanned the first page, his eyebrows shooting up. He looked at Sloan, then back at the document, and finally at the local inspector.

“Mr. Sloan,” the marshal said crisply, snapping his notepad shut. “You are under arrest for federal wire fraud, extortion, and corporate impersonation.”

Sloan’s face drained of all color. He lunged backward toward his car, but the two agents were already on him, clicking steel handcuffs around his wrists with a sharp, metallic snap.

As Sloan was shoved into the back of the federal cruiser, he looked back through the frosty window at Leonardo and me, his eyes burning with impotent fury.

Leonardo didn’t watch him leave. He looked down at me, shaking his head slightly, a slow, dark smile spreading across his face.