Call Me Yours

Chapter 23 - Background Checks (Alessandro)

A/N - This is the first Alessandro POV chapter- hope you guys are enjoying so far. And if you're this far in the book I actually love you, enjoy ;)

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Alessandro
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"Get Marco to check if Ivano's girls have been paid this time."

The man nodded obediently,

"Of course." 

He hurriedly left the room, taking with him the papers I needed signing by one of my 'business partners'. We'd been making a lot of progress lately, quite a few expansions so to speak.

I'd had one too many problems with Ivano's girls though. I had no interest in them, but the family had a long-standing relationship with Ivano and if I told him to fuck off it'd cause an extra problem that I couldn't be bothered dealing with right now. They'd been complaining to him lately saying my men weren't paying them right. I couldn't see how that was my fucking problem but Ivano had apparently been a little emotional over it.

"Boss, Bianchi had until today to pay, he hasn't. What do you want us to do?"
Gianni would say kill him.

I ran my hands over my face, ready to tell him to leave me the fuck alone for even a minute when the man himself walked in.

"Oh, thank fuck."
Gianni gave me a wide smile stretching out his arms.
"Nice to see you too brother."

When I became the face of the family, I was in no way ready. I knew fuck all about how to run anything. I'd never even dealt with drugs, prostitution, fraud. I'd never shot someone in my life, let alone killed. I had no idea about the life my father lived until his responsibilities became my responsibilities. And now here I was.

Gianni was in the background of the family, but truthfully he called a lot of the shots around here. I had no fucking complaints, anything for me to catch a break. If I was being honest, often I'd ask him for advice on what to do, he was my Consigliere, behind closed doors of course. Infront of the family I had everything under control. I was my father's son after all.

"What do we do about Bianchi?"
He looked up at me from sorting through some the papers on the table. We'd been investing money in 'cleaner' businesses, restaurants, hotels, and it was good fucking money but shit, it was hard work. The hundreds of documents laying across my desk were evidence of that.

"Did he not pay?"

I looked over at the man who'd brought me the news, raising an eyebrow, as if to say, speak now.

"No, he missed the last payment too."

"Then you deal with him, uccidilo." Something I did admire about Gianni was his ability to make decisions like that so abruptly. I found myself struggling to make certain decisions, which I obviously couldn't do. I couldn't falter when making decisions that could cost the family, and cost me lives.

The man nodded before leaving the room. At least I wouldn't hear about fucking Bianchi again.

"I need a fucking break, Gianni."
He sent me a questioning look.
"Yeah? What have you been doing?"
"You know, making fucking decisions, it's tiring."

I rested my head on the table infront of me, if one more person knocked on my door I was going to lose my shit.

I watched as Gianni forged signatures on some of the documents. A sudden thought came to mind.
"Gianni, who's our guy that does the background checks?"
"Why, are you looking to recruit?"He raised an eyebrow at me, he already knew I didn't bother with shit like that myself, and we weren't looking to recruit.
"No, I just want to check something."
"It's Daniel."

I decided to pay this Daniel a little visit, leaving Gianni to deal with the boring shit on my behalf.

I tracked him down and explained my request to him. He led me down the halls to a little office where we had a desk set up with multiple monitors, it had CCTV coverage of the main areas of the house and our large area of land around it. It allowed us to monitor who was coming in and out of the house, which was much needed.

I had him pull out a saved file of a certain night from a couple weeks ago and had him pause and zoom in on a certain face.

"Her. I want you to find out who she is."

"Si, just give me a few hours, capo."

I left him to get to work and as I returned to Gianni I couldn't help but think this was something I should've done a while ago.