Fake Mating To My Ex's Powerful Enemy

Chapter 271: Chapter 271 A Scam

Christina’s POV

Inspector Silva wasn’t much of a talker.

Once he saw I wasn’t interested in chitchat, he got straight to the point and handed me a file.

"I need you to keep everything you’re about to read strictly confidential. Especially from Monsieur Marchetti..."

"Got it," I cut him off. "My lips are sealed."

The whole file was in French. With my terrible French, I had to use a translation app just to figure out what I was looking at. Silva didn’t help, just sat there watching me struggle.

The more I read, the sicker I felt. For a second, I hoped my translation app was screwing up.

No such luck.

I flagged down a waiter. "Your strongest coffee, please. Something that could wake the dead."

When I finally looked up at Silva, my voice sounded hollow. "If you have all this evidence, why haven’t you just arrested him?"

According to the file, which looked pretty damn real, Fabrizio wasn’t just bad with money. He was stealing from investors and running Valmont & Cie into the ground. Turns out being a creative genius doesn’t make you good at business.

My head pounded.

"We’ve been watching Monsieur Marchetti closely. He doesn’t seem like a flight risk yet. He’s been scrambling to find investors and cash to keep the company afloat. If he pulls it off, no one would notice anything wrong. Not until the new investors start wanting their money back." He paused. "Then you showed up."

The way he looked at me felt accusatory, and it pissed me off.

I straightened. "What exactly are you saying I did?"

"You gave him the money he needed."

I thought about our partnership deal. "But didn’t you just say that kind of money could save the company?"

"It could, if he used it to pay back what he owes or return the stolen funds. But that’s not what happened."

"So what did he do with my money?"

Silva flipped through a few pages and pointed to some numbers. "Did he tell you to transfer the money to this account?"

I checked and nodded. "Yeah. What’s wrong with it?"

"It’s not a company account. It’s not even in his name. It belongs to a shell company that looks legit on paper but it’s completely empty. Both the bank and company are registered in the Cook Islands."

My stomach dropped. "Which means what?"

"Which means he’s planning his escape. The Cook Islands don’t have an extradition treaty with France. Once he’s there, we can’t touch him. Neither can your money."

Five million euros. Gone.

No wonder he’d been so excited about our partnership. I thought he actually cared about working together creatively. Turns out I was just some rich sucker with deep pockets.

"Is he still in Paris?"

"Yes."

"Then why the hell haven’t you arrested him?"

"Because he’s not ready to run yet. He’s targeting several potential investors, people like you who know his reputation but have no clue what he’s really up to, and he’s reeling them in one by one. You’re the first to bite on his so-called joint venture, which is just fancy fraud. We think he’ll take off once he’s got around fifty million."

My mouth went dry, and my hands shook from too much caffeine and pure rage.

"If you knew he was scamming me, why didn’t you stop me before I sent the money?"

"We weren’t sure until he had you send it to that account. We needed to see where the money actually went. We’re sorry about the situation."

He didn’t sound sorry at all. freeweɓnovel.cøm

"This cop just watched someone get conned," Akira growled. "I want to punch him."

"Me too!" I told Akira. But I knew this was partly my fault too. I’d been fighting with Hudson recently and didn’t let him do a financial analysis of the company like he usually would. Otherwise I never would’ve fallen for this scam.

But right now I needed to focus on fixing this mess. This cop wouldn’t be here for no reason.

"Can I get my money back?" I asked. freewebnøvel.com

"Maybe. But not until we finish investigating and he gets formally charged and convicted."

I wanted to call Fabrizio right now, demand answers and my money back. But that would just tip him off and he’d vanish instantly.

"So what am I supposed to do now?"

"You and Monsieur Marchetti seem pretty close. We’d like..."

I cut him off with a glare. "What are you getting at?"

He raised his hands. "Nothing weird. Just that he seems comfortable with you, talks freely. We still haven’t tracked down all the stolen money. If we can figure out where it went, it makes our case stronger. Makes it harder for him to get away with this."

I snorted. "Why don’t you just bug his office and apartment? Don’t French cops have gear for that?"

Silva didn’t even blink. "Madame Vance watches too many spy movies. We can’t wiretap a suspect’s place without a court order. We have rules to follow."

"Sounds like your problem, not mine." I stood up. "I need time to think about this. I’m leaving."

"We were hoping you might help us out."

"Help you how? I can’t even help myself right now."

My brain was already spinning. How could I confront Fabrizio and get my money back without tipping him off? If he had even a hint that I knew what was going on, he’d disappear instantly.

I thought about calling Hudson, but he’d just ask why I didn’t check with him before investing, why I didn’t talk to him before making such a big decision. And then he’d probably give me an "I never trusted that guy" speech.

"Like I said, the money’s probably been moved through a bunch of different accounts and ended up somewhere overseas. We’d have to convince foreign authorities to send it back, which almost never works. And even if it did, the money would sit with our asset management people while the case drags on."

The pain in my head was turning into a serious migraine. "Just cut to the chase. The money’s gone."

"Usually, yeah. But... there might be ways to speed things up."

"What ways?"

He pointed to the empty chair across from him.

I sat back down, tense.

"Monsieur Marchetti has several personal accounts here in France. We can freeze those. After he’s convicted, that money gets divided up among the victims. And who’s to say your investment wasn’t part of what’s sitting in those accounts?"

I stared at him. "You’re saying you could pay me back my five million from his personal money?"

He nodded. "It’s... not exactly by the book. If anyone found out, I’d be in deep shit. Could get suspended or worse. So I’d only do something like that for someone who really helped out with our investigation."

"So if I don’t help you, my money’s gone forever. That’s what you’re telling me."

He leaned back and smirked. "I think the saying goes, ’You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.’"

"This is wrong," Akira growled. "Call Hudson. Call Finn. Don’t make deals with this snake."

But five million euros was five million euros. And honestly, the choice wasn’t that hard.

"What do you need me to do?"