Page 77 of The Mafia King's Reign
There’s only one more, the one that shows just a fraction of the room. She searches for it, circling the space with narrowed eyes. For a moment, I think she won’t find it.
Then she stops in front of the floor lamp. Examines it. Smiles.
I expect her to yank it out immediately, but she doesn’t. Instead, she leans in close, staring directly into the lens. Her green eyes fill my screen, fierce and victorious. Then she sticks her tongue out at me, like a child, like my queen, before ripping the camera free.
No more cameras, no more feed.
“I should punish you for that.”
“I told you, no cameras. If you want to punish me… you know where to find me.”
Fuck. Oh, Valentina, if only you knew what I want to do to you right now. My cock twitches at the thought of her wet center and the way she tasted in my mouth in that garden.
I sit there for a long moment, trying to decide what to do with this woman of mine, when a text comes through.
Goodnight, Salvatore.
I reply right away.
Well played, Valentina, well played.
* * *
I set the phone down, still half-smiling, and that's when Raffaele's message comes through.
Something you need to see. Not urgent. But tonight.
From Raffaele, "not urgent" means it won't get anyone killed in the next twelve hours. Everything else is relative.
He's waiting in my study with a folder and the particular stillness he gets when he's already decided how he feels about something but is giving me the courtesy of reaching my own conclusion.
"The prosecutor," he says. No preamble. He sets the folder on the desk.
I open it.
The name at the top of the federal case file reads Assistant District Attorney Lindsay Beaumont. Below it, organized with methodical precision that tells me she has been building this for a long time, are financial records, shell company registrations, property transfers, and surveillance photographs. Photographs of our men. Our buildings. Three of our front businesses named by their actual function, not their legal cover.
She doesn't have everything. But she has more than she should.
"How long?" I ask.
"Eighteen months. Maybe longer." Raffaele's jaw is set. "She's been careful. No leaks to our contacts, no courthouse gossip. She's been running it quiet."
Lindsay. Valentina's best friend. The woman she calls every few days, whose voice relaxes her in a way that even I haven't managed to reach yet.
I close the folder.
The case is a problem. A manageable one, but a problem, nonetheless. I have lawyers for exactly this, and judges who would quietly bury a file like this before it reached a grand jury. That part doesn't concern me.
What concerns me is Valentina.
She doesn't know. She's upstairs right now, having just ripped my cameras off her wall and told me to come find her if I want to punish her for it, completely unaware that her best friend has spent a year and a half building a federal case against the man she is weeks from marrying.
"Put a watch on it," I tell Raffaele. "Passive only. I don't want her touched, followed, or pressured. Not one of our people goes near her."
He doesn't argue, but his expression asks the question anyway.
"She's Valentina's close friend.”
