Page 29 of Hidden Ties (Made Men #11)

TWENTY-THREE

ONCE IN A BLUE MOON

“ W hat the hell do you think you’re doing?” Sal shot up from the chair in his office when the unannounced man barged in.

“Where’s Valerie?”

He was one second away from pulling his gun out to kill the man he had a high distaste for but thought better of it, considering Valerie still might need his services. “Kent, I understand you are representing her at the moment, but you can’t just barge in—”

“I don’t have time to explain,” Kent said, holding up his hand to silence him. “Now, where is Valerie? This is important.”

“She’s in my penthouse.” Sal felt safe enough to divulge that information because Kent didn’t know which one he lived in. The lawyer had only known this was his office because Sal took a meeting with him for personal reasons a little over six months ago.

He figured he must have heard about Lyle and Gerard and wanted to speak with Valerie, but he wasn’t sure why it couldn’t wait until morning, until he heard the worry in Kent’s voice.

“I need you to check—right now.”

Seeing just how serious the lawyer was, Sal sat back in his chair while biting down his fury, and pulled up the personal cameras in his penthouse.

They were the only cameras he had access to in any of the penthouses on the top floor.

Those cameras were all personally watched by their respective owners.

He flipped through them but didn’t find her. She might be in the bathroom, where no camera was placed, but when he rewound the footage a bit, he realized she had actually left the penthouse.

“She’s not there anymore, is she?” Kent asked gravely.

Sal shook his head, trying not to let the same worry overtake him just yet.

Quickly, he followed her tracks after leaving the penthouse, flipping through the camera viewpoints. Kent came up behind him to watch the screens, as well. Valerie had first come to his office, which made Sal’s heart sink even lower.

Kent hissed at him, “Where were you?”

“I caught someone cheating at one of the tables. I went down to the casino floor to make sure with my own eyes. Look.” Sal put a split screen of the two cameras in each of the elevators.

When she hadn’t found Sal in his office, she had gone straight to the elevator.

At the same moment that Valerie had entered one at the top floor of the Casino Hotel, Sal had entered one at the bottom after dealing with the situation, so they rode a different one side by side.

Sal had only just returned to his office when Kent barged in a few minutes later.

“That’s why I couldn’t get on the elevator and had to wait so long. You both got in and must’ve done something to cause the elevator not to stop between floors.” Kent had still been staying in one of the hotel rooms for quite some time now.

“Yes, there’s a code. Fuck!” Sal cursed when he watched her try to search for him in the casino.

Her search had abruptly stopped when a man came up from behind her.

Sal zoomed in on the man and was able to make out the outline of the concealed gun in his pocket as they walked through the Casino Hotel.

“That was Valerie’s boss at the Horseshoe, Edmond Roads,” Kent told him furiously as Sal clicked on another camera angle to watch them leave through the front doors.

As she left through the front doors, she bumped into a random man with a hoodie low over his face who was returning from his jog, before Sal switched to the street camera. Fear started to overtake him as he watched Valerie cross the street toward the Horseshoe with the armed man. Alone.

“How long ago was that?” All of Kent’s worry was quickly replaced by jumping into action. Both men pulled their eyes from the screens and guns from their backs as they headed for his office door and loaded the chambers.

“Five minutes ago,” Sal said, slipping his gun back into its place now that it was primed.

They exited his office and entered the surveillance room with multiple screens across the wall. The newest Caruso soldier would be lucky to see the morning sun.

“Alessio, why didn’t you tell me Valerie came here?”

The soldier didn’t even bother to move his eyes from the screen to talk to him. “I just assumed she had found you like she said you would after I told her you were checking out a problem on the casino floor.”

“You’re fired.” Sal’s voice held authority that made the soldier finally look at him. “Immediately upon my return. Clearly, you cannot be responsible for watching surveillance if you weren’t able to see that she didn’t.”

“We’re losing time,” Kent reminded him, and it took all of Sal’s control not to scatter the soldier’s brains all over the screens.

“Get a hold of Lucca and tell him to call in the cavalry to the Horseshoe across the street. If you manage to do that, I will spare your life. If you’re lucky at all … I won’t return,” he told the panic-stricken soldier, who went for his phone as they left the room to run toward the elevator.

They got on in a rush, and he saw Kent go for his phone. “Who are you calling?”

“Trying to call in more backup, but the elevator is disrupting my signal.” Kent cursed, pulling the phone from his ear before he apologized unremorsefully. “No offense, but I prefer mine.”

Sal stalked forward at the man, taking full offense. “No offense, but how the hell did you know Valerie was in trouble, anyway?”

“Does that really matter right now?” Kent asked seriously, highly aware of Sal’s distaste for him.

The elevator numbers slowly counting down took away his attention.

“Try texting,” he told him, backing down, instinctively knowing they were running out of time.

The Carusos were only the tip of the iceberg for the kind of connections Kent had.

Despite how much Kent tried to hide from Sal, he did know his goings-on, but he was starting to feel like he was missing something.

While Sal still preferred his men to Kent’s, at this point, he’d take any backup he could get; he realized how late it was, so Lucca was probably sleeping and at home with his wife and newborn twins.

Taking out his own phone, he sent a mass text out in the same chat he had texted the guys in to come get their women the other day.

AT HORSESHOE. VALERIE’S IN TROUBLE

When he saw the loading bar slowly creep along to deliver the message, he put the phone back in his pocket, hoping it would send when he got off the elevator, ’cause once that elevator opened, they both shot out like hell was on their heels.

Sal thought he was going to be sick from the nerves racking his body. This was exactly why he hadn’t let himself get close to a woman—the fear of losing a woman he cared for would feel way too similar to losing his mother.

Sal had almost died after he lost his mom, practically starving himself to death. He had only let himself eat when the hunger pains had become too painful.

Watching his mother die in that way, and then proceeding to live on without her, was an indescribable pain he didn’t wish on his worst enemy. Anything and everything he did after her passing, he hated himself for it because his mother wasn’t alive and couldn’t.

If tonight wasn’t already eerie enough, it became only more so when he didn’t see not one made man as they made their way through the casino. The chances of that happening were like …

Once in a blue moon …

The thought made chills coat Sal’s body as they barged out of the casino doors, and Sal’s feet came to a sudden halt when he ominously looked up at the night sky.

“What’s wrong?” Kent asked, trying to see what had stopped him.

Sal’s chest felt heavy with more fear, understanding the sudden eerie feeling that had overtaken him. “It’s a full moon.”

With the cold night air hitting his face, he couldn’t manage to say that it wasn’t only a full moon.

But a blue one.

“Keep walking.”

Valerie entered the Horseshoe with the barrel of a gun still pointed at her lower back. She didn’t need to turn around to see that it was not only Edmond doing so, but that he had the weapon concealed in his coat pocket due to the lack of concern from the people in the Casino Hotel.

Since she was still phone-less, she had been looking for Sal on the casino floor when Edmond had found her.

She knew it was bad to do as he asked and walk out of the safety of the Casino Hotel; however, she could smell the stench of desperation.

Knowing his words—that he’d shoot to kill—were very much true, she had done as he asked, because as soon as she blew the proverbial whistle, he would do it, too.

He was on the brink of having nothing to lose, regardless of if he found what he wanted from her.

The only thing saving her at the moment was the fact she was following his orders.

The next thing to save her would be to keep doing as she was—walking as slowly as she could get away with and praying to God that Sal would get her message.

“Faster,” he said with a hard shove to her back with the pointy end of the gun.

“Okay,” she gritted out in a slight bit of pain, thinking she needed to distract him into walking slower while they continued through the Horseshoe.

The casino was pretty much dead from the lack of players, probably because of the cyberattack.

“Edmond, I’m not sure what you think I hav—”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Valerie. Once I realized it was missing, I’ve been looking everywhere for that fucking flash drive.

I went through months of footage of my office only to find you picked it up right off my office floor.

Unfortunately for me, I fired you the very next day.

My mistake was letting you get arrested before trying to find it in your house.

You can imagine my surprise when I realized it wasn’t there. ”

“How’d you know I left it at the Horseshoe?” she asked under her breath.

“I wasn’t for certain till just now.”

Great.

Valerie tried to slow her gait a tiny bit more while she talked.

“So, let’s see if I have this right … Obviously, the cyberattack was an inside job.

I’m assuming that’s why you didn’t want me to update the firewalls—it would have thrown off your whole plan.

” She laughed mockingly for a moment. “I bet you got unlucky when the man before me decided to retire early, and I bet you only hired me as his replacement because you thought my lack of experience would mean I wouldn’t care enough to want to fix the firewalls. ”

His silence told her she was exactly right.

“ My mistake , however, was when I showed you my simulation. I gave you the perfect fall man.”

“Bingo,” he chastised her.

“I bet the only reason you needed Gerard’s help was not only for him to do your dirty work, but to be the one to pull off the cyberattack.

You’re not smart enough to do that, but Gerard definitely was.

” Valerie had wondered why Gerard hadn’t agreed with her in wanting to update the firewalls, but now she knew.

“If I didn’t take the fall, you were definitely going to let Gerard. He was a goner no matter what, huh?”

“Your time’s almost up.” Edmond pressed the elevator button for the floor her old office was on.

“It’s not at my desk,” she told him as the doors came to a close.

Keeping his gun still trained on her, Edmond stared back at her, not believing that she was telling the truth.

“I promise it’s not. You think I would have kept that at my desk?

If I had, you would have found it. I wasn’t expecting to get fired that day, so when I was, I wasn’t able to retrieve it.

” She snickered, really hoping she sounded convincing as the elevator doors opened to the tenth floor.

If he made her get off here, she was as good as dead.

“Come on, Edmond. At least give me some credit.”

“Where the fuck is it, then?”

Valerie watched his hand waver over the numbers, waiting for her to tell him where she was leading them. Praying to God the man with the baby-blue eyes had heard her, she chose what could be her final resting place.

“The rooftop.”