REYNA
With that, I pulled away from him so fast that anyone watching us would think he burned me.
"There is a government surveillance camera not too far away from your home. The camera caught the sight of a large, black, heavily-tinted vehicle speeding down the road at the estimated time of Giovanni's disappearance," I explained. "With a bit of photo editing, I believe that I will not only get the license plate, but I may even get a description of the person who took him."
"Surveillance camera?" Saint narrowed his eyes. There was suspicion rising in his voice and speculation bubbling at the surface of his tone.
I nodded my head slowly.
"I made sure to look up and down these streets, search every corner, observe every crevice. There has never been a camera anywhere near my home unless I put it there," he said.
My brows pulled together as I tried to connect the dots he was planting around me. "What are you trying to say?" I wondered out loud.
"I've been given some... advice. It's actually quite genius. If you want to put away a man who is as powerful and as careful as me, what do you do? You send in a woman. A woman that's seemingly innocent and shy. You tell her to manipulate him until he says or does something that could put him away forever. If there are surveillance cameras, they were put there when you got here. Whether it's to monitor you or me... I don't know, but I know it has something to do with you. Isn't that right, Angel?" Saint accused.
I quickly shook my head, the hammering in my chest barely allowing me to hear any of my own thoughts.
Don't be scared. Don't be weak.
"Clearly you just didn't search hard enough," I said softly, my voice barely hovering above a whisper. I cleared my throat to relieve myself of the anxiety squeezing down on my frightened accent. "I already have more than enough incriminating evidence to give you the death penalty. Do you really think I need some stupid camera, Santino? No, I don't. You and I both know I can do much better than surveillance footage. I never asked for this job. If you can't trust me then I guess that leaves you with no other choice... kill me."
He stared at me, waiting for any sign of cowardice. I never bothered to break our gaze. I poured every bit of my determination through the gleams in my eyes. Saint once said he wanted fire, I was ablaze.
"What did I tell you? I trust no one, and that includes you," he said, letting disgust rip from his tongue like a bandaid. Saint reached out to me before I could stop him, his grip squeezing down on either side of my cheeks. Pain seared from his fingertips, forcing a grimace onto my face.
I reached up to pry his fingers away from my face, snatching myself away from him as if it were a game of tug-a-war.
"You do trust me, and that scares you. It's why you won't stop trying to find some reason to hate me. You keep trying to outsmart me, outdo me, and outplay me, but you won't," I found myself saying without thinking. I gulped the moment I finished speaking. The terror that demanded the hairs on my skin to stand was now screaming for my heart to speed up.
Seconds passed. Seconds turned to a few minutes. A few minutes turned to many.
"You passed," he said as he walked away from me and over to the door. His hand rested on the doorknob and his silence was screaming. "When you get that description and license plate number, come find me. Immediately." Saint walked out of the room.
"I passed?" I whispered, trying to catch my breath and even out the beats of my heart.
I passed.
"Get it together, Reyna," I muttered after fixing my disheveled clothing.
Shaking off my nerves, I strolled out of the room and back toward Saint's office where my computer was. There was still a lot of work I needed to do, and I was determined to find Giovanni.
A part of me wondered where Saint went, but deep down I knew the answer. I could just picture him at his bar, drinking until the world miraculously made sense.
I crept into his office to find Leo and Savannah were already gone. I was almost positive they left the moment Saint arrived.
Seating myself down on the couch, I leaned over my laptop to rewatch the video. My eyes narrowed as I tried my best to inspect the driver. Due to the tint of the window, it was practically impossible.
I took a screenshot with my device and quickly began to highlight the photo. When I brightened it enough to see into the vehicle, and I was able to magnify the image making the driver more identifiable.
The first thing I took note of was the license plate. I quickly jotted down what I could see:
LJ467T1
I hurriedly grabbed ahold of my laptop and searched up the license plate and ran it through a national database. While I waited for the search to be over, I went back to the image to try and get an identity for the driver.
It didn't take no more than two seconds for me to put a name to the face. Dante Morelli.
How is this possible?
My laptop dinged, and my attention was grasped by the screen. My eyes widened in confirmation. The vehicle belonged to Dante.
Dante was with me at the ball. It couldn't be possible, but all of the evidence pointed to him. He was the only lead we had in finding Giovanni, and even if I couldn't understand it, I had to notify Saint.
I jumped up from the couch and practically ran out of the room. Racing through the hallway, I made my way to the bar and found Saint almost completely obliterated. He was on the chair, his body completely sprawled out with his head tipped back. A frown crept onto my face at the sight of the empty glass in his hand.
"Santino!" I exclaimed.
He groaned in response. "Not you again."
With a sigh, I walked over to him, and grabbed the glass from his hand. He didn't move a muscle as I set it down on the table beside him.
"Saint," I tried again, nudging him.
"What?"
"Dante Morelli." Saint's eyes shot open as he stared at me, waiting for an explanation. When he didn't say anything, I continued, "I edited the photo and managed to get the license plate number and even a clearer picture of the driver which was Dante. I can't seem to make sense of it, though. He was right there with me for majority of the time."
"On what database did you run the plate?" he asked.
I looked down at the ground, almost guilty for the answer dancing on the tip of my tongue, "I use the same database that the CIA uses."
The corner of Saint's lips twitched with a smile, but he easily suppressed it. "I'm assuming Dante approached you when I left, correct?" he asked.
"Correct."
"We are in a business dealing with the most sharpest criminals. Everyone has enemies, so everything we do has to be calculated and free of any mistakes. Think like a calculated criminal, Angel. Pretend like you're Dante," he said, shutting his eyes again.
My eyes narrowed in concentration. "Well, if I were after you, and I wanted to take one of your most trusted men, I'd wait until you're away... like at a ball. A ball that I'm hosting. I'd wait just outside, far enough to not be detected but close enough to watch for the second you leave. Once your gone, I go in with the help of someone on the inside... but who?" I pause. "It has to be a guard. Could it possibly be Leo? He was the only one guarding the front."
If Saint was worried, he wasn't showing it.
With a sigh, I continued, "once I'm in, I get Giovanni, but Adriano walks in the door so I take him out with the first object I can grab. I hurriedly get Giovanni out of the house and into the truck where I take him to a secluded location. Once he's taken care of, I go back in the car and to the ball for an alibi. When I hear you brought someone, I go speak to her because I know you would never suspect the person that was with your date majority of the night."
Silence filled the room. My brows came together as I waited for some type of reaction from Saint. There was nothing.
"I think you have the wrong mole. You have to do something before information gets out. Information about you and about m-"
"Shut up," Saint demanded, his eyes snapped open to glare at me. "I already have this figured out. We're going to pay him a visit tomorrow night. As an apology, we are taking him out for dinner." He smirked.
"We?" I questioned.
"Yes, we. Do you have a problem with that?" He raised a brow.
"I'm-"
"You're what? Scared?" Saint growled, standing up from the chair. It was like the alcohol swam away from him as his angry took control of his body. "I will be there, and for as long as I live, no one will ever fucking touch you. So why the fuck are you scared?" he demanded.
"I'm not scared," I said.
He narrowed his eyes, his face a mere inch away from mine. I had to take a small step back in order to create some space between us.
"Good. Consider tomorrow night a test. Who knows? You may just take the lead in this game we're playing," he remarked.
"Chess?"
"Chess."
-
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