VALENTINA
The doors clicked shut behind Val, and she took a moment to observe the hallway. Grand mirrors lined the walls and ceiling, keeping with the theme of Lo Specchio. Even the doors lining the long corridor masqueraded as floor-length mirrors, only their crystalline knobs betrayed them.
Although she was alone in the hallway, Val's own reflection brought an unsettling sense that someone watched her. Every time she moved, a dozen mirror-images followed, a stalker that she couldn't escape from. She picked up her pace, heels thudding against the dark red carpet, eager to get the hell out of that corridor.
When she neared the end of the hallway, she distracted herself by glancing at her illuminated phone screen. The time 10:58 PM stared back at her.
Shit, shit, shit.
Val practically ran the rest of the distance to the final door with the glowing orange "EXIT" sign above it. She could only pray that the back exit would lead her to the loading dock, where she assumed that the beverage company would drop off its supply.
When she reached the door, Val pressed her ear close to the mirror, listening for any conversations on the other side. To her relief, only silence greeted her. Either she had the wrong door, or the delivery truck hadn't arrived yet.
With careful, painstakingly precise movements, she turned the knob and nudged the door open an inch. Again, no sounds filtered through the new crack in the door, so she opened it further, inch by inch, until she could poke her head out. Relief swept through her chest when her eyes swept across a vacant warehouse, like a huge garage with boxes and supplies stacked on top of one another. She checked and double checked for any sign of movement within the warehouse before sliding through the door.
Her heels clicked on the concrete step, echoing against the expansive walls. In the quiet, the shoes were deafening. Val cringed and immediately stooped to unbuckle the strappy pumps. She could curse her own stupidity later. For now, she needed to find a hiding spot—quietly.
She wasted valuable seconds in unclasping the heels, but eventually freed herself from the four-inch prisons. Before she could bolt barefooted down the concrete steps to the main floor of the garage, the sound of an engine thrummed nearby. Val's eyes widened to the point of pain as a pair of headlights illuminated the driveway leading to the warehouse.
Now or never. Val's entire body started shaking as she careened down the remaining steps and threw herself behind the nearest stack of boxes. She crouched, just out of view of the incoming truck and the same door that she'd just come through. A glance at her phone revealed the time: 11:00 P.M.
She exhaled a soft, ragged breath and waited for voices.
Not even fifteen seconds later, the door swung open and heavy footsteps thudded against the concrete steps, slow and relaxed. Not Matteo, then. Meanwhile, the delivery truck backed into the garage, emitting a rhythmic beep, beep with every inch it rolled. Finally, the truck stopped and a car door opened and closed.
"Hey Joey," a familiar male voice called out. Mario.
Mario's words were casual enough that Val could guess that he knew the delivery driver well, but that proved nothing. She needed evidence. Irrefutable evidence that someone was stealing from her father's accounts.
With trembling fingers, Val unlocked her phone and clicked on the camera icon. She clumsily swiped until the camera switched to "video" mode, and her thumb landed on the red "record" button. She shifted onto her knees and peeked the phone's camera just around the edge of her box cover, tilting the screen until two figures came into view.
Mario, with his slender frame tucked neatly in a gray suit, and Joey, a massive force in jeans and a dirt-stained white t-shirt. The two men couldn't have been more opposite. They certainly didn't look like they were in business together.
Val held her breath and zoomed in with a reverse-pinch of her fingers on the screen, right as Mario reached into his back pocket and pulled out an envelope.
No — two envelopes.
Her heart thundered so fiercely within her ribcage, she thought her phone's speaker might pick up its hammering. Why would Mario pay the beverage company in two separate envelopes unless the payments purchased two separate items? To anyone just casually skimming over the records, the cash appeared to fund the beverages. Val knew better.
Joey tucked one envelope in his back pocket but opened the other. He thumbed through the contents, counting the bills in a barely intelligible mutter. "Five, six... Nine, ten, eleven... fifteen."
When the beefy truck driver seemed satisfied that the envelope contained all of the money, he closed the flap again and turned his attention back to Mario. "They'll be taking the girls to the Harrison Hotel on Lex Ave. Have your guys there by five or Belyaev will close shop. Now, help me unload this shit."
Val's entire body stiffened, paralyzed by the dread coiling down her spine at Joey's words. She nearly dropped her phone, her fingers going numb with the rest of her. She couldn't think. The same three things played in her mind.
Taking the girls... Harrison Hotel... Belyaev.
Taking the girls. Harrison Hotel. Belyaev.
Val felt like she was going to be sick. Her throat convulsed, but she kept her mouth clamped shut to prevent any bile from spilling onto the concrete.
When she found the incongruities in the Lo Specchio accounts, Val assumed she might've uncovered a simple drug and money laundering scheme. But this?
The Romano famiglia did many bad things, but Val knew her father would never take part in the trafficking of another human being. In fact, when Val was sixteen, her mother told her about her father's efforts to destroy the deplorable system. He went to war against the Bratva, the Russian mafia who ran the rings, to end it. And now, it was happening right beneath her father's nose.
Val struggled to draw air into her lungs. She leaned her back against the wooden crate and clamped her eyes shut as she tried to make sense of the situation.
Mario paid a sum of the famiglia's money, under the guise of beverage purchases, to Joey, an informant who knew the next location of the trafficking. Val guessed that Mario didn't use that information for himself. He probably shepherded New York's most depraved elite to the hotels or houses for a hefty price...
Another round of bile rose in Val's throat. This time, she couldn't keep the liquid from spilling onto the concrete with a splash. Fortunately, the sounds of Mario and Joey unloading the liquor crates overshadowed her sickness.
Val set her still-recording phone on the ground and clamped both hands against her mouth. She couldn't make another sound. She needed to get out of that warehouse, evidence in tow, for the sake of the girls that would be at the Harrison Hotel. She needed to tell her father so that he could call the entire Cosa Nostra to arms.
Every second felt like an hour until Joey hauled the last box off of his delivery truck. Val heard the two men shake hands and mumble their goodbyes. A minute later, the delivery truck's engine cranked to life again, sputtering gasoline vapors around the garage before it pulled away from the loading dock.
Val remained frozen behind her boxes of cover as Mario's singular footsteps traveled back toward the concrete steps that led into Lo Specchio. He hummed a few notes of a popular electronic dance song. Val counted the thud of his foot against each step.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
He reached the top, and the humming stopped.
Val held her breath as the hinges on the door creaked once, opening. There was a faint clicking noise, then the overhead lights in the warehouse shut off. Seconds later, the garage door started to close, sealing all light from the garage. Finally, when Mario finished closing the warehouse, the door creaked again and slammed shut.
Val exhaled her momentary relief, but she still needed to find a way out of that place. Her fight wasn't over yet.
She hadn't expected Mario to shut off the lights, but her phone had a flashlight and plenty of battery. She patted the surrounding concrete until her fingers curled around the familiar shape.
"Gotcha," she whispered, plucking it from the floor and wiping the dust from its screen on her jacket's sleeve.
She bent to retrieve her heels as well, but before her finger hooked around the straps, a soft skid sounded from the other side of her wooden crate. The sound of fabric sliding, ever so slowly, against concrete...
Every muscle in Val's body froze as Mario hummed again from the darkness.
"Gotcha."
Val forgot her shoes and bolted in the opposite direction of Mario's soft laugh, but the pitch black made her clumsy, and she didn't know her surroundings at all. Her bare feet slipped on the smooth surface below, and she helplessly collided with another stack of wooden crates.
"Ah!" she cried, pain ricocheting through her temple as it made first-contact with one box. Slow warmth leaked from the source. Blood.
Another skid of fabric on cement. The undeniable sound of Mario scooting closer. "It was a molto buona idea to take off your shoes to dull your footsteps, signorina. I thought I would try it out for myself," he chuckled.
Val groaned, hardly able to hear Mario's taunting over the throbbing of her forehead. She gingerly pressed her palm to the wound, but the pressure only worsened her pain. Even worse, she realized she had dropped her phone during the fall. Recovering the phone might've been her only chance to walk out of the warehouse alive, but it also became next-to-impossible in the darkness.
Mario caught her. And now he would kill her.
"Did you really think that I wouldn't have cameras watching you?" he jabbed, sliding a step closer.
Val groaned, scrambling into an upright position. She squinted, her eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness. "I-I read... the club's... r-records. Those cameras h-haven't been l-l-logged online... in a y-year."
Mario huffed, and Val could practically hear his smirk. He was closer now. Just a step away. "I turned them back on as soon as you started sniffing around, cagna."
Val leaned her shoulders against the nearest crate, dizzy, but she slowly moved her feet across the floor, hoping to locate her cell-phone. She needed to stall Mario for as long as possible while she sought the lifeline.
"You knew I-I'd f-find your m-mistakes." Even teetering on the edge of consciousness, Val managed a cold, hollow laugh. Blood leaked into her left eye. "Y-You were get-ting sloppy."
"Oh, signorina, I was hoping you'd find the mistakes!" he claimed, voice booming against the walls and boxes. "I've been dreaming about putting a bullet in your head from the day you sauntered in here and sicked Matteo fucking Costa on me."
Val's foot brushed against something cold and smooth on the ground. Her pulse intensified. She'd found the cell-phone, but it was just out of reach of her toes. She slumped, extending her leg further and reaching —
"Mi ascolti, cazzo!" Mario demanded, stomping closer.
Val shrunk back against the fury in his voice. She'd angered him by not responding, but the entirety of her focus rested on reaching her phone.
Until something cold and circular pressed against her already bleeding temple.
Val's toes finally reached the phone, and she bent her knee, guiding the device closer. As soon as her fingers wrapped around the cracked screen and broken case, Mario's gun cocked.
"Die, cagna," he seethed, and Val knew it was too late.
She clamped her eyes shut, and an ear-splitting CRACK shook the walls.