Salvatore #2
His fingers still against the table. “I made sure she’d have everything she ever wanted.”
“I know.”
Silence settles again.
Then…
“Do you love her?”
His eyes stay locked on mine, searching.
This isn’t a test.
It’s a verdict.
“Yes.”
Marco watches me, long and steady, then nods once.
“Then I’ll be there,” he says. “I’ll walk my little girl down the aisle.”
His shoulders square again, decision made.
But he leans forward slightly, his gaze sharpening.
“I know you love her Salvatore and surprisingly, you seem like an okay guy, so let me give you a piece of advice. If you want her to love you completely, you have to let her choose you.”
I don’t respond.
“If you force her, control her, cage her…” he continues, his fingers pressing into the wood now, “you’ll never have all of her.”
He gives me a minute to let it sink it.
“Love isn’t obedience.”
My jaw tightens.
“Valentina doesn’t belong to anyone,” he adds, quieter now. “Not even you.”
I stand, the chair shifting softly beneath me. “See you at the wedding, Marco.”
He rises as well, straightening slightly.
“I want one thing.”
“You’re not in a position to negotiate.”
“I know.” He holds my gaze.
I wait.
“Those flowers she wanted… they’re called forget-me-nots. Make sure she gets them.”
“I will.”
He exhales slowly, something like disbelief crossing his face. “Crazy world,” he mutters. “My daughter… marrying a fucking Vitale.”
He looks at me a moment longer, like he’s measuring something he’s finally decided to accept.
“You going to start calling me Dad, Mr. Vitale?” he asks, a hint of dry humor in his voice.
I pause at the door, my hand resting on the handle, then glance back.
“No. But you can call me Salvatore.” He nods in agreement, and just like that, forty years of hate, tension, and family fued doesn’t disappear… it bends.
Now, I deal with the one person she trusts most.
* * *
“Boss.” Nico meets me at the door. “She’s been here twenty minutes. Came without a fight. Walked right through the front gate like she’d been here before.”
Something almost like amusement moves through me. “Of course she did.”
I take my time. I pour a drink I don’t particularly want, but I know enough about her to know I’ll need one anyway. Then I go to meet Valentina’s best friend.
Lindsay is sitting with her legs crossed and her hands folded in her lap. Dark blazer. Sharp eyes. Posture so composed it looks rehearsed, and it probably is. She walks into rooms full of dangerous men for a living, and she has learned to wear stillness like armor.
What surprises me is that it isn’t entirely performance. She is genuinely calm. Almost completely unbothered, except for the eyes. I recognize it immediately because I have been carrying it since last night.
Guilt.
Interesting.
I take the chair across from her and say nothing. Silence is a pressure most people cannot hold. They fill it with confessions, justifications, all the things they intended to keep to themselves.
Lindsay does not fill it. She holds my gaze like a woman who knows exactly what the silence is trying to do and has made a professional habit of refusing to cooperate.
“You should be afraid,” I warn.
She tilts her head slightly. “I don’t cower to thugs.”
“Hm.”
A beat. Then, clean and direct: “Why did you send Valentina to that warehouse?”
She isn’t here to negotiate. She’s here because she needs to know whether last night was my fault, and she is smart enough to go straight for it.
“I didn’t.”
The composure cracks. Not dramatically, she’s too controlled for that, but I watch it move through her. She needed it to be me. It would have been so much cleaner if it were me.
"You sent her." I lean back. "You found the location. You passed it along."
She closes her eyes. When she opens them, the guilt is no longer something she’s containing. “I thought her father was there. She asked me to find him. My source said,” She stops. “My source was wrong.”
“Your source was compromised,” I explain. “The information was planted. Someone knew you were looking and knew that if you found something convincing, you would tell her.” I let that land. “She wasn’t walking into one of my operations. She walked into a Volkov execution.”
The silence that follows is a different kind of silence.
“I know, the Russians,” she says quietly.
“Yes. They were settling their own account with Vladimir, one of my dock workers who had been feeding them intelligence.” I watch her absorb it. “Valentina walked into the middle of it. Whoever planted that information knew she would.”
Lindsay is very still.
“She could have been killed,” she says. Stripped of everything except the truth underneath it.
“Yes.”
She looks at the table. For a moment she is not a prosecutor or a politician’s daughter or a woman who does not cower to thugs. She is just someone who loves her best friend and nearly got her killed trying to help her.
“I would never,” she says. “Unlike you, I love Valentina. I would never have sent her if I’d known.”
“Unlike me? What makes you think I don’t love her? What is there not to love about that woman? I’m not the one who nearly got her fucking killed.”
She looks up. She wasn’t expecting that.
“You don’t have to choose between loving her and believing I do,” I tell her. “Both things are possible.”
She studies me the way she probably studies the witnesses. Looking for the lie. Waiting for the story to shift, but it won’t.
“This case you’re building,” I lean forward.
“This chase. You will not get me. You will not get my men, my books, or anything that holds up in a courtroom. I have lawyers you’ve never heard of and judges who owe me more than you can imagine.
That is not arrogance. That is a fact.” I lean forward.
“But more importantly, every time you push, she is the one caught in the middle. I am done watching that happen.”
“I will protect Valentina at all costs,” Lindsay says. She means it.
“No.” I hold her gaze. “I will protect Valentina at all costs. That is not a competition. It is a statement of fact. Last night I walked into a building with Volkov soldiers because she was in it. Not because I fucked up, because you did. I will protect Valentina, your only job is not to put her in harm’s way again. Is that clear?”
She stands. “Can I leave now?”
“Do as you wish.”
She walks to the door. I turn back to the window.
Then she stops.
“Salvatore.”
I don’t turn around. “Lindsay.”
A pause. Long enough to be deliberate. Then, very evenly:
“If you send one of your thugs to summon me again, I will shoot that motherfucker and file it as a suicide.” Now I turn around. She is already at the door. Not looking back.
“Hm.” I tilt my head. “Now who’s the criminal?”
She doesn’t answer.
She walks out and pulls the door closed behind her.
I stand in the quiet for a long moment.
Birds of a fucking feather.
The woman my future wife chose as her closest friend in the world just threatened to murder one of my men and frame it as a suicide.
I’m sure she can; she has a very convincing medical examiner.
I am genuinely not sure whether I should be furious or whether I should offer her a job but its not like she’d take it, her pride wouldn’t let her.
Three people who would do anything for the same woman, finally, reluctantly, understanding each other. First her father, and now her best friend. What a fucking day.
Now, I have to figure out where the hell to get enough blue flowers to fill an entire fucking venue in three days… This should be fun.