Chapter 6
Enzo
“I’m definitely not dressed for this,” Valentina mumbled, taking the pack of boxer shorts from me.
I quickly turned my head away as she wrenched the brand-new boxer shorts out of the packaging. Best to give her a modicum of privacy if she was just going to get dressed without warning out in the fucking open.
Lucky for her, I always kept fresh supplies.
Despite my family’s power, there was no telling when one of us needed to make a fast getaway.
Having supplies around made it easier to pack quickly and get the hell out of Dodge.
Though, I sure as hell never planned on sharing those supplies with my enemy.
And I sure as fuck never thought I’d be giving the Romano heiress my underwear.
But I couldn’t expect Valentina to wear her blood-stained clothes, so this was our last, best option.
“I can tell the security guard to get lost,” I offered. “Give you some privacy.”
“No, it’s fine,” she said firmly. “Your guard might be helpful, and I don’t want to dismiss him just because I look ridiculous.”
I wanted to tell her that she looked hot as fuck in anything, but since I could still see her out of the corner of my eye despite my averted gaze, I focused on pivoting again to make sure she was completely out of sight.
I kept my mouth shut as I heard her pull on the pair of old cargo shorts I had loaned her.
I maintained the awkward silence as I heard her put on a belt and buckle it.
Honestly, I had planned on ducking out of my bedroom when she said she needed more clothes before going down to the control room to look at camera footage. But then she’d just started getting dressed the minute I handed over the clothes, leaving me no time to get out of the way.
At any other time, I would have said she was getting dressed in front of me as some sort of seduction tactic. But after last night’s hell, I knew that she’d do anything to catch her father’s would-be assassin. Valentina wasn’t playing games right now. She wanted answers even more than I did.
Once she dressed, I led her out of my apartment and headed downstairs to the building’s control room.
There we found the security guard waiting.
He was seated in front of several large computer screens, black and white footage playing on some of the screens while the rest were paused.
I pulled out one of two chairs for Valentina to let her take a seat.
I stood behind her protectively, my hands gripping the back of the chair reassuringly.
As if understanding, she leaned back, her golden hair brushing against my hands with the movement.
It took a hell of a lot of restraint to keep from seizing that hair and fisting it in my hand possessively.
For one, I doubt she’d appreciate it, and for another, we had an audience.
But the urge to touch her seemed to be getting more intense as time went on.
As if the simmering in my bloodstream was turning into a white-hot desire rushing through my veins.
Keeping my restless hands on the back of her chair, I drummed my fingers against the chrome.
Anything to focus on not touching her in front of the security guard.
“We got interior and exterior footage,” the oblivious security guard said from his seat next to Valentina.
He punched some keys on the keyboard, and then with a few clicks of the mouse, brought up some grainy exterior footage.
“We have evidence of movement near the old fire escape at around midnight last night.”
That old fire escape had been torn out years ago, the metal too rusty and degraded to be useful.
I raised an eyebrow. “Evidence? You mean the footage, correct?”
The security guard grimaced. “Remember, Mr. De Luca, we’ve had to deal with privacy demands from the neighbors. We’ve got cameras placed to see part of the former fire escape, but we can’t put cameras beyond a certain point. Only part of the wall with the fire escape can appear on camera.”
I cursed under my breath. He was right. While this was an upscale neighborhood, it was flushed with laundered cash rather than legitimate wealth.
We were surrounded by the types of crooks that made their money less than legally.
Drug dealers, crypto scammers, foreign oligarchs, scummy real estate developers.
Illicit wealth that was trying to stay hidden.
Same as me. These weren’t the types of neighbors who were not going to take kindly to cameras looking into their business any more than I did.
In respecting their privacy, they respected mine.
A kind of mutually assured destruction that guaranteed none of us would rat on the others.
Useful in my line of work, but fucking inconvenient now that we were trying to track down a shooter.
“Not ideal, but there’s got to be something,” I said.
Nodding, the security guard started to play some of the footage capturing part what remained of the.
A couple of bars and some rivets. There was a flash of movement, as if someone was ascending, using what little was left of the fire escape to haul themselves up.
Then, a gloved hand gripping one of the windowsills on the way up.
Next moment, he vanished into the shadows. His usual MO.
“He scaled that wall with his bare hands,” Valentina said with a gasp.
That’s how the son of a bitch got in undetected. He would never have made it in through the front or back entrance. Both entrances had alarms.
“He knew that the entrances were going to be a problem for him,” I noted. “He must have been casing the apartment and figured the wall with the destroyed fire escape was his best bet.”
“Yes, but even if he had been watching your apartment, how could he have known that my father would be there last night?” Valentina asked, looking up at me.
That was a damn good question. Even if the shooter knew about the building’s security, there was no way he could have known that Don Romano would have been at my apartment that night. Romano’s appearance had been closer to a spur-of-the-moment drop-in, rather than anything planned.
The one thing that made sense right now was that someone had been listening in on Don Romano’s phone calls. Which meant that the shooter probably knew a whole lot more than just my apartment’s security system. He might have known about the older man’s movements for a while now.
“Is there anything else?” I asked.
The security guard brought up more footage, this time of a brightly lit hall that got increasingly dark toward the back. Clearly some of the lights had blown. A recurring problem in an apartment complex as huge as mine.
As the footage played, a masked man came into view.
He was running like the hounds of hell were after him.
As he ran, he shoved a pistol into the back of his jeans.
Then, he reached into the shadows and produced a stepladder.
In the blink of an eye, he was climbing the ladder, tearing out one of the ceiling’s removable panels, and disappearing up through it.
“Holy shit, he escaped through one of the vents,” I said. “That’s how he got out without being seen. Which floor is this?”
“The floor directly below yours, sir,” the security guard answered.
“Show me footage of my floor specifically,” I ordered.
The guard did as told, bringing up footage of the well-lit hall outside my apartment.
The video played, showing the shooter as he rushed out of my apartment and then dived down the hall.
Suddenly, half of the hall lights blinked out.
Valentina came into view, immediately reaching for the brass knuckles in her purse as she peered into my apartment.
She slipped into the apartment and then, less than thirty seconds later, the shooter materialized from the darkness and sprinted down the hall to the elevator. The gunman vanished into the elevator.
Without needing instructions, the security guard brought up elevator footage.
The shooter desperately pounded on the elevator buttons as if that would somehow make the elevator go faster.
Then, the doors opened and the shooter tore out of the elevator, down the half-lit hall from the earlier footage.
“Dammit, he was right behind you,” I said to her.
Which meant he could have hurt Valentina. Or worse. The thought of him getting that close to her filled me with rage, and an emotion I hated getting acquainted with: fear. That bastard had nearly had my future wife in his sights. He could have fucking killed her.
“I didn’t hear him at all,” Valentina said, her voice shaking. “He was right there and I had no idea.”
“This guy is like a ghost,” I muttered.
“Based on this footage, he moved through the air vents until he made it back to the fire escape and scaled the wall again, this time to descend to the ground. Then he ran out of view of the fire escape cameras,” the guard explained before sharing more video with us.
Just as the security guard described, the video showed the shooter getting out using the vent and then climbing down the wall before disappearing into the night.
The son of a bitch had found every weakness in security and used them to his advantage.
And most of those weaknesses had been things I never expected anyone to be able to overcome.
How the fuck had he managed to climb fifteen floors up without falling or breaking a sweat?
Piecing the night’s events together, it was clear that the assassin had climbed up to my apartment using the fire escape, shot Don Romano, then ran out of my apartment to hide in the darkness of the hall outside.
Once Valentina entered my apartment, the shooter rushed downstairs, using the elevator to make his way back to the fire escape through the vent.
After that, it would have been easy for him to climb down the fucking wall and vanish without a trace.