Chapter 11 #2
Considering that her family was in hospitality on the legitimate end of things, I was fine deferring to her when it came to most of the wedding setup.
I’d have the last word when it came to meat, but I’d take her advice seriously about everything else.
A far cry from just a few weeks ago when I wouldn’t have trusted her to choose the font for our wedding invitations.
Which were starting to discreetly go out now to guests outside of family—something that both her mother and my mother had informed us that they were setting up.
No doubt Valentina’s mother was happy to get the invitations out now as a way to distract from Don Romano’s absence.
“You’re the expert,” I said, reaching out to take her hand.
She smiled, a blush rising in her cheeks as I gave her small hand a squeeze. This wasn’t me putting on a show to make us look like a real couple. I genuinely wanted to touch her in that moment. And all other moments if I was telling the truth.
But I had buried all feelings six feet deep, and with the wedding so close now, I wasn’t stupid enough to resurrect them.
~~*~~
WE WERE CALLED INTO a tasting room, then seated at a large coffee table, where a manager and her assistants were already laying out slices of wedding cake with labels placed in front of them.
After the cake set up, the assistants brought out several bottles of wine along with glasses filled with various types to choose from.
With the table set, the army of assistants exited the room, leaving just me, Valentina, and the manager.
Valentina pointed at one of the small plates, asking which wine would go with the cake.
“We have an excellent Gewürztraminer to pair with the white chocolate,” the manager answered Valentina.
Next thing I knew they were talking about wines and desserts with an ease that I was never going to keep up with.
My family had invested in getting us enough training to keep up with the upper class and I had training in butchering.
Despite all that, I would always come across as an ignorant brute compared to Valentina.
As a butcher, my concerns were meat and maybe liquor.
Best for me to stick to the topics that made a bride’s eyes glaze over and let Valentina have free reign over the more cultured side of things.
Suddenly the manager’s phone rang, and she apologized before leaving the room to take the call.
“Guess we should start tasting,” Valentina said. “We’ll let the manager know what we like when she gets back.”
I nodded and reached for a glass of pure white wine while Valentina went for the rosé.
Glass in hand, I checked the color of the wine—the way I’d seen rich folks do at all the fancy events my mother had forced us to go to.
But what I saw gave me pause. Instead of clarity, I saw small white crystals at the bottom of the wine glass.
The crystals looked like salt or sugar, faint enough to miss if I hadn’t been paying attention. But I was paying attention.
Next to me, Valentina was lifting her wine glass to her lips and without hesitating, I violently grabbed the glass out of her hand.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Don’t drink it,” I said through gritted teeth, keeping one eye on the entrance in case the manager returned while we were talking. “Don’t eat or drink anything.”
“You can’t be serious,” Valentina said with a frown. “I told you I can handle a simple tasting.”
I leaned in closer, lowering my voice. “The wine is poisoned.”
Valentina scoffed at that. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I’ll prove it to you.” I set her glass down on the other side of the table, then held up my glass for her to see. Not waiting for her reaction, I lifted my glass, letting the wine get past my teeth.
“Wait, no stop,” she said, her tone pitched high with concern. “It looks like there’s sugar in that glass.”
I still had the contents of the glass in my mouth, and it tasted off. The taste was metallic. Not so bad that someone would have noticed while taking small sips, but a big gulp like I had taken tasted like a warning.
“Why the hell did you do that?” she demanded in a shrill voice as she desperately reached to grab onto to me. She was already tugging on my jacket sleeve, trying to get me to stand. “We’ll have to get your stomach pumped if that wine is drugged.”
At that point, I spat the wine back into the glass. “I didn’t drink it. Just tasted to confirm and that wine doesn’t taste right.”
The color drained from her face. “Oh, my goodness.”
“We need to get the fuck out of here,” I said, grabbing onto my glass and hers. Sure enough, there were crystals at the bottom of her glass too. “Take the two opened wine bottles.”
She did as instructed, grabbing the opened bottles, and also picking up a couple other unopened ones as well. “Why would the caterer want to poison us? This doesn’t make sense.”
“Your glass was drugged too. Someone is real fucking desperate to get rid of us.” I shot to my feet. “This might have been an inside job, but there’s also a chance that nobody in this office knows the wine has been tampered with.”
Valentina glanced around quickly, suddenly looking more alert as her apprehension receded. “It looks like there’s only one way out of here and that’s through the front entrance.”
I nodded. “No time for elaborate exits. We just get the fuck out of this place. Get ahead of me and I’ll watch your back.”
Without argument, she did as I ordered, rushing past me back into the reception room.
I was half a step behind her, impressed at how fast she moved in those high heels.
But I shouldn’t have been surprised. Valentina was a smart woman, and she’d never allow herself to be at the mercy of her fucking shoes.
The front desk attendant stared at us in surprise as we rushed out of the building, holding wine glasses and bottles. But nobody in the caterer’s office stopped us and Valentina somehow managed to take the glasses from me as I helped her into the passenger seat.
“Tell your chauffeur to meet you at home,” I said, getting behind the wheel.
“I’ll send him a message later,” Valentina said. “Right now, we have to get this wine tested.”
“I know a couple scientists who might be able to help,” I said, driving away. “They usually help us with our drug supply—”
“There’s a forensic lab in town that we can go to,” she said, interrupting me. “They’re on our payroll.”
“Of course,” I muttered. Foolish for me to have been surprised.
The Romanos likely had the whole fucking city in their pocket.
While my family had to deal with the most suspicious characters in New York’s criminal underworld, the Romanos could just fucking stroll right into the city’s top forensic lab.
“Stop at a gas station so that I can put everything in a bag before we deliver it all,” she instructed.
She was still holding onto all the items we’d taken—the bottles and the filled wine glasses. Valentina appeared totally unfazed. Whatever fear she had shown back there was gone.
Plus, she was already planning our next move.
Without a hint of fear. But beneath that placid exterior that she had put on after the initial shock, Valentina must have been scared.
Somebody was coming after us. In the span of a week, her father had been shot, there were multiple car fires at my family’s dealership, the bank in our vicinity had been bombed, and now there was some mysterious substance in our drinks at the tasting.
And there had been those taunting messages on my cell phone.
None of these events were random or coincidence.
All of this was planned. There was no doubt in my mind.
Whether this was the work of one person or an organization, I couldn’t say yet, but this poison attempt only steeled my resolve.
I was going to find whoever was responsible.
As long as Valentina’s safety was threatened, I wouldn’t fucking rest. I would hunt down whatever guilty party had orchestrated this and I would pay them deadly retribution.