Page 59 of The Broker
“I understand,” he says wryly. “Trust me.”
Hang on. What’s he saying? I prop myself up on an elbow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What do you think? There hasn’t been anyone for a long time.”
“How long?” I demand.
“Really? We’re going to have this discussion at three in the morning?”
“You’re avoiding answering my question.”
He trails his hand down the curve of my breast. “I slept with Marissa once,” he says. “Two years ago. It was a mistake.” His fingers hook in the waistband of my panties. “When I was with her, I closed my eyes and imagined it was you. That’s when I broke things off with her. Before Marissa, it was a three-year drought. After her, there’s been no one.”
I do the math. Dante’s telling me he’s had sex once in the last five years.Once.He wasn’t traumatized like I was. He wasn’t afraid of sex, wasn’t terrified of intimacy.
It was because he wanted me.
Joy bubbles up in my chest. “How long have you had your eyes on the Spider you gave Ciro Del Barba?” I tease.
“Valentina, if you’re attempting to draw some kind of parallel between my feelings for the Ferrari and my feelings for you, I’m going to be blunt and call you an idiot. Chalk this up to sleep deprivation.”
I laugh at his disgruntled tone and wrap my arms around his neck, allowing the joy to consume me. “Shut up and kiss me, Dante.”
We make love. No rope, no toys, no gimmicks. It’s slow and unhurried, interspersed with a lot of kissing. Dante doesn’t order me to masturbate while he watches. He doesn’t command me to ride his face. He isn’t tied up, and my heart isn’t racing with nerves.
When he pushes into me, filling me with his thick cock, it feelsright.He thrusts, and I dig my nails into his back, wrap my legs around his hips, and rise to meet him. When he fingers my clit, his face buried in my neck and says, “I want you to come when I do,” I feel like I’m in the place I was always meant to be. And when we fall asleep together, it feels like. . . You know when you hold up your phone to take a picture, but the image is blurry? Then the lens adjusts, and everything comes into sharp focus? That’s what it feels like.
The next couple of weeks are pretty great. Angelica’s recital is a triumph. She’s the prettiest and most graceful ballerina on stage, and I’m not just saying that because I’m her mother and biased.
Giorgio doesn’t die. He makes it through the first forty-eight hours, but then, just before the transfer to Venice, he gets an infection, and the doctors are forced to pump him full of antibiotics and sedatives. He’s unconscious most of the time and seems to have no memory of the events that led to his shooting, but it’s not all bad news. His doctors seem reasonably confident that he’ll live.
Dante and I spend our nights together, which is amazing. I set my alarm for five, and every morning when it goes off, I trudge downstairs into my own bed before Angelica can wake up. Got to admit—that part is less than great.
During the day, I make progress on dismantling the Verratti organization. It takes me five days of poring over source code to find a weakness in the communication app the Bergamo organization uses. From there, it gets easier. Seven days after getting Giorgio’s phone, I have a list of everyone on Verratti’s payroll.
“There are five people here that could be Revenant,” I tell Dante. “But there’s a complication.”
Dante is reading my screen over my shoulder. “These cash deposits,” he says. “Five cash deposits, two million each. You think Verratti paid his hacker in cash?” He looks grim. “You’re saying it might not be any of these guys, then.”
“I’m afraid so.” The hacker isn’t invulnerable—we hurt him badly when we stole his crypto—but every search for his identity has ended in a roadblock. “If he’s not one of these five, I’m out of ideas.” I exhale in frustration. “I’m sorry, Dante. I know you—”
“Hey, hey.” He kisses my neck. “Don’t be sorry. It’s frustrating, I know, but we don’t need this guy’s identity to stop him. A lone hacker with no resources can only do so much. I’ve been talking to Verratti’s lieutenants, sowing discord in their ranks.”
He’s right, of course. I’m so caught up in failing to find Revenant’s identity that I’m missing the big picture. I smile up at him. “Tomorrow’s payday. Given the time of the year, everyone will be expecting Christmas bonuses.”
“You’re ready to empty Verratti’s bank accounts?”
“I am.”
He smiles at me, his eyes sharp and focused. “Let’s do it.”
The plan works better than we could have imagined. Verratti’s peoplelosetheir minds. Furious messages fly around, and angry recriminations are everywhere. People accuse Salvatore of mismanagement, of gambling their finances away, and of being unfit to lead. They question his judgment in allowing the Russians a foothold in their city. When they demand to know where Bianca Di Palma and Romano Franzoni are, they openly speculate if Salvatore has killed both of them. The Bergamo leader tries to restore calm in vain, promising that everyone will get paid as soon as his banking issues get sorted. But by the time the week ends, the damage is done.
On Saturday night, Dante and I open a nice bottle of prosecco to celebrate. It’s midnight, and I’ve spent the evening watching the Verratti employees type increasingly angry messages to their boss.
This morning, we met with the padrino to update him on our progress. Antonio was delighted. “Salvatore is going to get arrested any moment now,” he said. “Jail will be a relief. His people are furious, and frankly, I’m shocked nobody’s tried to kill him.”
There was a vicious smile on his face. Sometimes, it’s almost possible to forget that Antonio Moretti’s rise to power was bathed in blood. He murdered Domenico Cartozzi, killed the handful of soldiers that were loyal to the old padrino, and out of the ashes of the old organization, he forged a new Venice.