Total pages in book: 181
Estimated words: 171979 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 860(@200wpm)___ 688(@250wpm)___ 573(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171979 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 860(@200wpm)___ 688(@250wpm)___ 573(@300wpm)
“You don’t happen to have any video games, do you? I’m usually wide awake at this time, working on my game or playing. I’m a night owl,” she politely added, stating the obvious.
He nodded before going up to his bedroom, and she annoyingly followed behind.
“You don’t mind, do you?”
Sal flexed his jaw. “Guess not.”
Seeing the loft-like bedroom upstairs, then the huge walk-in closet, she couldn’t help but appreciate the amenities. “Damn, it just keeps getting better and better.”
Going to the back of his closet, he pulled out an old storage tub that, when he opened it, sent dust particles flying. Inside were all the old video games he and Terry used to play when he was a kid at the Internet café. It was a box of memories he hadn’t opened since the day he’d placed the items in there. After his haunting dream, it gave him a bittersweet feeling to see them again.
“A Nintendo 64!” Valerie squealed, grabbing the system up carefully, along with the controllers.
He could instantly tell she looked at it the same way he did—with bittersweet memories of her own.
“I’m jealous you kept yours. I had to sell mine after I got kicked out of my home.”
Sal felt for the poor girl, knowing if it weren’t for Terry, he wouldn’t have had a single thing from his childhood. While the car he drove was the Coupe de Ville his mom had owned for that short period of time, he knew it wasn’t the exact one as the original that had gotten impounded. There was just something about still owning the original you had as a child that made the nostalgia of something so much better.
“Oh my God, you have Mario Kart for it, too,” she gasped, catching sight of the game in the bottom of the tub. “I could kick anyone’s ass on Rainbow Road.”
Sal couldn’t help but let his inner child take that as a threat. “Wanna bet?”
Valerie had officially died and gone to heaven.
Here she was, in a sick-ass penthouse that overlooked the city, with a man who looked hot as hell right about now as he began plugging the old gaming system into the TV, and she was about to play Nintendo 64? This was a gamer girl’s fantasy.
If this was what the mafia was like, she wanted to sign on the dotted line. Even if she had to do it in blood, she didn’t give a fuck. This was great! Going to jail was the best thing that had ever happened to her in all her life!
“Does the mafia accept women?”
Sal stopped what he was doing for a moment, clearly taken aback by her bluntness.
Does she want to die?
Never in all his life had an outsider asked him something like that, let alone just come out and say the word mafia. He knew she understood how serious it was, considering she had brought a weapon in to meet the head of the family, yet she’d say risky shit like that?
The woman was an anomaly, for sure, and she was damn fucking lucky he was the one who controlled all the cameras and audio in the Casino Hotel. God forbid Lucca heard her talk so freely.
The question was: Did he entertain it in private? Should he just shut her ass down here and now? Or did he just say fuck it, ’cause the woman wasn’t stupid enough to believe anything other than the truth, anyways?
Goddammit … Lucca’s going to kick my fucking as—
“Not exactly.”
“Well, what does not exactly mean?” she asked. Sensing Sal’s frustration with the wires, she went to help him hook it up correctly. When she took a look, it was no wonder he was having trouble—he had all the wires messed up.
What a noob.
Flustered from her questioning, Sal gave up and let her do it. He knew exactly how to hook the stupid thing up. He had only done it a million times growing up. He was The Great fucking Salvatore, for fuck’s sake. If she knew he was the notorious hacker, there was no way Valerie would have even stepped in to help in the first place. Knowing her degree and job, he knew without a shadow of a doubt Valerie knew of The Great Salvatore, but he had yet to tell her, secretly hoping it would never come out. If he thought she talked too much now, he would never get her to shut up if she did know exactly who he was. All the questions she’d ask him about how he did this or that would be endless. This whole time, Valerie was thinking he was hiding only the fact he was a made man, when in actuality, little did she know he was more concerned with hiding his even bigger secret.
“Come on …” Valerie nudged, looking like she was about to resort to begging. “I promise I won’t tell anyone. I haven’t even been able to contact my friend.” You could see something click in her mind, then. “Shit, he’s probably worried sick, actually. I’ll need to find a way to talk to him—”