Page 98 of I Would Beg For You

“Don’t touch her!” Val yells.

I scream again when he receives the butt of a gun to the side of his head.

Out of the corner of my eye, I can see a man in plain clothes come in and go to the vanity table in the corner. He opens a box, tucks in a small, clear plastic bag half full of white powder. When he turns toward us, I notice a police badge dangling on a chain from his neck.

“You’re planting this,” I say.

Why am I not surprised crooked cops would try to get the drop on Valentino, the most newly-minted Don on the Northeastern coast?

“Shut up, you bitch!” The man holding me backslaps me across the face.

Val roars like an angry, caged bull

I yelp, tasting blood as pain throbs from my broken lip.

“Get them out of here,” the cop tells the men.

“Val!” I scream when they start to pull me away.

“Naomi!” he shouts back.

I struggle against the man tugging me down the hallway, my bare feet dragging on the carpet starting to burn. “Stop!”

“Shut up, I said!”

He clocks me with the butt of his gun this time, and the last thing I hear before darkness claims me is Valentino saying,

“You’ll pay for this…”

Chapter 31 Valentino

I spend the wholenight fuming in righteous anger. Those fuckers dragged me to a police station in a backseat of nowhere village in the county. We were in Scarsdale—why the hell would they go to another station?

Something feels so amiss in this whole thing. They’ve also taken Naomi, and I don’t know if they’ve brought her here. Women are usually kept separate from men when taken by law enforcement, so she’d be in another room. I hope with all I’ve got she’s fine. Yes, one of those bastards slapped her. He hasn’t got long to live. Once I lay my hands on him, he’s a dead man, cop or not.

The cops who took me leave me alone for hours in this windowless space. It’s an interrogation room; I don’t need to have been in one to recognize the table and chairs, the mirror on the wall. We all watch TV, don’t we?

What you don’t reckon with on TV? The caged feeling after being in this tight space that starts to close in on you after a while. Pacing doesn’t alleviate it, nor does sitting down andletting my mind go blank. A tough thing to do, with all the questions going around in my head.

What the fuck happened?

Is Naomi okay?

How did these guys get the drop on us?

Tangents from these three main concerns suffuse my head until I’m ready to burst, yet I know grabbing a chair and flinging it at the wall will only aggravate my position. They can add vandalism to the charges against me. Charges I still don’t know about.

I recall Naomi telling someone they were planting something in our room. The blow from the butt of a handgun had stunned me, and it’s a bit hazy. So, the cops are trying to frame me? Why? Because I’m the newest Mafia Don in this region?

None of this is making sense.

The door opens, and I jump up.

A bland-looking man in a well-tailored suit nods at me. “Mr. Andretti, I’m Fletcher Boyle, Esquire. Let’s get you out of here.”

I don’t know this lawyer, but I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Where’s my wife?”

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