Chapter Three

Enzo

 

Enzo jangled his keys in his hand as he headed toward the garage. It was good to be back home, even if his little trip to jail had only lasted a few hours. Mr. Morber had been at the station to meet him, as he had expected, and he had been bailed out before he could be officially booked. The cops had never gotten the satisfaction of seeing him in orange, and Enzo was determined that they never would. Morber had told him to come to the office the next day, and they would be ready to cover the details of the case. Morber and Barnard always worked quickly for the Marino family.

 

“Rupert, I’m taking the BMW this morning, but make sure the Ferrari is ready for later. I think I’ll need a nice long drive to clear my mind.”

 

“Of course, sir.” The butler, an old man who had been in service to the Marinos for as long as anyone could remember, gave a somber nod as his boss came through the kitchen toward the garage.

 

It was a short drive into the city, and Enzo shifted impatiently as he waited for the long elevator ride to the correct floor. He had things to do, and that didn’t include worrying about this case. His attorneys were good, they would get him off, and he could go back to raking in cash by the thousands. It was an inconvenience that he had been arrested, nothing more.

 

“Good morning, Mr. Marino,” a pretty blonde secretary said as soon as he stepped off the elevator. She stood up and came around from behind her desk to greet him. “Can I get you anything to drink? Coffee? A bottle of water?”

 

He openly appreciated her slim body, even though she was lacking a little on the curves. Her cheeks blushed; women always liked it when he made them feel as though they were wanted. Enzo had been to this office numerous times and still didn’t know the girl’s name, but she treated him like a king just because he looked at her the right way. “No, thanks.”

 

“Right this way, please.” The secretary led him through the door at the back of the lobby and down the hall. She stopped short and opened a door he had never been through.

 

“I think you’re confused,” he said gently, giving her a small smile even though he didn’t feel particularly happy. “Mr. Morber and Mr. Barnard are at the end of the hall.”

 

The secretary nodded and cleared her throat. “Yes, sir. But Ms. Madelyn Rowe will be handling your case.” She waved toward the opening once again.

 

Still convinced that this was some sort of mistake, Enzo entered. The office was much smaller than the ones he was used to seeing, barely a closet, really. The furniture was nice, but it had been crammed inside. The woman behind the desk, her dark hair flowing around her shoulders, looked up at him with a smile.

 

“Mr. Marino, please, have a seat.” She stood up and gestured to the chair across from her desk. She wore a dark blue suit that swept around her curves and contrasted nicely with the deep mahogany of her hair. Her tortoiseshell glasses against her creamy skin were another nice contrast, and the deep brown eyes behind them were far too pretty to belong to any lawyer. She had an expensive fountain pen in her hand and a file open on her desk, giving the illusion of someone who was ready to work.

 

“Call me Enzo, if you would.” He shook her hand and sat, still unsure of just what was going on here.

 

“Not a problem, and you can call me Madelyn. I think we can start by going over the exact charges and what they mean in the court system. Then I’d like to go over some of the evidence with you and see what we can do about it.” Ms. Rowe sat down again and scooted up to the desk.

 

Enzo leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “If you don’t mind, I’d actually like to start with discussing why you’re the one working on this case. Mr. Morber and Mr. Barnard have always handled everything for me. Are they suddenly too busy for their best client?”

 

She looked up at him over her glasses and smiled. “I’m sorry for any confusion that this may have caused. They have personally given me this case to work on, and I assure you that I’ll do everything in my power to make sure justice is served.”

 

Her professionalism didn’t impress him. Her body did, though, and he allowed his eyes to flick down to her ample chest for just a moment. “I’m surprised someone like you can handle a case like this.”

 

Madelyn sat back in her chair and raised one eyebrow. Enzo thought it was probably supposed to be a challenge, but it was sexy as hell. “A person like me?”

 

“A woman,” he clarified. “No offense. You’re a lovely woman, probably too lovely to be sitting in this stuffy old office. And while I’m sure your senior partners knew what they were doing when they gave you my file, you might want to consider that this is a murder we’re talking about. It might be a little disturbing for someone on the sensitive side.”

 

She laughed, a reaction that surprised him. Her laugh was a sincere one that made the corners of her eyes wrinkle, not the little giggle that he usually got out of women when he was putting on the charm. “I assure you, I can handle a little bit of blood. I’ve already seen the crime scene photos, and I haven’t passed out yet.”

 

She was stubborn, he had to give her that. And it made sense if she was an attorney in a prominent firm like this. Maybe he could use a woman like her on his side. “All right. Show me what you can do.”

 

Madelyn cleared her throat and kicked into full lawyer mode. She had everything prepared, whisking pictures and documents out of the file and presenting them to him as she spoke, gently tapping important information with the end of her pen and speaking as though she had rehearsed the speech in front of a mirror all night. “George Lewis was found in an alley on 31st Street two weeks ago. He was shot, and the ballistics testing indicates it was with a nine-millimeter. Nothing unusual there, but the district attorney claims that Mr. Lewis had a connection to you. He owned a dry-cleaning business, and some sources say that the business was under the protection of the Marino family. Now, what we have to do is determine whether or not that connection is a strong enough one, and whether or not it would give you a motive to kill the man.”

 

Enzo was impressed, even though he wouldn’t have admitted it. What surprised him the most was that she wasn’t treating him as though he was guilty. The male lawyers never did, but it had been his experience that women who knew who he really was tended to assume he was a bad man, no matter what he said or did. “Aren’t you going to ask me if I did it?”

 

She paused and looked up, watching him quietly for a moment before she responded. “Would you like me to? We can discuss that, if you want.”

 

He considered that for a moment. He knew exactly how George Lewis had died, and while Enzo had been in some way responsible for his death, he hadn’t done it himself. The dry-cleaning business had indeed been under his protection initially, but Mr. Lewis had stopped making payments. That wasn’t even exactly why Mr. Lewis had ended up bleeding to death in a back alley, but the motive might not be all that important to a judge or jury. “I didn’t kill him. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have interrupted you. You were saying?”

 

Madelyn continued while Enzo followed along. She laid out all the evidence, including the witnesses that were going to be called to the stand, the type of bullets that had been used, and the supposed connection between Enzo and Mr. Lewis, which wasn’t much more than Enzo dropping his suits by for a quick cleaning, as far as anyone could tell. “It looks to me that they’re really reaching on this case. They wanted to catch you, they figured out where you were, and they came up with an excuse to put you in handcuffs. I can’t exactly say that part in court, because it would imply that you really are the head of a crime family and therefore guilty of at least other charges, if not this one, but the fact that they’ve made such a weak case is only to our benefit.”

 

Enzo nodded, his tongue sliding against the back of his teeth as he thought. She was good, that was for sure. He had to wonder if she was just as good in bed, if she let that beautiful brown hair go flying as she worked out the pent-up energy that must be stuck inside her, or if she was cold and aloof between the sheets. He’d love to be the one to find out. “Tell me, how many cases have you won?”

 

“All of them,” she replied instantly. “I work my ass off around here, Mr. Marino, if you don’t mind my being frank with you. I can tell you don’t like the fact that I’m a woman, but I can promise that my gender has absolutely nothing to do with this case.”

 

He held up his hands in defense. “No, I’m not saying anything more about that. You’ve already convinced me. I should have known from the moment I walked in that the big guys wouldn’t put me in anyone’s hands unless they were perfectly capable. I have the utmost confidence in you.”

 

“Good,” she said with a small smile. “So do I. Now let’s move on to building the case against the district. Tell me where you were the night of the murder.” Her fountain pen was poised over her legal pad, ready to write.

 

Enzo smiled. “I don’t suppose I could claim I was with you, maybe out on a moonlit stroll or sharing a bottle of champagne on a balcony somewhere. It seems like a very pleasant pretext to me.” And of course, after that moonlight stroll and bottle of bubbly, he would have tumbled her into bed and buried his face in her chest for the rest of the night.

 

The slightest change of color came to Madelyn’s cheeks, just enough to let him know that he had gotten to her. “I think the truth would be a better idea, personally.”

 

“Okay,” he said with a shrug. “But working an evening shift at Sterling isn’t nearly as exciting.”

 

She jotted it down with lightning efficiency. She hadn’t even needed to ask him what kind of place that was or where it was; clearly, she already knew. “I’ll need a list of anyone else who was working that night who can give their testimony. I don’t know if you keep in contact with any of your customers, but if we can reach them about it that will be helpful as well. I’m sure I can also get surveillance footage from the city to prove that you were there.” Her hand flew across the page, the jet-black ink flowing out at her commands.

 

Enzo blinked. He was getting far too wrapped up in the details about this woman. He was glad he really had been at the store that night, because it was obvious Madelyn would have found out otherwise. “I’ll have an employee roster to your email this afternoon.”

 

As they covered some other aspects of the case, Enzo couldn’t stop thinking about how beautiful this woman was. It was just a bonus that she was also intelligent. “You know,” he said when they had covered everything they could for the moment, “maybe I should get myself in trouble more often just so I have an excuse to come and see you.”

 

The lawyer looked away on the pretense of reassembling the file, but Enzo didn’t miss the way the corner of her mouth ticked up ever so slightly. She did everything she could to remain cold and still on the outside, but he had a feeling there was an entirely different person inside. He wondered if she ever let her out, and he wanted to be around to see it.

 

“Don’t worry,” she responded. “We’ll be seeing plenty of each other while we get this case hammered out. Maybe the next time you find yourself on the wrong side of a pair of handcuffs, you can go back to Mr. Barnard or Mr. Morber. I have a feeling they won’t be quite so distracting for you.”

 

Was she trying to deflect his attraction to her, or was she just being playful? Enzo couldn’t quite tell, and he kind of liked it. Women had always been so easy for him. He just swept his dark eyes down their bodies and whispered some random line about what he wanted to do with them, and they were putty in his hands. Madelyn wasn’t completely immune to him, but she was at least going to put up one hell of a fight.

 

Enzo stood to go. “For our next appointment, I wonder if we might be able to meet in a more relaxed environment. Somewhere nice, like a restaurant. We can discuss all the bloody details over dinner, since none of that bothers you.”

 

She smiled and raised her eyebrows, but she didn’t bother to answer his question directly. “I’ll call you when I have more to discuss.”

 

“Sounds good.” Enzo turned and left, completely forgetting to flirt with the secretary again on his way out. Madelyn couldn’t evade him forever.