When Jamie Lombardo opened her eyes she was staring right into the face of her alarm clock. The numbers 5:33 AM peered back at her, almost mockingly. Quickly she did the math in her head, recalling that the last time she had been awake enough to read the numbers on her clock had been 2:01 AM. She had been asleep for less than four hours.

Shit, she thought half angrily and half excitedly.

Rolling onto her back she looked up at the blank ceiling above her bed, which she had stared at with a brooding intensity the night before. She had been so excited over what was to happen today that sleep had seemed all but impossible. Impossible, but it was necessary to attempt at any rate because she knew that she needed to be rested for today. She had even pulled out all of her tricks, save one, that would have helped her to find her rest.

A warm bath with scented candles, her favorite jasmine bath salts, soothing music, and her favorite book had been employed to relax and calm her nerves before she had gone to bed. She had even dared a luxury that she usually did not indulge in, a glass of red wine. Together they formed the perfect recipe for a calm and soothing night’s sleep.

The bath had been perfect and relaxing, the salts had caressed her skin, the candles had filled her nostrils with pleasant memories that danced across her other senses as well, and the music had lulled her into a perfect calm. And the wine too had done its job and brought her to a relaxation that she had not known in quite some time.

Despite all of this, sleep had not come easily to her.

At least I slept a little. She pondered a moment if perhaps last night would have been the perfect opportunity to employ her favorite tactic for finding a restful night.

Temporary companionship had never been hard for her to find, not even here in New York where the woman-to-man ratio was 10 to 1. She had never had any difficulty in filling her bed for a night… a week… or even a year if she wished it. Boyfriends came and went, but men looking for only a single diversion had only ever been her truest interest apart from her work. Her career would always come first and she had known that from the beginning. And a man in her life that would fill a more permanent role was something that she had no care to have.

There’s never been one worth it, she thought.

Men had their uses, yes, and some of them definitely rare enough to warrant having one around. But to keep them around forever in her life seemed as pointless as trying to put a leash on a shark. They were diversions at best, something that she needed when she wanted to relax, just like a bath. But that was all.

But no, she had decided. She had lost enough sleep as it was. And having a man in her bed would have only caused her to lose more sleep. It was better that she had skipped such a thing altogether and done as she had. It was better that way, and she needed as much of her rest as she had gotten.

She looked back at her clock, 5:38 AM it now read. Her alarm would be going off in less than an hour. It would serve no purpose to just stay in bed, she realized. I might as well make use of the time while I have it.

Rising up she stretched her back, her muscles feeling better after a short night of half-sleep. Pulling off her covers she stood barefoot on the floor wiggled her toes, the plush carpet under her feet was warm and soothing and the resulting tickle was enough to dispel some of the lingering fatigue.

Standing up she began to unbutton her silken pajama top. Finishing it, she set it aside on her bed and began to pull off her matching pajama bottoms. Standing naked in her bedroom she mechanically folded her sleeping clothes and set them back into the top drawer of her vanity before moving to the bathroom.

The cold tile underneath her feet sent a shiver through her body that made her dance for a moment as she moved to the wide and gaping corner shower that she owned. Turning it on, the jets of water that issued forth were cold as a river in winter and squealing lightly from their temperature she stepped back, allowing the water to warm itself before she got under it.

Taking a shower the morning after taking a bath seemed redundant, she knew. But today was too important to risk even the slightest mishap. What was more, her baths were less about actual bathing and more about relaxing when she had knots that needed untying. A shower served the opposite purpose and was more for preparations than for relaxing.

While she waited for the water to warm up she turned and looked at herself in the full-length mirror opposite the shower. Seeing her nude twin standing there she gave herself an appraising look.

An olive-skinned girl of twenty-six stood there, staring back at her. She put her hands on her hips and turned to look at herself. Her legs were strong, but not overly so and they were a result of her favorite exercise of jogging. Her hips were a bit wide, but not overly so. Her belly was flat and had just enough muscle to look appealing, she thought. Her breasts were shapely and full and her shoulders were proportionate to the rest of her body. Her hair was jet black with natural curls that reached down to the middle of her shoulder blades, a holdover from her Italian roots.

Not too bad, she thought. She could stand to lose a few pounds, maybe work on toning the rest of her body as she had always thought that her legs were her best feature. And she had toyed with the idea of getting a haircut, maybe even making it as short as her jawline. Maybe she would, but not today.

The steam that began to flood the bathroom pulled her from her assessment of her body and she hastily stepped under the jets of water. She let the water gently hammer at the skin at her neck and back, watching as her dark hair turned into a soaked mass of tendrils that dripped down in narrow rivulets over her breasts. She took up her body wash and cleaned up her skin and followed it up with her shampoo, conditioner, and face wash. The whole process took less than fifteen minutes before she was done and she shut off the warm shower, savoring the lingering steam for a few moments.

She dried herself and wrapped her head in a towel as she moved back to her bedroom. From inside her wardrobe, she pulled out the best of what she had to wear. A new business suit, a gift from her father now that she had landed this new job, hung ready and waiting for her. The suit was custom made by the hands of one of the best tailors in town and had not been cheap for her father to have made, she was sure.

The suit would wait for a while longer; she had other things to tend to first. She picked up a pair of comfortable panties and a bra to match as she moved back to the bathroom where the steam still hung in the air. She slipped on the panties and bra and felt comfortable in them, walking around the room just to let the garments find a comfortable seam line on her body.

Still clad in her underwear she went to the kitchen and arranged breakfast. She quickly scrambled a couple of eggs, made some toast, and fried a few strips of bacon. The latter had been her mother’s influence.

“Bacon is good for you,” her mother had once told her. “It’s good for the blood and it’ll keep you alert.” Never having been one to question her mother’s wisdom, Jamie had always held that as true. She sat at her table and consumed her small meal, washing it down with a glass of chilled orange juice.

She checked the paper for anything interesting and relevant to a lawyer’s needs and found nothing there. Keeping in tradition with her childhood she perused the comics in the paper and enjoyed a few lighthearted laughs of characters that she had followed since childhood.

A glance at the clock on the wall told her that she was getting down to having roughly two hours before she needed to report in for her induction interview at the firm. Feeling a growing nervousness born of excitement she cleaned up her dishes and returned to her bathroom to complete her morning routine.

When she brushed her teeth and took a shot of mouthwash for added effect she took the towel off of her head and the mass of jet black tendrils that lived there was her next concern. She took laborious pains to dry and treat her hair, recalling that everything needed to be perfect for the first day of a new job. Next year, perhaps, she could afford to be a little more lax in her preparations. But for at least the first year, everything had to be just so. That was the way that lawyers had to work, meticulously. And that would be reflected in her appearance.

First days at a new job left lasting impressions and she intended to be certain that her impression was just that: lasting. Not for her looks or that she had an expensive suit to wear, but for her intellect. One of the first lessons that her father had taught her long ago was that a person could be remarkable for their appearance, but they could be all the more amazing for what was not visible to the eye. Intellect was certainly that and her father had proved that on more than a single occasion.

When she completed the work with her hair she turned next to her makeup. She added the usual features, a little mascara, eyelash curls, and a touch of lipstick. She debated adding rouge to her cheeks but decided against it. Rouge had a tendency to rub off when she least needed it to. No, she thought that what she had done already was sufficient enough. Not perfect, but sufficient. She wanted to come across as strong today, not overbearing. Or at least she didn’t want to appear that way in matters of her appearance.

Her hair and face done she checked the clock. She still had another hour and a half before it was time for her to be at the firm. There was still plenty of time for her to finish her morning routine.

She picked out her best pair of shoes and checked to make sure that they were color coordinated with her new suit. She spared a moment to shine them, making them pristine and neat. Then she slipped into her new suit, checking every seam and button to make sure that she was perfectly dressed.

She turned to her briefcase. It was a handsome thing of brass and calfskin that sat open and waiting for her on her hall table. She double-checked everything that was inside, the usual fare for a lawyer that had yet to take on any clients. She had two notepads, three silver pens with old-style calligraphy heads, an appointment book, a contact keeper, her phone charger, a card holder with a dozen of her business cards inside of it and a small reference book to the most basic articles of law that every lawyer should have. It was that last article that she felt she did not need as she had committed every facet of law to memory. But again, her father’s influence reigned in that.

“I had something like this in my briefcase for every trial, love. I always felt safer with it and the only times I ever lost was when I was without it,” he had once told her. To that end, she made sure it was safely tucked away in her case before closing it.

She put on her best and most professional looking watch, made sure that her phone was fully charged, and gathered up her wallet and keys.

She gave herself another look in the mirror at her front door with only minutes to spare and nodded satisfactorily at it. She looked strong, proud, and even a little menacing, just as her father had taught her. But there was still a delightful womanly quality about her, which her mother had taught her. Just because she intended to be perceived as fearsome did not mean that she should sacrifice her feminine charms. She smiled at her reflected twin.

“Alright,” she said to herself, “let’s go get ‘em.”

The cab ride to Manhattan took longer than she had anticipated with morning traffic and she was thankful that she had left her apartment with time to spare. When she arrived at the lobby doors of Lester & Desoto they were already teaming with people moving in and out of the glass revolving doors like an army of worker ants foraging for food.

Her skin danced with nervousness as she walked to the door, briefcase in hand. She kept her eyes firm and strong as she walked by the others that passed her, in true New York fashion none of them paused to give her a single look as she went by.

Entering into the lobby she felt like something out of a story of Greek mythology, like a lowly hero entering into the halls of Olympus. The lobby of Lester & Desoto was everything that she had heard it to be. The floor, ceiling, and large columns that flanked both sides of the lobby were all crafted of finely polished marble. Carpets that looked as though they couldn’t have been more than a year old were set at strategic points in the lobby that partially quieted the sound of shoe leather on marble, but did nothing to hush the numerous voices that were echoing off of the expensive walls.

Everywhere she looked she saw men and women in expensive suits, either talking on their phones or to one another about this problem, that solution, or a combination of the two. Some of it, she was able to infer as nothing more than idle gossip, some of it was the oral stroking of egos, but very little of it was genuine business.

It was the standard of conversation for people in high profile legal firms like this. She had learned that in law school. Part of a lawyer’s job was not to discuss privileged information with associates unless they were consulting, which she doubted they were by the sounds of things. But some self-praise was to be expected in most cases. No one got ahead in the legal world if they appeared weak and making oneself look good in front of others was how the game was played.

Ahead of her, sitting behind a desk that was so highly polished it looked like it could have been made of ivory was a woman in a black business dress and a short skirt. She looked to be about Jamie’s age, maybe a bit older. Her face was framed behind a pair of thick glasses that made her look almost comical, but she seemed as no-nonsense as those around her.

The girl looked up from the papers on her desk as Jamie approached. “Can I help you?” she asked very businesslike.

“Jamie Lombardo,” she said equally plain. “I have an–”

“Appointment,” the girl finished for her. “Yes, Mr. Desoto is expecting you.” She leaned over and keyed a few numbers on the intercom on her desk. “Mr. Desoto, Jamie Lombardo is here to see you.”

“Thank you, send her up,” said a disembodied male voice on the other end of the intercom. Though Jamie could not see the face or the body of the man that owned it, something in the man’s tone was full of authority and the kind of menace that one might endow with a hungry lion.

She felt a twitch of nervousness in her heart that she took a deep breath, hoping that she covered it sufficiently.

The young girl in the glasses gave her a smile. “You’ll need to take the express elevator, it’s the only one that goes all the way to the top,” she explained as she opened the top drawer of her desk and fished out a plastic key card, passing it to Jamie. “Go around to the bank of elevators, you’ll see a set of golden doors there. Flash this at the reader and just hit the “Skyview Offices” button. They’ll direct you when you get there.”

“Thank you,” Jamie said, accepting the tendered card.

She followed the streams of people that were flowing deeper into the building, knowing that they could only be heading for the means to rise to the offices ahead of them. She saw a gathering of people attempting to fill the elevators as quickly as they could and just beyond them there was the pair of golden elevator doors that the receptionist had spoken of.

As she walked towards them she saw that a few of the people she passed in the fancy corridors finally took notice of her, some of them not for the better.

“Hot damn,” whispered one, a tall and brawny man in a gray suit with long hair that was parted neatly down the center, reminding her of an adult Alfalfa. “Someone must be throwing a party.”

“I hear you,” said his companion, a smaller man with a developing pot belly in a black suit with a bad tie. “Hey, honey… who splurged for a party and didn’t invite us?”

Jamie gave them a scathing look as they smirked wolfishly at her as if they had stumbled onto buried treasure and she was to be had for the wanting. All she could do was stare at them as she reached the golden elevator doors and waved her key card at the reader before them and the doors parted invitingly for her.

The men’s smirks vanished instantly.

Jamie allowed a moment to revel in the power that she clearly had that these two did not. It was obvious enough that the golden doors were meant for the cream of this crop and these two obviously fell short of the mark. And that they thought her some kind of a party girl bespoke as to why that was so. But doors like these surely wouldn’t open to such a creature as they thought her to be. And that realization was clear on both of their faces as the doors began to close.

In the span of a heartbeat, she considered winking at them but decided against it. She didn’t want to leave an impression on these two at all, let alone one that would make them think that they’d been right in their assumptions. No, she wanted them to think that she was someone with power… someone that could destroy them. She kept her face stoic as the doors closed.

When next they opened she could feel that she had ascended to a top level. Directly ahead of her was another desk, this one made of mahogany behind which an elderly woman sat. She was a wrinkled old thing with creases of age in her face and like the downstairs receptionist her features were cradled inside a pair of glasses. The woman might have been aged, but the business dress she wore was not. Jamie recognized the suit and in keeping with such things she knew that the designer label on it was not cheap and the overall design itself was not a month old and hard to get a hold of for one who didn’t have money.

They pay well here, she realized if the receptionist was dressed better than most millionaires that she was aware of. It made her wonder briefly how well-dressed the superiors of this firm were dressed and if she, Jamie, had underdressed herself.

When she reached the receptionist desk the old woman there looked up and smiled warmly at her. “Jamie Lombardo?”

Jamie wordlessly acknowledged with a nod.

“Follow this hall and turn to the right. It’s the only office at the end of the hall. Mr. Desoto is expecting you.”

“Thank you,” she said and turned to as she had been told. She wandered down the hall, noting how quiet this floor was before arriving at the aforementioned destination. This door she saw was large enough to drive a Cadillac through and mounted on swinging hinges with no sign of any locks or that the door could be at all closed for privacy.

She stopped just short of the door, took a bracing breath, and stepped inside. The office beyond the massive doors was not what she had been expecting. It was a large room, flanked on all sides by floor-to-ceiling windows with the exception of the wall on which the doors were mounted. Upon that wall, was a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf that was loaded with volumes of the usual texts requisite to a lawyer’s office.

At the far end of the room, there sat a lonely desk. She recognized it as being oak, trimmed with highly polished brass. Behind it, there was a small man with a balding head and a thick pair of glasses that looked like they could have gone out of style back in the 40’s. The man wearing them looked to be somewhere between seventy and eighty years old and the suit he wore looked equally as old.

He sat with his head down, his eyes fixed on the papers in front of him as if he had not noticed her arrival. Feeling her nervousness growing she crossed the expanse between the front door and the desk, uncertain if she should clear her throat or not get the elder man’s attention or if she should just introduce herself.

He saved her the trouble. “Ms. Lombardo,” he said without looking up from his work. “Please, come and sit down.”

Doing as she was bidden she moved and settled into one of the two leather chairs facing the desk and the smaller man behind it. Still, he did not look up from his papers as he worked, his pen working fervently to complete whatever task he had been stuck with.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

She paused, a little stunned by the question. “Excuse me?”

“Lester & Desoto isn’t your run of the mill legal firms, Ms. Lombardo. We’re one of the top one percent of all legal teams in the country. The rich… the influential… those with the most to lose – especially if they’re even remotely guilty and anyone can see that – are the ones who come to us. They pay us to keep them out of prison… or in some cases to keep them from losing everything in the divorce. Every case that we take here is worth millions. Hundreds of millions, even. That’s a lot of weight to bear, especially if you fail. So I ask again, are you ready?”

She stiffened her spine, though she had not let her posture slip one bit since she had sat a moment before. “Of course I am, Mr. Desoto. I was top of my class and I–”

“I’m well aware of your qualifications, Ms. Lombardo. We pride ourselves on knowing everything we can about the people we hire. How do you think you got here? You’re fresh out of law school and you get a job here, of all places. We didn’t take you in because we’re a sympathy cause. You were top of your class, out of hundreds, from the best school for this kind of work. All the right marks, you wrote the best papers, you killed yourself in your undergrad school and you doubled that in legal school. You come from a family that was famous for its work in the legal system, which was a point in your favor that set you apart from the others. And your reputation among your professors, as well as your peers, has it that you’re one who can get things done. It’s why we brought you on to this team without the formal interview nonsense. Did I miss anything?”

Jamie felt like she had just been lectured like a recruit in a military camp, but she didn’t feel the need to complicate matters. Everything seemed complicated already. “No, sir, you didn’t.”

“Good. Are you ready for your first assignment?”

She frowned with a slight tinge of worry, but the elder man didn’t seem to notice as he had yet to look up from his papers. “My first assignment?”

Still not looking away from his work he pushed a leather-bound folder across his desk towards her and went right back to his writing.

She took the folder and opened it. Within was a legal brief, detailing a small case history and the transcript of a trial that was dated three years prior. She noticed quickly that some of the files had been redacted, blacked out with a magic marker. An unusual practice for a legal document, not to mention more than slightly illegal since this wasn’t the CIA. She scanned the most pertinent details on the case folder that she could find and noticed that the name on the folder was blank. The mystery of it was so overwhelming that she found that she wasn’t able to comprehend what she was hearing. “I don’t understand.”

“I’ll come right to the point, Ms. Lombardo. We brought you onboard because your ideas are radical and you think outside the box. That’s something that this firm needs. We believe that we can use someone like you and to that end, we’ve decided to give you one of our highest profile cases. Inside that folder, you’ll find a small packet containing your travel plans.”

“Travel plans?” she asked, flipping through the folder and looking for the aforementioned packet.

“We’re sending you to Colorado,” Desoto went on as though she had not spoken. “Your first case is a man that this firm has a – shall we say – large interest in. Your task will be to function as his counselor. All the details will be made available to you when you arrive at your destination.”

“Sir,” she said, feeling uneasy speaking thusly to a man whose name was on the building she was in, but felt it was necessary. “Some of this file has been redacted. That’s illegal, especially for a law firm, and I can’t see what other details might be provided for me that should already be in this file.”

Desoto’s face remained neutral as he spoke. “The client mentioned in that folder was a former employee of this firm. The copy you’re holding there isn’t the original document, it’s merely a copy and the details pertinent to your task have been left in. Everything redacted is trivial and unimportant. But suffice it to say that your first client has information that we need that he did not disclose during his trial… it was considered privileged information and thus was not open for discussion, even behind closed doors.”

Though this was her first day on the job, she knew that that was unusual. Whenever anything came to trial, all pertinent information relevant to the case either for defense or prosecution had to be disclosed to all parties involved. If anything was withheld from either party it would have been declared a mistrial.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Desoto said, interrupting her train of thought. “But you’re wrong. The information that was withheld would only have helped the man we’re sending you to meet, but he never gave it up. We’re sending you to get it from him.” He paused and for the first time, he looked up from his work to meet her eyes. Her earlier assessment of him being a hungry lion, she now saw, would have been something of an understatement. He was more akin to some kind of a hungry and mythical sea monster that had learned to walk on dry land, but no less dangerous. “And we expect it to be done by any means necessary. Above all, you are not to share the nature of your assignment with anyone outside of this room. Is that understood?”

There was a subtle malice in the man’s words, very much in fact like the growling of a lion. If she could have put words to it, it would have translated as “I can eat you or I can scare you. What’s it going to be?” Jamie knew that she had been given an order. And like a soldier should, she knew that when she had been given an order the best thing to do was to obey it.

“I understand, sir.”

“Good,” Desoto said, going back to his papers. “Then you’d better get going. Your plane leaves in four hours and I imagine that you’re not packed. I’d recommend summer clothes… Colorado gets hot this time of year.”

She felt a tingle in her belly that she knew to be nervousness. Not nervousness because she felt unequal to the task, but nervousness born of being unprepared. She cleared her throat before speaking. “Uh, Mr. Desoto, I don’t mean to overstep my bounds… but this seems highly irregular. This legal brief you gave me isn’t even complete… there’s no name on it. You haven’t even told me what it is that I’m looking for. How can I be expected to complete this task that you’ve given me?”

Again, not looking up from his work, Desoto just sighed as he responded. “Your work in law school suggested that you were good at figuring things out with less to go on. We brought you on because we liked that about you. Are you suggesting that we made an error in judgment?”

There was no direct malice to his words this time, but she did sense that she was like a moth flying dangerously close to a flame. It was better to retreat than to press the issue any further. “No, sir. You haven’t.”

“I’m pleased to hear it. In any event, more details will be provided to you once you reach your destination, Ms. Lombardo. And I’m sure that I don’t need to tell you that everyone here at this firm has the utmost confidence in you and that you will no doubt carry a great deal of our respect if you return to us with success.”

There was a finality to the words that was hard to miss. She understood that she had been dismissed. She rose to her feet, gathered up her briefcase in one hand and took the leather-bound folder under her other arm and smiled at the man who had only met her eyes once in the strangest – and admittedly only – induction speech that she had ever heard.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, turning and heading for the door.

“Ms. Lombardo,” Desoto called after her.

She paused and turned to look at the elder man, who still had hardly acknowledged her presence. Keeping with his work he added, “Welcome to our little family, I’m sure you’ll be quite happy here.”

Saying no more, Jamie quickly turned and left the office.

Once she was out and in the hallway beyond, she felt her heart quickening to a pace that she had never experienced before in the whole of her life. She looked at her watch and the whole of the situation splashed on her as though she had woken from a strange dream. It was her first day at work, she had only been here less than fifteen minutes, and she was being sent off on what was apparently an important assignment, and with incomplete details.

She wondered for a moment if her father had ever endured such a thing before during his days, but she quickly pushed those thoughts aside as she returned to the golden elevator and swiped her keycard across the reader. Once inside the elevator, she turned her thoughts to what to pack for the trip.

* * *

She had managed to pack a bag in record time and managed to make it to the airport just in time to catch her flight. She had flown coach, which surprised her when she finally had a moment to evaluate her situation. This fact had been lost on her in the hurry of it all when she weighed what she already knew of her current employers. Shouldn’t Lester & Desoto have their own private jet? Likely, they did… but they had seen fit not to give her use of it. Why? Perhaps it was because she was the new kid in school? That seemed plausible. Even being new and with her academic career as distinguished as it was, she had yet to earn her stripes. Maybe it was also because the jet was otherwise in use? That too seemed possible.

She gave up on such thoughts as she returned to her legal brief for the umpteenth time since she had left the office. She spent the entire flight looking at it and committing every detail to memory and trying to extrapolate what it was that she was supposed to be doing.

It all came back to one inescapable fact: it was a pretty strange thing, this assignment. And what she was able to infer from the reading was that her client – whoever it was – was up to their neck in some pretty serious shit. The transcript, she learned, was not only redacted but fragmented. She had read – even written – several such things as part of her education. From that, she was able to see that her brief had spanned at least three days’ worth of court appearances. So this matter hadn’t been settled as quickly as she had originally thought. Even so, there were gaps in the transcript and in the details prior and post of the hearings. Again this whole affair struck her as odd that she was not being given the details of what her task was, or of whom her client was.

They’re testing me, she thought, when her flight had been less than an hour away from landing and she finally closed her file folder. They want to see how good my academic theories hold up in the field. She looked at the sealed folder in her lap and lightly drummed the smooth leathery surface of it with her fingers. They want to determine if I’m worth everything that I say I am before they give me the really big jobs.

That seemed logical.

There was just one flaw. If this job was as big as Mr. Desoto had said it was, why had she gotten it? Why hadn’t they started her out on something small? Something that was not as important?

She took what she knew already. She was a budding lawyer, fresh out of law school with aspirations to be the confidant and representative to the wealthy, influential, and the guilty. She had no illusions about the latter. Law school had taught her that she would have to learn to defend people even if she knew that they were guilty. She had had little difficulty in accepting that fact and for one simple reason: guilty people paid better. But even like any seasoned lawyer, she had to show that she was the best at what she did.

Her academics had certainly proved that she was, as Mr. Desoto had said, an “out of the box” thinker. Even her theories had challenged some of the core principles that her professors had held to be true and unshakable. In some cases, at the very least, she had given them pause for reconsideration of some of them. Maybe her new employers wanted proof that her theories were right.

I’m a guinea pig, she realized. That made more sense than other thoughts that had crossed her mind. If they gave her a job that was as big as Mr. Desoto had claimed like this one, it was the equivalent of throwing a child into the deep end of the pool. Sink or swim, to use the cliché. If she was a success at this job, then they would welcome her in with open arms and a magical key card that opened golden elevator doors. But if she failed and her theories proved wrong, then she would remain, essentially, a nobody. Someone that they could toss aside as if she was nothing.

She was new, inexperienced, and expendable; an unholy trinity that was cause enough for concern in the legal world. And to be handed a case that was as important as this for her first trial run?

She felt the cold tingle of sweat on the small of her back.

I can do this, she assured herself as the fasten seatbelt light came on overhead. I know that I’m right and I know that I can do this. It won’t be a problem, not at all.

The force of the plane landing crushed any last doubts that she had. She knew that her theories of certain legal practices would hold up in practical applications. Much of the legal system was dedicated to hard facts and intimidating words. Sometimes, a softer approach was what was required. Soft… but firm.

When the passengers disembarked from the plane she felt the heat of the Colorado air about her and she saw that Mr. Desoto had been right. It was plenty hot here. Despite that, she felt a cool confidence about her and a winning smile touched her face.

I won’t fail. She was certain of that.

After collecting her luggage she followed the itinerary provided for her in her travel plans. She was able to rent a car and drove the rest of the way from the airport to the hotel in which she would be staying. After checking in and getting her luggage squared away she checked where it was that she was to be going next.

According to the brief, it was simply a place called Hahn’s Peak. But there was no address. What was Hahn’s Peak? A mountain resort? Some kind of a restaurant? A meeting place of some sort?

She checked her phone and searched for it. A few seconds later the top result was something that both shocked and worried her. Her phone stared back at her with the list of answers for her simple inquest: Hahn’s Peak Correctional Facility.

“It’s a prison?” she asked the empty room as if hoping there was someone within earshot that could answer her question. She did several more checks, all with the same result, making sure that Hahn’s Peak was not a restaurant or some other public venue that she might be overlooking. But each result was the same; there was only Hahn’s Peak correctional facility. Unconvinced, she pulled out her trusty laptop and did several other internet searches and all of them turned up the same result. Hahn’s Peak was indeed a prison.

She leaned back in the uncomfortable motel room chair and gaped at the screen that seemed as taunting at her phone had been. She watched and waited, hoping that perhaps this was some kind of an elaborate joke. Colorado was the marijuana center of the nation; she hoped that some lackey – high on the local product – had made a massive clerical error. But as the seconds went by, she realized that it wasn’t going to be so easy.

“My first client is in prison?” she asked the empty space around her again. Something like that should have been left in the brief.

She felt a twinge of anger at Mr. Desoto. Attorney-Client privilege was something that didn’t always work well in prison and a man as experienced as Mr. Desoto in this kind of work would know that.

The first part of the test, she told herself.

She shook the feeling off. She’d seen the inside of prisons before and had been able to confer with people on the inside. Some prisons offered conference rooms where they could be monitored under minimal supervision and at least speak in person. Other prisons insisted upon a partition of unbreakable glass and telephones in order for people to speak to one another. Sometimes it was a combination of the two, where she would be sitting in a long line of open phone booths where anyone on either side of her could hear what she had to say.

And there was little information available on this prison, save for its location and a few details about contact information. That was typical fare for a prison, as overly cautious people did not want details leaking out that could help convicts to escape from within, or for people to help plot an escape from without.

All that was available, really, was what was in front of her. If she wanted more, she was going to have to go to the prison and try and meet her client firsthand. Isn’t that the way of it anyway?

She sighed and took a calming breath, then looked at her watch. From the itinerary, she knew that she would have to meet with her client firsthand anyway. Traveling from New York to Colorado had gained her two hours of time and she’d already adjusted her watch to match the local time. She had an hour and a half before she was to meet her client and from her searches, she knew that the prison was less than thirty minutes away by drive.

She sniffed at her clothes, unchanged since she had left home after her strange and brief first interview at work. She gave herself another look in the mirror. She definitely had the look of a traveled person; her new clothes were slightly wrinkled from travel, her hair had lost some of its bounce, her eyes were slightly red, and the quick whiff of her clothes told her that she smelled like the inside of a plane.

“First impressions,” she reminded herself as she began to undress and headed for the shower.

When she had bathed and dried her hair, she still had nearly fifty minutes before her meeting was to take place. She changed into another of her business suits. It wasn’t quite as striking as that which her father had bought her, but it had the comfort of familiarity about it. She combed her hair and tied her thick wavy locks into a single ponytail and settled her glasses upon the bridge of her nose.

Gathering up her briefcase and looking at herself in the mirror that hung on the back of the door she gave herself a second appraising nod. She looked business-like enough to pass muster for one of the legal profession. Her suit definitely gave her a no-nonsense look and it convinced her that she at least presented herself as someone that was not to be trifled with.

“Right,” she said with a sigh. “Let’s do this.”

* * *

The drive up to Hahn’s Peak was a pleasant one. She had seen only several prisons before and the location in which they were constructed reflected the kind of people that were held within. And from the drive, she was able to get a sense of what kind of prison Hahn’s Peak was to be.

One prison she had seen was built at the edge of a small town, where there were, of course, the traditional high walls and guard towers. But even those were shorter, where even a man with a ten-foot ladder might be able to scale such obstacles if he so chose. Such facilities usually kept the mildly dangerous contained.

Another prison that she had seen was more akin to a college dorm than anything else. The facility itself was stacked five stories high and shaped like a large brick turned on its side with blackened and barred windows every six feet. In which she had seen no concrete walls, but row after row of high fences topped with razor wire that could reduce a man to slivers of flesh in seconds.

The worst of the worst were usually in some facility of stone and concrete walls so high that one would not be able to see in or out, and even those walls were behind several rings of high chain link fence capped in razor wire as well. And those too were usually punctuated by guard towers where men armed with rifles kept a diligent watch for escapees or anything out of the ordinary.

She looked at the terrain that she passed and saw only rugged mountains everywhere. Though the landscape was beautiful, it was rocky, steep, and looked like even the work crews that had carved the very road that she drove on had had a difficult time in building this paved path. The rocky slopes were so steep that a man on foot would need to keep to this road if he wished to travel faster without the need of any climbing gear.

She took that into account.

Adding to that, it had been nearly ten minutes since she had seen any sign of civilization, which meant that the nearest civilian populace was miles behind her. A far removed facility in the middle of high and rugged terrain.

It was a simple equation that added up to one fact: Hahn’s Peak was meant for the worst kind of inmates.

“Shit,” she mumbled.

She had no fear of dealing with difficult clients, men or women. Their behavior towards her was immaterial. But criminals that had a bone to pick for any reason usually grinded their teeth with the person nearest to them for the convenience of it all. In this case, it would be her. And when someone had an ax to grind, it made the work slow up all the more. And already she felt like there was little enough that she had to work with.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she mumbled again as she drove onward.

The swerving mountain road finally crested she saw Hahn’s Peak correctional facility come into sight. With the brilliance of the sun shining on it, she felt slightly impressed at what greeted her eyes.

The facility wasn’t the tallest prison that she had seen. It was three levels high, even the guard towers around it were about the same height. It was a shining white, making it look as though it had been crafted from snow that had refused to give way to the summer heat. The facility was surrounded by a single chain link fence, but this one was capped in traditional barbed wire rather than the more aggressive spirals of razor wire.

The inside of the facility looked as she had expected. Right off she could see that there was an exercise yard that was, at least for the moment, empty of any of the inmates. But dotting the inside of the fence she could see guards walking patrol dogs here and there, and the silhouette of but a single guard occupying the towers above.

The facility sat squat on the flattest part of this mountain, as though it were a temple built atop some mythical mountain and the beings within meant to be some kind of pagan gods. All around, she guessed, the population within had a panoramic view of the beautiful – but impossible – terrain all around them. Indeed, the only access road she could see was that which she had driven on to reach this place.

If this place was meant for the worst kind of criminals, then it was a joke to put them here. Jamie, with no real experience in attempting to break out of prison, thought that it would be quite easy for a person to find the means of escape in a place like this.

Something is very off about this, she thought.

She followed the road to its only end-point, the front gate of the prison where a security booth had been set. Though the term “security booth” was an overgenerous description for what she saw. It was nothing more than a small shack that looked lavish enough to combat the elements, equipped with what looked like it could function as either an indoor heater or an air conditioner, and a pair of guards sat within behind a sliding window. Facing her car was a simple gate that was held securely shut by nothing more than a lever handle that could be locked with nothing but a padlock. And that padlock, she observed, was presently missing.

A man intent on escape could almost literally just walk out of this facility. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh or panic.

Bringing her car to a stop at the gate, one of the guards within the entry shack rose up from his seat inside and opened the sliding window. From within she could hear the sound of a television broadcasting some kind of a sporting event. Obviously, these guards were not given over to strict routines and intense watches with military fervor.

“Help you?” the guard, a pale and pock-marked faced man asked.

“Jamie Lombardo,” she said, introducing herself before she realized that she wasn’t sure what else to say about why she was here. “I have an appointment with one of your–”

“Come on in,” said the guard as he stepped away from the window, sounding slightly irritated that he had been taken away from his sporting event to open the gate for her. He pulled the gate wide, allowing her space to drive through.

Feeling a nervous chuckle within her, she drove forward. The road emptied into a large parking lot, in which she saw a number of vehicles sitting in the only parking lot in the whole of the prison. Among them were mostly SUV’s marked with correctional facility license plates, likely these were the personal conveyances of the guards. There were a few minivans, one or two coups, and a single Cadillac that she immediately registered as the warden’s vehicle as it sat in a marked parking space.

This is a new one, she thought, never having seen a prison layout like this before in the whole of her life.

She parked her car and as she stepped out she saw the entrance to the white building ahead. A set of glass double doors that looked like they could have been taken off of a department store entrance and placed here beckoned her forward. With her briefcase in tow, she entered into the facility proper and found a reception desk waiting for her.

Behind it was the first real resemblance to a secure prison that she had seen. A plate of glass, looking to be about an inch thick, stood between her and the small office space beyond. In which, she could see the flutter and flicker of numerous TV screens with a dull gray backwash on the wall behind them, on which she was certain that the feed from security cameras could be seen.

Sitting at the desk that controlled such devices was a short and elderly man of perhaps fifty or so. He was dressed in a short-sleeved gray shirt with rank tabs on his shoulders that Jamie could not read. Across his chest was the usual embroidered emblem of a badge marked with the prison’s name on his right breast. On his left was a name tag that read, “Simmons”.

“Excuse me,” she said.

The older man within the small office looked up and smiled warmly at her. When he spoke, his voice was lightly fuzzed as though filtered through a speaker, through which she was certain she too must have sounded to him. “Can I help you?”

“I’m Jamie Lombardo. I’m here to see one of your prisoners.”

The old man, like the guard outside, nodded as though she had been wearing a sign that told why she was here and that he’d been expecting her all day. “Yes, come in please.” He tapped a switch on his desk and to her right, a glass door buzzed with the sound of an electronic release and the door swung open less than an inch. “Follow the hall to the very end,” Simmons instructed. “Turn left at the fork, the receiving area is there. Your client will be down momentarily.”

“Thank you,” Jamie said, uncertain as to what else to say and for the third time today she followed the instructions that guided her to her next meeting place. She followed the hall, turned, and found herself in the most peculiar of receiving areas that she had ever seen.

In other prisons she had visited, she had learned what to expect from receiving rooms. She had anticipated seeing cold and unfeeling concrete floors with metal tables, chairs, and chain hooks bolted to the floor where inmates could be shackled to their seats to prevent any notion of escape. Additionally, she had thought to see armed guards standing stoically with their backs to the wall, ready to draw side arms and fire at unruly inmates at a moment’s notice.

It was not so with this place.

The room was as warm and inviting as the lounge in a winter ski retreat.

In the center of the room, there was a large fire pit, which now sat cold and unused. It was a handsome thing, carved from a single piece of white marble if she was to guess and large enough so that people could use it as a bench if they chose, sitting nearer a pleasant fire. Surrounding it, was a plush carpet that – like the building – looked as white as un-melted and untouched snow. Small tables brilliantly carved from oak, mahogany, cedar, and other fine woods dotted the room in no particular order. Accompanying those were plush chairs and couches that only the rich would be allowed to sit upon.

The room was flooded with light from a wide window that, she noticed, was without bars. Not even the doors she had passed through to get here save for that at the reception desk, had used any kind of security. No keypads, no thumbprint readers, not even a skeleton key. None of the technology meant to keep dangerous men caged had been employed here. This place, she suspected, was genuinely some kind of a joke.

Uncertain of what else to do she slipped into one of the nearest chairs. It was soft and comfortable and she easily felt relaxed just sitting in it. But the moment of comfort was not to last as on the far side of the room another glass door opened and in stepped a lone figure.

Jamie’s breath nearly caught in her throat at the sight of the figure that emerged.

He was tall, just over six feet, she judged. His hair was long and brown reaching down to the bottom side of his ears, and parted down the right side so that one side of his scalp looked longer than the other. His locks hung down in his face in sharp tendrils, as if he had just emerged from a shower. His face looked rugged, covered in several days’ worth of bearded growth. His eyes matched the color of his hair, his shoulders were wide and broad, and the housecoat he wore did little to hide the bulk of his body.

Through the barely-parted folds of that coat, she could see a faint outline of muscle. He wasn’t rippling with toned mass, but from what she could see he was – she imagined – pleasant to look upon. She managed to compose herself just enough by the time he crossed the room to where she sat and she stood to meet him.

“Jamie Lombardo?” he asked, his voice as smooth as an aged port.

“Yes,” she said, her voice nearly a squeal of delight. “I’m your new attorney, Mr., uh… I’m sorry, I don’t even know your name,” she admitted heavily.

He smirked at her and somehow, that smirk too was charming. “Dominic Rizzuto,” he said, extending a hand forward. Gently, he took her smaller hand in his larger one and she felt his grip was gentle but firm. “I’m pleased to meet you,” he said, not shaking her hand like she had expected he would. Instead, he brought her knuckles to his lips and he laid the gentlest of kisses upon her skin. The touch of his lips was moist and warm and so soothing that it could have been made by a puff of air.

It sent a jolt of wild electricity down her spine that she could feel in the tips of her open-toed shoes. She hadn’t been greeted by a client like this before in the whole of her life, either professionally or personally.

“Uh… I’m pleased to meet you as well, Mr. Rizzuto,” she said, trying to retain her professional demeanor.

“Dominic, please,” he corrected her. “We’re going to be working together, are we not? And I find that keeping formality is nothing short of dismal for a relationship like ours. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Oh god, yes! she screamed in her mind. Aloud she said, “I don’t think that I can do that, Mr. Rizzuto.”

His smirk lingered on his face, as though he was pleased by her response. “I admire your dedication. But please, I insist that you at least allow me to call you ‘Jamie’. Or would that make you uncomfortable as well?”

She thought back to her schooling theories. Part of what made a lawyer successful was putting their client at ease. Some professional protocols had to be observed, but she couldn’t stop him from doing anything if he really wanted to, like using her first name for instance. Sometimes, a first name basis did speed up the work. But she felt it best to keep her professionalism intact.

“That would be fine, Mr. Rizzuto,” she agreed.

“Please, sit,” he said, offering her the chair that she had so recently occupied. She sat again and she was pleased to see that he waited for her to fill her seat before he planted himself in the chair adjacent to hers. He crossed his legs, very formal and businesslike, and she got a hint of the sense of old-world manners about him. And not just the kiss on the hand, either. Waiting until she was seated… formal introductions… yes, that smacked of old-world habits that went largely unseen nowadays.

Except those that have money, she realized.

“Shall we begin then?” he asked his voice calm.

She licked her lips and felt that familiar chill of uncertainty creeping inside her belly. To stall for time she replied, “Yes, lets.” She turned and opened her briefcase, her movements slow and deliberate, vying for time to make it seem as though she knew exactly what she was doing. She removed the leather-bound legal brief that Mr. Desoto had given her this morning and one of her blank notepads. Setting her briefcase aside, she opened the brief and settled the pad inside of it, using it to hide the redacted files within.

“So…” she began, sensing that her stall had expired though her mind had arrived at no conclusions.

Dominic’s smirk turned to a full smile. “You have no idea what you’re doing here, do you?”

She felt her lips tremble for the briefest of instances. The desire to say something – anything – that would give him confidence in her filled her up like champagne in a crystal flute. But after only a moment’s deliberation, she recalled her own theories. Dishonesty at the outset was never a good thing; it could turn a client’s trust into a peril pretty damn quick.

“No,” she admitted, feeling her chest sink again. “I don’t.” Way to start my first big case, she thought with a heavy heart.

His smile didn’t falter and he folded his hands in his lap. “No matter. I often find that the unknown is a thrilling way to start, don’t you?”

“Uh, yes, of course,” she agreed.

“Then why don’t we start with our setting?” he said, gesturing to their surroundings. “What do you think of Hahn’s Peak?”

She spared a moment to look around, still not believing what it was that she was looking at. She gave an honest assessment. “If this is a prison, I think it’s a joke. I’ve seen the guards… I’ve seen the towers… the dogs… the security locks at the lobby… the front gate… it’s all a joke. Hell, if I were a prisoner here I could walk out without anyone to stop me.”

He nodded. “I like your analysis, and you’re quite correct. A man bent on escape from a place such as this would find it most easy indeed to slip out unnoticed. But within a half-hour’s time, he’d be right back here with some of the precautions that they have in place here. Moreover, a man would have to want to break out of here at all.”

She took that in and weighed it. She thought about everything that she’d seen. The drive up, the sweeping view, the simple – and slightly irritated guards – at the front gate, the reception desk, the single door chime that had admitted her here, this lavish receiving room, her well-kempt client, and his comment about a man ‘wanting’ to escape.

It all made sense to her in the span of a heartbeat.

“This is a White Collar prison,” she reasoned aloud.

“Colorado’s first,” Mr. Rizzuto, confirmed. “It only existed on paper up until about five years ago. A year after that the land was purchased and construction began. You’ll find no murderers, rapists, molesters, or violent offenders here, Jaimie. The men that are here are relatively harmless, and there are only fifty or so of us, that I heard at last count. This facility is strictly for those who have committed, shall we say, victimless crimes of an electronic nature.” He put his hand on his chest, almost bowing to her, “Like myself.”

She made a quick note of that on her pad and sensed an opportunity that she could not afford to pass up. “Mr. Rizzuto, I read the brief of your court transcript of why you were sent here. But it wasn’t altogether enlightening. I’m afraid a few details were withheld from me.”

He nodded. “I’m not surprised. Not at all.” He wiped his forehead. “They did tell you that I’m a few weeks away from being released, did they not?”

She felt like a knife’s edge had just been pressed against her throat. She knew that this man had information that she needed to gather for them, though hell if she knew what that information was. But being open with her client and establishing the early trait of open conversation could save her a tremendous amount of grief.

“Yes,” she decided. He knows he’s being released soon and obviously he knew that I was coming… I have to find out what else he knows first. “I do.”

He nodded. “Wonderful. Well, then let us begin with the most obvious question you have, now that the mystery of this prison has been solved.”

She readied her pen. “Why are you here, Mr. Rizzuto?”

He straightened himself up as though stiffened by a sense of self-importance. “Quite simply, I embezzled over $10 million dollars from my former employer.”

She made a note of that. “Why did you do it?”

He shrugged. “The challenge of it, if nothing else,” he said, reminding her of a boy she had known in high school. That boy had fancied himself the ultimate daredevil of the school simply because he was bored and wanted attention and went to tremendous lengths to capture it.

“I see. And who was your former employer?”

“Lester & Desoto, they’re a legal firm in New York.”

Jamie’s hand trembled as she wrote his response.

* * *

It was close to nightfall when she left and she had only left because the guards had advised her that the drive down the mountain was treacherous after dark. Unable to stay she agreed, her mind exploding with questions. When she got back to her car the first thing she did as she drove away from the prison was dial up Lester & Desoto. She went through several switchboards until she finally arrived at the familiar voice of Mr. Desoto on the other end.

“Ms. Lombardo,” he said familiarly on the other end, “successful so soon?”

She bit her lip. “No, Mr. Desoto, I’m not,” she admitted but quickly pressed on before she lost her momentum. “Sir, are you aware that this Dominic Rizzuto was a former employee of our firm?”

Desoto sighed with aggravation, but patiently replied, “Yes, Ms. Lombardo, we were well aware of that.”

“Sir, I feel that that was something that could have been left inside my brief… or that you could have told me firsthand. A detail like that–”

“Is of no consequence to anyone outside of our firm, do you understand?” Desoto said, his voice rising to the point of being a warning.

Jamie had studied the law long enough to know how to read between the lines when someone was talking to her that way. The meaning of Desoto’s words was clear: Yes, we know, but we don’t want anyone else to find out about it. The reason for her being sent here was also clear. Dominic Rizzuto had embezzled ten million from her firm and she had been sent to find out what he’d done with it.

“Yes, sir,” she replied.

“Good. So you’ve made contact with him, I expect.”

“I have, sir.”

“Then you know what to do. Show us that our confidence in you has been vindicated and learn what we need you to find out. Do that, and your reputation within our firm will be solid.”

Before she could say another word there was a familiar Click!

She sighed as she drove back to her hotel. Her client used to work for her new employer. Right off she could see that as a conflict of interest. She had thought it strange to wonder why she would be sent in now to consult with a man who was weeks away from freedom. If he had the information necessary to reveal where he had hidden the firm’s money, why not bring in someone else? A forensic accountant? A tax attorney? Either of these would have been a more accurate ploy… but that still didn’t answer the question as to why they wanted her.

“Because I’m expendable,” she reiterated for what felt like the hundredth time. Yes, that still remained the most logical conclusion. But a part of her clung to the hope that she had been singled out for this task because they believed that she could do something that another lawyer could not. She had the ability to get inside a person’s head and learn their secrets from the inside out. She had said as much in school… she had written papers on it… she had even done it a couple of times in practice. But this, this, certainly was not practiced. And the stakes here were $10 million strong.

“This is going to be a long job.” She drove to her hotel, anxious for rest.

* * *

Over the next few days, Jamie fell into a kind of pattern, although in fairness to mathematical precision the only things about her day that resembled any kind of predictability was that she would rise in the morning, shower and dress, have breakfast at one of the dozens of mom and pop diners that this quaint little town offered. In the evening when she returned to her hotel room, she would research what little she could from the tidbits that she managed to pry out from under her client’s awareness, and usually fall asleep without realizing it.

Everything that occurred in between was more of a difficult thing to predict. Each day was different and every trip to the prison yielded something new and oftentimes enlightening about her task. But insofar, nothing had proved to be what she might term as ‘groundbreaking’. And Mr. Rizzuto’s release date was only drawing closer. Though she still had weeks to accomplish her job, she already felt the pressures of failure weighing down upon her.

Little by little she learned more about Dominic Rizzuto. Everything that she had learned of him reminded her of a great brick wall being built and she was watching it go up brick by agonizing brick. Watching grass grow would have seemed the faster element and she felt as though she was still no closer to solving the mystery of the strange man.

And though it was interesting to meet him in the setting of the prison, she was surprised to find day after day that it was less of a prison and indeed more of some kind of a social or athletic club. It had everything that an ordinary prison did not have and even a few things that a high society social club did not. And Dominic insisted that she meet with him to sample what was available that the prison could offer.

There were tennis courts, which they abandoned after the first time when she proved what a horrible player she was. “Nothing to worry over,” Mr. Rizzuto had told her. “I haven’t played since I was about ten or eleven myself. So I believe that our skills are at the least, evenly matched in that regard.”

His words offered her no comfort as she had played so terribly that she couldn’t have hit a single ball if she had been swinging a door instead of a tennis racket.

There was a pool set in the prison yard, which even came equipped with a lifeguard that Jamie was surprised to see was not a guard but a civilian employee. Bet he gets paid a lot, she mused, having heard that the pool was made use of rather infrequently and the lifeguard was only summoned when someone had signed in for use of the pool.

She had found the swimming hole easy enough to make use of but was surprised to see that the prison offered her a complimentary swimsuit. “I didn’t think that there were any women here,” she had remarked when she slipped from her bathing robe – also complimentary – and into the slightly chilled waters with Mr. Rizzuto.

“There aren’t,” he said matter-of-factly. “I asked the quartermaster to have one made especially for you. A very nice mine does fine work.” He paused and an admiring eye looked her over. “I’ll have to be certain to give him a generous tip.”

At that point, Jamie was glad for the heat of the Colorado summer as it helped to hide the redness of her cheeks.

There was a gaming room that the prison had been outfitted with. It was filled with the latest versions of almost every game that one could imagine in the console or old-style arcade formats. There were even some venues available that she had not ever seen outside of Las Vegas, having gone there once with friends during her pre-law school years. Some of that which was included were V.R. games that required the use of vision goggles, gloves, and the strange padded vests that would allow a player to feel everything that was happening around them as well as see.

“I’ve grown fond of these games,” Mr. Rizzuto had said to her after he’d paid nearly $50 for them to play a game that simulated very near-to-life hunting scenarios. “It saves the trouble of having to go home and shower and clean one’s weapons afterward.”

As the days wore by they made use of the other diversions that Hahn’s Peak permitted its inmates. There was a sauna that they made use of more than a single time. The towels were again, complimentary, and Jamie found that she had grown eager to use the sauna whenever Mr. Rizzuto suggested it.

Each time they had gone, she had worn a towel that wrapped tightly around her chest, covering her down to knees with a supplementary towel that covered her head and kept her scalp from growing into wild entanglements.

Mr. Rizzuto, alternately, was more appealing to see. He wore only a towel around his waist that covered his pelvis down the knee. But in the true old-gentlemanly fashion, he had a second towel draped over his right shoulder that he would, occasionally, use to mop the sweat from off of his brow. That added to her earlier estimations that he had come from old money and likely had enjoyed this kind of a temptation outside of prison, but she still could not pry any more details from him on the matter than he was willing to give.

But even so, the sight of him reclined on a wooden bench in a steam room with his eyes closed and resting his head on the backside of the bench with nothing but steam between them was as intoxicating a sight as any that she had seen. The vision of Mr. Rizzuto with sweat glistening on his hard body sent shivers down her spine that the steam of the sauna could do nothing to combat. And with his eyes closed and resting, almost angle-like, she found that she could admire him in a capacity that was most certainly unprofessional. But she managed to hide her brief moments of interest with the reliable cloak of her job.

“You seem like you’ve done this plenty of times before, Mr. Rizzuto,” she had probed delicately one day.

“I have,” he’d replied without opening his eyes. “There was a sauna not far from where I grew up back home. The owner was a friend of my family’s. Every so often, he would give us a family pass and we would indulge.” He sighed deeply as if lost in the memory. “Some of the first friends that I ever made were in those steam baths.”

A sauna not far from where he grew up, she thought with some contriteness that could be anywhere.

More diversions that the prison offered were indulged. Of all of the things that Jamie had expected to find in this place, the largest of the surprises were a lounge and a bar – though she learned that nothing better than 2% alcohol was served. “This is a prison after all,” Mr. Rizzuto had said with a wink at her.

Despite the strangeness of the lounge and bar, which had been named after the prison, she found that offered a rather enjoyable atmosphere. It was the first chance she’d had to see how Mr. Rizzuto interacted with some of the other inmates, who also frequented this establishment.

At any given time there was never more than a half-dozen of them allowed within the bar and she observed that they were at least kept on either strict timetables or were limited to the number of drinks that they were permitted to enjoy.

“Much as I do love this place,” Mr. Rizzuto had commented one night after another of the inmates had made use of the bar’s stage to perform a short stand-up comedy routine, “I do wish that they’d serve us something more potent than this.” He indicated a glass of something that pretended to be a red wine that had been served with the steaks that they had ordered.

Jamie could agree with that fact seeing as how 2% alcohol more or less tasted like flavored water – and disgustingly so at that – she had sensed another opportunity to learn something new about her client. “Something you miss from home?”

“Indeed,” Mr. Rizzuto said, holding up his glass as if examining its contents. “Wine is like a fine woman if you’ll pardon my lapse in manors and stoop to the cliché. It all begins on the vine, doesn’t it? It starts with the grapes that are raised and harvested when the seasons permit the most perfect of times. They need to absorb the rain, the sun, even take a good bath in the dirt that nature sees fit to blow around, and then be harvested when nature deems them worthy. Then they need to be plucked, ever so carefully, and crushed in a giant vat of a wine press, and always in a wood vat, never let anyone tell you different. And then the resulting juices need to be aged, properly, before they’re bottled. And again, the bottles need to be aged before they’re finally opened.”

He closed his eyes as if lost in a grand memory once again. “Perfection. The process I’ve just described is over-simplified, I admit. But the gist of it is there. There is an art to making wine… a tradition if you will. There is something that honors our forebears that are not done here.” He looked again at the glass in his hand and set it gently upon the ground and wiped his fingers on his napkin as something oily had been on the glass. “The swill that they served us here tastes very much like it could have been concocted under the bunk of any inmate in any other prison that you could name.”

Jamie wished that she had had her pen and pad with her to have written down everything that he had said. Not only was it the longest batch of words that Dominic Rizzuto had ever spoken to her, but there was something else behind it: passion.

He’d spoken of making wine as if he had done it, countless times, and from a young age. Obviously, he had an appreciation for it and that had made him a little easier to read. He had described harvesting grapes for wine as if he had done so from one who had to observe the changing of the seasons and that he knew how to read them. He’d commented that crushing grapes in a wooden vat – not the metal ones that most tended to use these days – was the way to go. Jamie knew nothing about making wine, but even that sounded like something that was done for the sake of tradition if nothing else. That told her that Mr. Rizzuto had an affinity for doing things in an old-fashioned sense.

Again, all of this smacked of an old family with old-world values and traditions. Perhaps one that owns its own vineyard or winery? Still, that didn’t narrow her field of search at all. When she returned to her hotel that night, her research revealed that there were hundreds of families up and down both coasts of the country that owned their own fields and wineries. None of them matched the Rizzuto family name either, which frustrated her thinking that she had hit another dead end with the biggest bit of information that her client had given her.

Christ, he could have grown up on a vineyard and played with rich kids his whole life and dreamed of a life of eloquence. It didn’t seem so farfetched, that, and unfortunately for her, it wasn’t something that she could research and confirm. Not without asking outright either.

Now that is an idea. Just ask outright questions. Yeah, why not? Her mind flooded with questions that she could have asked.

Is Dominic Rizzuto your real name? Where were you born? Who were your parents? Do you have a sweetheart waiting for you when you get out? What are your plans when you do get out? Where did you hide the money that you embezzled from the people that sent me here to get that info from you?

She softly chuckled at the thoughts as she prepared for bed that night. Yes, she could try the direct approach and get what she needed from Mr. Rizzuto. But that would destroy everything that she had been working to accomplish and completely foil any chance she had at proving that a soft approach to client’s confidences could be inferred. I’d be a laughing stock then, wouldn’t I?

As the days went past, they found other ways to occupy their time. They took many frequent walks on the grounds inside of the wire and she found the view around them beautiful. “It really is gorgeous up here,” she’d remarked one morning as they walked.

“What did you expect?” Mr. Rizzuto had asked.

She’d shrugged. “Well, I’ve heard that Colorado was pretty much the stoner capital of the country. I expected to see pot farms everywhere and guys with dreadlocks selling dime bags on every corner, and the smell of marijuana in the air everywhere I went.”

Mr. Rizzuto laughed at that. “And now?”

She looked out at the landscape again. “All I see is mountains. I smell evergreen trees. I can hear the wind rustling through the leaves. I can hear birds that aren’t pigeons or crows. There're no car alarms here, no sound of angry traffic at all. I don’t hear the sounds of shoes on concrete. I don’t hear any neighbors screaming at each other over rent or whose turn it is to stay home with the kids. It’s almost… peaceful here.”

He nodded in silent agreement with her analysis. “You’re a city kid, I take it?”

She confirmed with a nod, “My whole life the ‘great outdoors’ was something that you either saw on TV or read about in a book. I always used to think that there wasn’t anything even remotely resembling a ‘wild frontier’ anymore. I thought every place was just plowed under or covered with cement. You know… civilized.”

He turned a curious eye towards her and the single look informed her that she had touched on a delicate subject. “So, by your definition, anyplace without concrete under your feet… a Starbucks on every corner… or free Wi-Fi isn’t civilized. And by extension, anyone who would choose to surround themselves with such things is what, a savage?”

Jamie had never even considered military service, but she felt like the time had come to throw herself on a hand grenade… one that she had thrown, in fact. “No, not all Mr. Rizzuto,” she said, thinking quickly. “It’s just, I wasn’t expecting a place like this when I first came here. I mean, from here, I can see the horizon to horizon and all I see is this beautiful mountain range. I had thought that anymore – no matter where you went – you couldn’t go anyplace without being able to see the next small town or city. It’s just amazing that there some land that remains untouched out here.”

Mr. Rizzuto watched her carefully for the span of no more than a few seconds before he seemed to accept her explanation. He gave a small nod. “I’m glad to hear it.”

Though she didn’t let it show, she had breathed a sigh of relief inwardly that would have doubled most people over. I learned something new today, she later realized, I think he’s a bit of a rustic kind of boy.

She took that realization and tried to turn her near-blunder into an advantage. A quick look at the prison’s list of past times revealed that there was something that she was quick to suggest and that Mr. Rizzuto had been quick to take up.

“Archery?” he’d asked, beaming at her when she suggested that they make use of the prison range. “I never would have thought you for the type.”

She smirked at him. “Well, I’m not very good, but I’ve always been fascinated by it.” Not a complete lie. Jamie had been fascinated by archery as a child and that fascination had continued into her adulthood, even to the point where she followed it with close attention whenever the Olympics came about.

There was something interesting about one person, taking a shaft of wood or metal, and letting that shaft – tipped in something that could be very lethal – fly down range at a target that had a center no larger than a silver dollar. There was something to be admired in that, she had always thought. To focus one’s attention – and intention – so diligently on a target just so far off and intending to pin that target with something the diameter only slightly larger than a pencil.

“It’s a lot like golf,” she said. “Focusing on something small and then using something larger to try and put that small object into a slightly larger target? I think it requires something a little extra.”

“Indeed,” Mr. Rizzuto said as they signed out a pair of bows and dozen arrows each.

The archery range wasn’t what she had thought it would be. She had imagined an open-air field with large round circular targets at the end of the range, or perhaps plastic facades of animals to shoot at. But again, she was reminded that this was a prison with its limitations and guards would now allow a convict – even a well-mannered one – to bring obvious weapons onto the grounds where they might be turned against them or other inmates.

What they got instead was a small range that was but four long narrow cement channels in an indoor room that were illuminated by fluorescent bulbs overhead. At the very least, there were the large circular targets at the end of each lane with their target rings marked with rising values the nearer one drew to the center. Jamie counted them lucky that at the very least they were alone in the small range where they could talk freely.

It was only a short while before he noticed her watching him, a tad more intently this time and a curious smile graced his features. “Something interests you about my form?” he asked, sending another arrow down the range.

“No… it’s just,” she bit her lip nervously; “I can’t quite figure you out, Mr. Rizzuto.”

“And that’s bad?”

“No, not at all. But I’m usually better at reading people. I just can’t seem to get a lock on the kind of person that you are.”

He sent another arrow down range. “I’m familiar with that kind of complication. I usually find that when that happens to me, I’m able to discern a few other things if I tally what I already know of a person. Why not start with that?”

Got him, she thought triumphantly, but outwardly she wore a mask of contemplation that showed the appearance of a woman who knew less than she really did.

“Well… you’re a well-mannered person; that tells me that you obviously had a proper upbringing. I’m thinking an old family. Old families usually mean old money, even to the point where you likely have wealthy relatives in the old country.”

Mr. Rizzuto said nothing but sent another arrow down the range. His silence told her that she was on the right track.

“I looked up Lester & Desoto,” she went on, continuing with her fable. “They’re a high-end law firm. Usually, people who end up working there are the kind of people who know other people. Most people get a job there because of who they know. People who get representation from them get that kind of attention because of how they know them. So I’m thinking that you have connections.”

Again, Mr. Rizzuto said nothing and continued with his archery practice.

“You had to have had some kind of ties that landed you a job there. But after talking with you all this time, you strike me as an empirical thinker. You’re obviously smart enough if you took millions of dollars from a high-end firm like Lester & Desoto; that kind of thing isn’t done overnight, it takes a long time, which tells me that you’re patient.”

Again, he said nothing but continued to shoot his arrows at the target down the range.

“But most people wouldn’t see anything wrong with stealing from a firm that makes untold amounts of money from people that are rich, guilty, and have something to lose. But you, you turned yourself into the authorities, pleaded no contest, and because you’re not a violent offender you wound up here. That is also interesting to me, because from what I’ve been able to gauge of you, you were smart enough to avoid prison altogether. But you were consumed by your conscience… that’s something that a lot of old families usually aren’t bound by.”

At this, he froze, not freeing his latest arrow and turned to face her. “You have much contact with these ‘old families’ as you call them, do you?”

“I’ve met a few,” she admitted. “In most cases, if you can hide it, cover it up, bury it, or buy a way out of it, or get someone else to take the blame for it, that’s the way that those possessed of old money tend to work. That’s not the impression that I get from you.”

He watched her for a few moments and then turned back to his archery and sent down another arrow, striking a semi-distant target.

“That’s what adds to the mystery of you, Mr. Rizzuto. When we had steak the other night at the lounge and you spoke of wine, you did so with passion… like someone born to that kind of work and taught to see the beauty in it. Like you are someone taught to relish that kind of work and to appreciate every last ounce of effort that goes into it. I’ve seen people get passionate about many things before now, Mr. Rizzuto. I’ve seen men speak about muscle cars the same way that some men speak about their wives. And I’ve seen women speak about this brand of dress shoe or another with the same enthusiasm that teenage girls talk about whichever celebrity they have a crush on.”

She allowed that to penetrate his mind and pressed on. “And in all of the time that I’ve been talking with you and you’ve never spoken of anything like you have that wine. Now, I for one do appreciate a good glass of wine and under the right circumstances, but the way you spoke also assigns my confidence to the belief that you come from a line of people who made that their life’s work.

“But it also assigns mystery as to your origins, Mr. Rizzuto. Now, I don’t doubt that there’d be more than one Rizzuto family on either coast that knows how to make wine, so any one of them could be yours. And unless I flew out to each of them and started asking questions, I don’t think I’d get anywhere and I’m not a believer in wasting my time.”

“Admirable,” he spoke finally, shooting off another arrow. “Is that all you’ve been able to deduce of me so far, Jamie?”

She crossed her arms reluctantly. She did know a bit more, but the major details that she had just divulged pretty much eclipsed anything else she could have added to the point of worthlessness. “More or less,” she admitted.

He laughed. “Then you really don’t know too much about me, do you?”

She sighed. “No.”

He shot off his last arrow and for the first time, she noticed that his archery was impressive. Each of his shafts, she noticed, had grouped very near the center of his target. Were this an Olympic event, he would be qualifying for a medal. “Well,” he said, allowing his bow to slide in his hand so that it touched the floor as though he were holding a cane, “I’m sure that we have much more to talk about then, don’t we?”

Oddly enough, she found that prospect rather appealing.

With the days passing, they made more and more use out of the many different pass times that the prison offered and Jamie had managed to wrangle a few more details from her client about the whereabouts of Lester & Desoto’s missing money, but each turned out to be as fruitless as the next. And while she noticed that Mr. Rizzuto was chatty about some things, he was a mom on a lot and she grew more and more doubtful that he would be forthcoming if she were forthright in her questioning.

And with Mr. Rizzuto’s release drawing ever nearer she felt the pressure of time upon her increasing steadily. And while using each of the facility’s diversions, she had found most useful of them all was the prison’s track. And thanks to her own pastime of jogging, she had been able to use this to good effect.

Like today.

“You know, I at times wonder why you enjoy running so much,” he said to her, trying to keep up with her quicker pace. It was only one of their many different outings where she successfully managed to surpass him.

She smirked. Even the Colorado altitude did nothing to slow her down the way it did some people. She had had a difficult time adjusting at first, but now it seemed positively easy to jog at such a high altitude. “It relaxes me,” she said with a smile. “It helps me think.”

“So I noticed,” Dominic said, his forehead beaded with sweat. “And now that you bring it up, I’m actually curious about something if you wouldn’t mind sharing?”

The question had come up so suddenly that she almost tripped and fell. For all of the time that she had been spending with Mr. Rizzuto he hadn’t been one to ask many questions.

Maybe I’m finally getting to him, she silently hoped. “Sure. What’s on your mind, Mr. Rizzuto?”

“Have you decided yet how you’re going to help me?”

She felt a twinge of regret in her heart and a short bout of panic. The first few days here it had been easy to stick to her principals about helping him and being openly honest. But eventually, it had gotten to that point where she could not keep from talking about why she was here. A quick fabrication had been necessary and she had led him to believe the fact that she was here on the behalf of a third party interested in helping him after he was paroled, which wasn’t a complete lie. He had seemed to accept that without question.

Whether he does or doesn’t is immaterial, she had told herself. He can walk out of here without telling me a thing unless I show him what I’m really after.

“No, not yet,” she admitted. “My employer says that he wants to get a feel for you first. He wants to know the kind of man that you are before he decides if he’s going to help you.”

“Well, it’s his money and your time that you’re spending, my dear. So, as you please.”

“Thank you,” she said with a grin, amazed that her simple lie had had help for so long. Though in the back of her mind that lie felt almost like a child, growing to maturity within the confines of her brain and threatening to burst under the growing pressure of why she was really here. “Uh… where were we?” she asked, trying to switch back to the topic at hand.

“The trial,” he reminded her.

“Right, the trial,” she said with a nod. “Who was your attending attorney?” she asked dumbly, knowing already that he had waived his right to an attorney for his initial trial.

“I didn’t have one,” he replied.

She turned a faux look of shock to him. “Excuse me?”

“I waived my right to an attorney for the trial,” he said simply. “I didn’t see the need.”

She licked her lips, feigning interest. This was old news, of course, thanks to what details had been available in her brief, but he had never spoken of the fact directly. And seeing as how she was making no headway in her usual methods, she’d resorted to trying a more underhanded approach to figuring out what he had done with the money. “You embezzled millions from the firm you worked with and you didn’t think you needed an attorney?”

“Not in the least of ways. Eventually, I realized that what I was doing was wrong and when I turned myself in–”

“Hold it!” she said, stopping so suddenly on the track that he almost collided with her. She turned to put her hands out to stop him and she could feel his large muscular chest underneath his tight form-fitting gym clothes. This last bit of information had shocked her completely, never having seen that tidbit anywhere in the files. “You turned yourself in?”

He nodded, wiping sweat from his brow and looking thankful for the chance to catch his breath. “Yes, I did. As I was just saying, eventually I knew that what I was doing was wrong and when I turned myself in I pleaded no contest to the charges. It was settled within a matter of days and I was sent here.”

She paused, momentarily forgetting about what he was saying and suddenly realizing that she was closer to him now that she had been since first she had started coming to see him. The nearness of their mutual proximity, she found, was rather enticing. There was even something enchanting about it.

She floundered with her words for a moment. She had gotten the sense from Dominic that was a very clever man. She’d determined that he’d gone to all of the right schools, his mannerisms certainly held that he was from one of the old families and therefore from older money, and though she had only just skimmed the surface of his professional life she had determined that he should have been clever enough to have avoided prison altogether.

But that he turned himself in and for reasons of conscience and pleaded guilty, that was a shock to her. “I’m sorry; I don’t quite understand Mr. Rizzuto.”

He shrugged indifferently. “There’s nothing to understand, really, Jamie. I knew that my actions bore consequences. You recall how I said that I had done as I had for the thrill of it? Well, eventually the thrill wears thin and I also got a firsthand look at how what I was doing was hurting people. Thus, my hasty need to see justice done upon myself in as expedited a form as possible.”

She stood where she was, her mouth wide, her eyes almost gawking she was sure. “What did you see that turned you around so quick?”

His eyes fell, almost shamefully. “Men and women… people that I worked with… many of them were being laid off because the firm no longer had the means to pay them. They were people that I knew, Jamie.”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

He sighed, his tone becoming almost mournful. “When I first started my little game, I had thought to myself, ‘This place takes in millions every day… who’s going to miss a little bit here and there? They’ll never even notice that the money is gone.’ That’s what I told myself, but it didn’t take long for me to see that the firm simply began to trim away what they considered to be dead weight in order to keep the profits of a few people up.”

“Dead weight?” she asked, curious as to his use of metaphor.

“Some of those people had been dedicated to that office for years, decades even. They had families to feed, insurance to pay, and like that. They were just normal people, trying to make ends meet. And I took that away from them for no reason other than because I had been bored at the time.” He shocked her again by putting his larger more muscular hands over hers and gently squeezing them and the simple gesture, she felt, carried tons of emotion.

“And the firm just brushed them aside, like crumbs off of a dinner table, not caring where they landed or maybe just hoping that someone else would sweep up the mess later. Who knows? And it was me that made that happen. People didn’t just miss out on buying groceries that week, Jamie, it was worse than that. I robbed some of those people of their pensions; the money that they were saving to send a child to college, the finances needed for a heart operation… who knows what else?”

He pushed her hands slowly aside and rather than resume running, he began walking and quickly she fell in step beside him, her ears determined not to miss a single word. “So you admitted to your guilt, and then what? Gave the money back?”

He squeezed his eyes shut so tightly she had thought for a brief moment that perhaps he had something stuck in his eye, but he shook his head. “No… it was too late for that. The money was no longer where it was supposed to be. I couldn’t just give it back, Jamie.”

“You could have changed that. Something tells me that you were smart enough to do that and set things right before anyone noticed.”

“Yes, I could have. But the program that I had written was complex and self-executing. Once it was in, there was no stopping it, not even by me. It would simply run its cycle and eventually it would self-terminate. But even I would never know where the money went once it was done. That was part of the thrill for me, you see.”

“Wait… what?” she asked, again feeling puzzled. “What do you mean you don’t know where the money went?”

“Just that,” he explained, “I don’t know. I never cared to have that money to myself; I’m not a greedy man. I just wanted to have the thrill of knowing that it could be done… and annoying my bosses at the time.”

To Jamie, this sounded like the notion of a lunatic mind. He stole the money, but didn’t care to keep it for himself? To her, that sounded like a Robin Hood complex, but even Mr. Rizzuto had said that he didn’t try to give the money back to those that were less fortunate. He couldn’t, by the sound of it, which invalidated her earlier theory. But still, that he would steal money and then just shoot it into space where he couldn’t track it was most perplexing. That’s like breaking into a jewelry store, loading all the gems into a truck, and then driving the truck all over town and shoveling the goods out the back.

They walked in silence for a few moments before she looked at her client, watching the way the sun glistened on his hard body, before speaking, “You’re a strange kind of man, Mr. Rizzuto.”

His look of self-loathing melted a small amount as he smiled at her. “That’s the finest kind there is.”

* * *

In the seclusion of her hotel room, she looked up the records of finance for Lester & Desoto that fit the time frame that Mr. Rizzuto had run his little scheme. She had to give him credit, even the bean counters within the firm, some of the most highly paid financial experts outside of the government, hadn’t seen Mr. Rizzuto’s scheme coming. And no one had known it had happened until it was too late.

It was very cloak-and-dagger. He could have gotten away clean if it hadn’t been for his conscience. And listening to him tell his story, she never would have imagined that he would have been the sort to bend under the weight of his conscience. And though he had been forthcoming about his guilt, he wasn’t as nearly as direct in his subtle – but far more brilliant – skills in the use of computer software.

There wasn’t a single track for her to follow.

Within the records, all she was really able to find was a large gap in that particular time frame’s daily banking statements. She had seen how businesses that dealt with multi-million dollar finances worked and every minute of every day was accounted for when someone somewhere was using the firm’s money. But in the case of Mr. Rizzuto’s scheme, there was a mere two-minute portion of the day in question where nobody touched a cent of the firm’s money.

Impossible, she thought. And her co-workers at the firm had agreed. Because it was that gap in the day’s finances that drew their attention and someone, later on, realized that millions had gone missing. And that was the proverbial stone that had stirred up the hornet’s nest.

As she looked at the records, she couldn’t help but be a little impressed at Mr. Rizzuto’s skill. There the money was, one minute before, looking as normal as a blue sky on a clear day, and then suddenly, ten million was missing one minute and thirty-seven seconds later.

She viewed the technical specs of it as well, utilizing records that she could access and thanks to an old boyfriend Jamie had had in college, she knew how to read them. The firm’s computers noted that the servers began running a little hot, usually brought on by a heavy workload that the computers themselves had to strain to keep up with. In this case, she knew that the workload would have required every single person in the company to log onto their servers at once and download what would be an equivalent the Library of Congress all at the same time. That, of course, didn’t happen as the records indicated that the servers were functioning with less than nine hundred people being logged on. But even so, there was a predictable slowdown in the server’s function when such a thing happened, and then poof! After that one minute-thirty-seven-seconds worth of a high load, the money went missing in the time it would have taken someone to press “Enter”. And then it was just gone.

“Amazing,” she said, leaning back on her bed and crossing her arms, looking at the records. It was hard to believe that Dominic Rizzuto wrote his own computer program to steal this kind of money because he was bored. He’d also said that he wanted to do so because he wanted to annoy his bosses at the time. Jamie hadn’t been able to determine who his boss had been at the time, but given Mr. Rizzuto’s rank in the firm at the time of his employment – which was extremely low – it could well have been anyone.

“I wonder what he could do if he put his mind to it,” she thought.

Looking intently at the records she felt a strange twinge in her belly. This was what she was here for, certainly, but there was something that told her that these records were the way to figure out what Dominic Rizzuto had done with that money.

Hell, it’s not like I’m getting anywhere talking to him face to face. In just these last two hours looking at the digital footprint of the day the money had gone missing she had learned more about him than all of the time she’d spent questioning. And yet, these records had offered her the largest clue thus far.

She knew little of electronic finance transfers, apart from what she could accomplish on her phone. But million dollar transfers were another thing entirely. There were special protections put in place by banks and by recipients of such things. There were passcodes, voice authorizations, signatures, there had to be a plan in place with the bank beforehand in some cases, and sometimes they had to be done in person… whatever. And somehow, Mr. Rizzuto had managed to bypass them all.

While she knew that she was not gifted in matters of electronic finance she did know that even in the world of electronics that everything left a digital fingerprint. Visit a website, there was a marker in your browser history to show that you’d been there. Check your online bank accounts, there’s a record of the login. A driver pays ten bucks for gas with a company gas card; it gets logged both in a gas station’s computer as well as the company finance reports. That was just the way it was nowadays, there was no escaping it.

It had to be so with what Mr. Rizzuto had done. There had to be something… an IP address… a routing number… something that could help her dig into what it was that she needed to find this missing money.

This is the age of the internet, she reminded herself. The money was literally shot into space… it’s like trying to look through the internet for a single pixel in every picture that’s online.

Yes, it was going to be a longshot and she hadn’t yet unraveled enough of Mr. Rizzuto’s identity to determine where he had sent the money.

Yes, he’d said that even he didn’t know where that money had gone, but part of her was unwilling to believe it. It just wasn’t in the human condition to steal that kind of money and not pay attention to where it landed. Mr. Rizzuto didn’t strike her as the dishonest sort, but then again she had presented herself as an openly honest type and still she had resorted to a light kind of lying. That was proof enough that under the right circumstances, people could do things that were uncharacteristic for them. And that was a facsimile to which she now clung the same way a drowning man clung to a life preserver.

She stared at the screen of her laptop, feeling as if she were already so close to that money. Like looking at a fish in an aquarium she felt like she could just reach through the glass and touch it if she wanted. Close, but so far removed, that it was infuriating.

He knows where it is, she told herself with a sigh. She just needed to figure out more about him.

* * *

“Enough of me,” Dominic said, surprising her as they sat at a plastic table in the middle of the prison yard in the shade of an umbrella. The day was hot and the shade was welcome, and with no one in the yard but each other she felt as though she had joined him in the privacy of a fancy residence somewhere. It was odd that she felt like she was beginning think of this place as Mr. Rizzuto’s home. “Tell me something about yourself.”

She nearly choked on the chilled lemonade that they had been drinking, the question catching her off guard. “Excuse me?”

“Well, we’ve been talking about me all this time and I feel as though I’ve been remiss in my manners. And sitting here, I just realized that I don’t know a single thing about you.” He sipped his lemonade, “I find that I would very much like to know more about you.”

She adjusted herself uncomfortably in her chair. “Mr. Rizzuto, really, I don’t think that’s relevant to our work here…”

“You’re curious about the nature of my crime and how I grew up both very personal things, I’d say. And yet you won’t share a single detail with me about your life?” He shook his head a clicked his tongue, “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Let me give you an incentive then, Jamie. I’ll answer some of your questions if you’ll but answer some of the mines. You’re familiar with the whole stick-and-carrot routine, I assume? Which would you prefer?”

It wasn’t a threat he was making, she knew that. But he was offering her a choice, though it was a very subtle one at that. It was like a twisted version of the whole ‘horse before the cart’ proverb. She could get him to move, but only if he gave her a carrot for a change instead of vice versa.

It was a decision that she knew she had made without having to think overlong about it. He could make her work even more difficult by being stubborn and not giving her anything and she would feel the lash of it at every turn. He wasn’t asking much, just a few details about her. What could it hurt? It wasn’t as though he could know who she worked for and why she was here. Could it?

Maybe, she thought with a small worry. He’s smart and all of these questions about why they put him away…? No, she had been so careful not to give away why she was really here. She was sure of that. But still, it didn’t make her feel any better knowing that the only way to get information out of him was to give information about herself.

I’ll never see him again once he’s released… what could it hurt?

Under such an ultimatum, what else could she do but cooperate?

She felt a chill that had nothing to do with the ice-cold glass with the refreshing drink in her hand. “Uh, well, I can if you like… though I don’t know where to begin.”

Mr. Rizzuto leaned back in his chair, a triumphant smile on his face. “I find the beginning is always a good place. Where were you born?”

“New York,” she answered honestly.

“Oh? Still have family there?”

“My mom and dad,” she said, drawing lines on the building condensation on her glass with her free finger. “Dad’s the reason I got into doing this kind of work,” she said with a reminiscent smile.

Mr. Rizzuto gave an approving nod. “Ah, you admire your father do you?”

She nodded. “I do.”

“He’s also into legal work?”

“Yes. It’s been that way ever since I was born.” She felt the warmth of old memories as they came washing over her. The recollection of it all made her feel like a child again. “There were just so many things that he did that always fascinated me. The way he could talk with lots of big words – even though I didn’t understand when I was a kid – it was very impressive. The way he looked in his suits, his briefcase, the way he carried himself with such… I don’t know…”

“Swagger?” Mr. Rizzuto offered.

She smiled and laughed. “Yeah, I guess you could call it that. My dad was always so haughty and so confident.” Her smile deepened. “I remember always wanting to be like that, exactly like that, when I was a kid.”

“You seem like you’re well on your way there. Where’d you go to law school?”

“NYU,” she said.

Mr. Rizzuto nodded approvingly, though she detected some apprehension in the gesture. “They’re not very famous for their legal schooling, though, if I recall.”

“No, not really,” she admitted, “they’re as good as any other. But that was where my dad went to school. I wanted to follow in his footsteps to the best of my ability.”

“And your mother?”

Jamie sipped her lemonade. “I love my mother, no mistake. But it was my father that always held my attention. My mother had plenty to teach me and I do resemble her more than a little, but my dad’s way always seemed like the way that I wanted to go. I wanted it all; the suits, the smiles, the briefcase and yes, I guess even the swagger, as you call it.”

Mr. Rizzuto saluted her with his drink. “Well, I daresay that you’re well on your way to the swagger.”

She chuckled, though inwardly she thought that if she failed in this assignment there would be no amount of swagger that could save her. “What about your family?” The question left her mouth so quickly that greased lightning wouldn’t have been able to keep up with it. She had asked without intending to and she regretted asking as soon as the words had left her lips.

Mr. Rizzuto lowered his eyes from hers as though contemplating the grass at her feet. “Well, there’s not much to tell, really.”

Her regret froze like a river in a flash freeze and rather than paddle on with her regret, she sensed an opportunity. And one that she might distress herself over not taking now that it had presented itself. “But there is something to tell?”

She waited and listened while he was quiet for a moment, then sipping at his lemonade he kept his gaze low while he spoke. “I was kind of like you with your father; I adored mine… but his work, not so much.” His tone was almost somber like he was remembering the day of a loved one’s funeral.

Her gut clenched.

“My father was a lot like yours, a career man. But his career often kept him from home a lot of the time. When I was a boy I remembered not seeing him too much. It was just me and my mother; she wasn’t exactly what one would call ‘top notch’. She loved her wine… she loved her brandy… she loved anything that was potent enough to fog the senses and dull her wits.” His tone changed, becoming angry and he clenched his fist tightly.

Jamie set her glass down on the table that sat between them. It was clear that they had gotten into some murky waters here. “I’m sorry, Mr. Rizzuto. I didn’t mean to–”

He dismissed her apology with the wave of a hand and his tone softened, becoming more like the gentle sort that she had only ever heard before now. “No, it’s fine, Jamie. I asked about your life, the least I can do is share mine. It’s only fair after all.”

“But you don’t have to go on if you don’t want.”

He was silent for only a heartbeat before he finally raised his eyes to meet hers again. “No… I think it’s good for me to get this out.”

She waited, not sure of what else she could have said.

“When my mother and father got married, neither of them really had much in the way of anything. It was a marriage of convenience, I suppose you might say. My mother expected to elevate herself from being what she was and my father was looking for a quiet and simple life.” He drummed his fingers on the table top disappointedly. “Neither of them got it. My mother’s only solace was the drink and my father was consumed by his work, albeit reluctantly.”

“What did your father do?”

Mr. Rizzuto sighed. “He would often joke that he was into the bad news business; bankruptcy… repossessions… and like that. Sometimes he’d be gone for long stretches of time… weeks, sometimes even months. There was a time once when he was even gone for a year.” He smiled as a reminiscent look crossed his face. “I used to imagine him as a prominent banker, dressed in his best suit, and going from one big building to another and telling people that they were being audited or having their wages garnished… something like that.

“Because I was a child at the time, I didn’t really understand what was going on and I just thought that those were things that everyone in the adult world had to deal with. And when my father came home, he always had this warm smile on his face. And he would open up his arms and I would rush into them and hug him so tightly.” His smile became a little sad. “God, I’d give anything to feel that way again.”

Jamie felt her brow crease a little. “It must have been a strange business for your father to be gone like that. I’ve heard of people being gone for days and weeks, sure, but never months or a year. It must have been some pretty big financial business for it to come to that.”

“I’m given to understand that it was, yes. Well, his business was anything but pleasant. I can well imagine that he never wanted to be gone so long. As much as my mother enjoyed her drinks, my father and I enjoyed our time together. We always went to watch ballgames… we went to the park… he taught me about archery… hunting and tracking. My cousin had a vineyard in the country that we used to visit spring and that’s where I developed my passion for wine,” he said with an acknowledging wink. “And there was, of course, my favorite of our bonding experiences: trips to Drubber’s Magic Store.”

“A magic store?” she asked curiously.

He took a deep breath at the memory of it as if he were reliving that experience in the span it took to fill his lungs. “Card tricks, rope tricks, magic boxes, coin traps, vanishing rubber chickens, fake vomit, rubber dog turds, top hats, velvet capes, magic wands…” His face positively beamed with the recollection. “We never had a greater time than we did visiting Drubber’s Magic Store. Oh, the things that we would buy. I’d spend weeks rehearsing every little trick I knew, putting together my own little magic act and I’d perform it for my father when he came home from his business trips.”

She felt a curious sense of warmth spread through her at the mention of these words. She had had similar experiences with her father and mother, but to hear Mr. Rizzuto talk of it… there was something, enchanting about it.

Jamie felt an upswing of courage in her heart. “Your father sounds like an incredible man. Where are your parents now?”

Mr. Rizzuto folded his hands in his lap. “Well, my mother died just about the time I was getting into high school. She finally found a bottle that she couldn’t let go of,” he said noncommittally.

She felt a shard of sorrow enter into her heart for the man across from her. His mother didn’t sound like any grand prize, but it was always hard to lose a parent she thought. “And your father?”

His look became dour. “My father… well… let’s just say that he had a small falling out with his employer. He wound up in prison for it.”

That shocked her. From just a few things that she had heard, Rizzuto Senior sounded like a well-meaning and caring man that made time for his son. That he could end up in prison when he had a young son to look after seemed like some sort of a terrible joke. “He did?”

He nodded. “He died in prison as well.”

“My god.”

He looked across the table at her. “After I heard about that, I was kind of like you and I followed in my father’s footsteps. Or at least, in as much as I could. I had other relatives to help take care of me and with their help, I was able to get through school and I learned all that I could about the world of banking, which by then had mostly become dependent on how well one could run a computer. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I never forgot the injustice done to my father.”

She felt her daring rising but sensed that the time was quickly approaching for her not to ask any more personal questions. But there was one question that she knew she could not let go unanswered. “Why was your father sent to prison?”

His look at her remained gentle and neutral, but somehow she perceived that their conversation had reached its end. “It’s of no consequence now, Jamie. I can’t pretend that I wasn’t upset about it or that it helped to shape me into what I am now. But I put it behind me and that’s usually where I like to keep it.”

In a move that surprised her, he reached out and gently brushed one of her thick wavy locks from out of her face. The simple gesture was oddly tender and she felt delightfully evoked by it. “Sometimes, you just have to keep things where people don’t look for it.”

* * *

When she returned to her hotel room she collapsed directly onto her bed, exhaustion feeling as though it had played a larger part in her day. She sighed deeply and the darkness of the growing night around her enveloped her like a wave upon the sand. She felt lost, but also elated at the same time. It was an odd feeling, and she knew its cause.

On one hand, she was getting nowhere with her case and she knew that she was nowhere near to discovering where the money had gone to. But on the other hand, she felt like she was making progress with Mr. Rizzuto… with Dominic… on a level that felt, well... more personal than that which was normally shared between a lawyer and a client. She felt attached, in a strange way, to Dominic.

She smiled at that. Even just thinking his name, especially after today, she felt oddly closer to him. They had shared something today and really shared it. She’d given him details of her life, albeit only slightly significant ones and he’d done likewise for her. But it had seemed as though what he’d shared had been infinitely more profound.

After today she realized that she had learned something about the man, not what he’d been put in prison for or what he’d altogether done to her employers. And somehow, that seemed like the proverbial quantum leap compared to the lack of progress she had been making lately. It seemed the most important thing that she had taken from today’s session. It seemed that it was the most important thing, in fact.

Strange as it was, there was something… appealing… in listening to the way Dominic talked of his father today. There had been times when, as a child, her own father had sat her on his knees and told her about her other relatives. She’d heard stories about a great-grandfather that had worked on the Western Pacific Railroad… a grandfather that had worked in prisons during the Great Depression… on and on like that. She remembered the stories and remembered feeling entranced by them.

Dominic’s story had been no less gripping. Brief as it was, she felt taken in by his words. Even now she remembered the subtle things about today’s conversation. The way his face lit up when he mentioned going on outings with his father… how he would rush into his father’s arms when he came home… how he seemed grief-stricken even now that his father had passed on. There was something tender in that.

Tender and appealing, she thought with a girlish smile.

She rolled onto her back and allowed a momentary surge of raw instincts to overcome her. She thought of Dominic as she had seen him before during their other talks. The way his clothes seemed to hug every contour of a perfectly sculpted body… the way his hair, wet and thick, had framed his face when he climbed out of the pool… and that smile that he constantly wore that wouldn’t have melted ice, it was so cool.

She felt a stirring of lust inside of her and that brought her back to her senses. The thought struck her like the front-end of a semi-truck: sex with Dominic? Yes, there was a certain appeal in that. But caution counseled that it would come with repercussions that were wholly not worth it. She would be facing disbarment from any kind of legal practice, for one. Years’ worth of her parent’s money and time training her to do what she was currently doing would be lost for another. Then, of course, there was the fact that it was nothing short of a breach of principals that she could ill afford.

A lawyer did, of course, have to remain objective in the work that they did. There was no room for personal feelings whatever the circumstances of the case were. She knew that she had to focus on her objective here and that her feelings for Dominic – Mr. Rizzuto – had to remain immaterial. She couldn’t allow herself to be distracted by him.

She froze at that thought.

Distracted… magic… Mr. Rizzuto likes magic tricks!

She sat up with the speed of a ballistic missile being shot off as the profoundness of her realization penetrated her mind. All at once, a billion thoughts came crashing down on her and she couldn’t make heads or tails of them, they were so many. But she latched on to the simplicity of what she had just thought like a lifeline and focused all of her efforts on that. Combined with what she now knew about Mr. Rizzuto’s character suddenly made a strange sense that permeated the mystery that had been surrounding him until now.

And none of it would have been possible if I hadn’t stuck to my methods! She allowed herself a moment of triumph in thinking that.

She bounded from her bed for her laptop with the speed of a bullet. She switched it on and waited impatiently for the machine to boot up as her thoughts began to align themselves. How could I be so stupid? How could I have missed it? It’s so damn simple.

Once her laptop was ready she hastily opened up the Hahn’s Peak detention roster. As an attorney with a client inside she was privy to certain details of her client’s internment. Quickly she drew up Mr. Rizzuto’s finances and kicked herself in the head mentally for not having realized it sooner. It was so damn obvious a fact that it was literally as plain as the nose on her face… and she hadn’t noticed it.

It hit her like a boxing glove filled with cement. Hahn’s Peak was a white collar prison. And in white collar prisons, unlike regular correctional facilities, prisoners had to pay for the treatment that they got. Private rooms, the clothes that they wore, the luxuries that they enjoyed, the TV channels that their cells came with, the sauna… the pool… the archery range… the lounge… the food… all of it had to be paid for with money that the inmates alone could provide. There was no tax-payer money involved in such institutions.

And the money that he uses has to come from somewhere! Like an account holding ten million dollars that he claimed to know nothing about, perhaps?

Quickly she began looking at Mr. Rizzuto’s finances all the way back to the day he had arrived. The average cost of living inside Hahn’s Peak for him was in the neighborhood of $300 daily; average for someone with millions of dollars in store somewhere. And after listening to him today, she was able to judge for certain that he didn’t come from a moneyed family if he and his father made trips to a joke shop where a highlight was fake dog turds. No, no, no… the money that paid for his cushy life here in the prison had to come from somewhere else.

And I bet I know where, she thought, her fingers dancing furiously across the keyboard to check if her theory was correct. She looked at all of the transactions numbers that appeared in the prison’s daily ledger for Mr. Rizzuto. To a one, they were a match. The money that paid for his stay in prison was all coming from the same place.

I’ve got you now, she thought happily as she began a back trace, but still the hurt in her mind as to how she could have overlooked this very simple fact burned at her. Hell, this was something that the forensic accountants at Lester & Desoto should have missed. But somehow they’d all missed it. And in the back of her mind, it all made sense. But even if her hunch was right then the joke would still be on her… as well as Mr. Rizzuto.

Somehow, the latter more than the prior worried her.

After a day like today, she realized that she was growing to like him. He was kind, thoughtful, and obviously, he had a sharp mind and a good heart to him. All of which were things that she had thought a good man should have. But if she was right about this whole thing, then she would be ruining him.

The thought dug at her like a knife.

She put the thoughts aside as her back trace completed and her laptop dug up an account number for her. Got it! I found his money! I found his goddamn money! The thought was one of triumph, but again there was that small pain of ruining Mr. Rizzuto if she divulged what she knew.

She was stymied by that for only a moment. This was a matter that needed to be handled delicately. She had to be sure of her evidence. There was no room for error. She had to double-check what she knew before proceeding. It would only be embarrassing if she went to her employers with what she knew and it all turned out to be a false trail.

Just another magic trick, she thought.

She calmed herself and quickly gathered up her cell phone. She dialed a number that she had used a dozen times already and waited for the other end to pick up. After only a few rings she got her answer.

“Lester & Desoto Law Firm, finances office,” said a voice on the other end that she imagined as belonging to some pimply-faced kid.

“Hi, this is Jamie Lombardo on special assignment. I need some help with a back trace on an account number. It’s an account being used to finance the stay of a prisoner at Hahn’s Peak Correctional Facility in Colorado. I just need to know whose name is on the account and where it’s coming from if you can tell me.”

“Sure thing, just give me the number and we’ll see where it goes from there.”

She fed the numbers to the accountant on the other end and waited. Only a few seconds passed before the voice on other end responded, “Huh… that’s weird.”

“What’s weird?”

“Well, I’m looking at the transaction history here… you say that this account is financing an inmate’s stay at Hahn’s Peak Correctional?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, it’s weird for sure then because according to my data here, Lester & Desoto is footing the bill for his stay.”

She was silent for a moment before finding the words in her mind to make sure that she had heard the voice on the other end correctly. “You’re saying that our law firm is paying for this man’s stay in prison?”

“It sure looks that way. But it’s got to be a mistake, right?”

She was quiet a moment before she replied, “Yeah… mistake.”

* * *

“What do you mean you haven’t found the money yet?” asked Mr. Desoto over the phone. “I thought you said that you were making progress on this case?”

The words stung at her with the viscosity of molten metal. She cringed her eyes tightly as she listened to the venom in Mr. Desoto’s words, hearing the terseness in them as though she was standing in the room with him. “I thought I was too, Mr. Desoto… but something tells me that I could be making a very large mistake with what he’s told me. I need to be certain that I haven’t been led down a false trail.”

There was a brief silence on the other end of the phone and she could almost see the short and portly man grinding his lips together in frustration with her. She could hear him take a deep and patient breath before he spoke next. “Ms. Lombardo… you are aware that Mr. Rizzuto is due to be released in a few days, are you not?”

She tried to remain calm. How could she be unaware of it, being as close as she was to this case? “Yes, sir, I am.”

There was another brief silence, this one filled with a kind of malice that was she was thankful she wasn’t present to witness firsthand. “You’re a very smart woman, Ms. Lombardo. I’m certain that you’ve ascertained why you’re there and what it is that we want you to do, so I’ll not beat around the bush any longer because time is a factor. We chose you for this task because we believed that you could deliver. If Mr. Rizzuto doesn’t divulge the location of the money that he swindled from us before he is released from prison… we’ll lose it forever. And that would not be good. Not for you, or for your future with this – or any other – firm. Is that clear?”

She swallowed the knot that had tied itself in her throat, but not before noting that he hadn’t mentioned how it would hurt the firm either. “Yes, sir.”

The line went dead.

Jamie hung up her cell and reclined against the headrest of her car. She gripped the steering wheel with both hands and tightened her grip until she could hear the faux the leather groaning in protest under her fingers. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!” she muttered, squeezing the wheel.

Her moment of anger ebbed and she released the steering wheel from its unnecessary assault. She unbuckled herself and left her car and entered back into the prison that she had become so familiar with.

She waited in the receiving area with nervous anticipation, uncertain of what it was that she was going to do or what she wanted to say. All she knew was that she had figured out something that she knew would either make or break the firm she worked for, not to mention her own career.

Oh? Why yes, I did have a hand in the Rizzuto case. Strange one, wasn’t it? Yes, the man had supposedly embezzled millions from the firm and he used it to pay for his own prison sentence. How was that for irony? He worked for them, swindled them, and got them to pay for his time inside. I still laugh about it when I’m with friends.

Yes, she could see how that would certainly appear funny to someone who had an ax to grind with Lester & Desoto. But she could also see the other side of that coin, as to how it could affect her on a personal and professional level.

Jamie Lombardo? Oh, yeah… she was the one that uncovered that whole Rizzuto business, wasn’t she? Buried her own firm because she wanted to prove that what she thought was right? Yeah, I remember her… nobody wanted to hire her after that. Everyone was afraid that she’d put them out of business. We all know she’s good at that.

In a strange way, Jamie felt like Lady Justice, blindly holding the scales in one hand and a sword in the other. She had always found that figurehead curious as a child, being uncertain of its meaning. But now, she felt she understood it in a way she never had. The scales would tell her what was right from what was wrong, but the sword held more appeal as she felt she could more easily have thrown herself upon that blade rather than endure what seemed to be the inevitable conclusion.

She could ruin Dominic Rizzuto, which would get him sent to a whole new prison and for a new sentence. In doing so, she knew he wouldn’t survive. He wasn’t an evil man, not from what she had gathered, but she did know that he wasn’t physically given to violence. An ordinary prison, where inmates fought and killed each other left and right would certainly be the death of him.

Or, she could remain silent, ruin her reputation and be cast out as one that no one would hire in the future. Sure, that would cause the least amount of trouble for everyone, although the thought of seeing the disappointment on her father’s face stretched deeply into her imagination.

But there was also the third option. She could break her silence and ruin the firm she worked for. By disclosing that their money hadn’t really been stolen, she would prove herself a success, yes, that was true. But oh, shit, wouldn’t Lester & Desoto become the laughing stock of the legal world? People with millions – even billions – invested in the firm would lose confidence in them and they’d never take on another client again. The firm that had jailed a man who stole millions, but those millions weren’t really gone, they were just moved to another account somewhere within the company and they never even suspected it.

Either way felt like she was losing something.

“Shit,” she muttered a final time before the entry doors opened and Mr. Rizzuto entered.

“Ah, Jamie,” he said with a winning smile. His eyes took in the sight of her, no doubt noting that she was dressed rather informally today being clad only in a pair of jeans and a loose t-shirt. “I hope you had a relaxing evening? You seemed so exhausted when you left yesterday.”

She bit her lip nervously. The exhaustion that she had felt yesterday as she’d left was nothing compared to the fatigue she felt now, even being freshly rested. “Uh… not really, no… it’s kind of hard to explain.”

His expression changed, becoming concerned. “Is there something wrong?”

She rolled her eyes contemplatively. “Why don’t we speak outside?” She didn’t know what she was going to say and she felt like she was only seconds away from doing what her conscience compelled her to do, but she knew that privacy was definitely going to be a part of the recipe.

He gestured for her to leave the receiving room and they entered into the familiar open grounds on which they had already spent many a day walking, talking, and generally getting to know one another. The day was still warm but Jamie felt herself sweating for reasons that were entirely unrelated to the weather.

“Do you have some news regarding these people you represent who wish to help me?” Mr. Rizzuto ventured.

“Not exactly,” she replied, feeling a cramping feeling in her gut that was begging her not to relinquish the truth. “I’m afraid that our business today has to be a bit more… forthright.”

“Forthright?” he asked, arching a curious eyebrow.

“Yes,” she said, feeling her stomach roiling as though something was alive inside of her and begging to get out. She paused in their walk, standing in a wide open space of the prison yard. A quick look around told her that she and he were as alone out here as they were going to get. Save for a few prison guards and one or two other prisoners that were well out of earshot, they at least had this portion of the grounds to themselves.

Standing there, she recalled something that her father had once told her. “Sometimes, sweetheart, you have to choose your spot and stand on it. You can’t let anyone else push you off of it. You pick the time, you pick the place, and you draw that line in the sand and say, ‘mine’. Sometimes, that’s all you can do.”

The memory of the words and the voice that had given them rang in her ears, lending her strength. This is my spot, she thought resolutely.

“Mr. Rizzuto… I need to be honest with you now… completely. I work for the firm that you used to work for and I’m here to find out about the money that you swindled from them. Specifically, I need to know about the money you stole and where it went,” she said, feeling an iceberg plummet into her belly, squishing the gyrating creature in her belly but giving birth to newer ones all at once.

Mr. Rizzuto’s eyes widened in what she knew could only be a bonafide shock. She wouldn’t have expected less from dropping an A-bomb on him. His mouth was slightly agape and for the first time since she’d known him, he looked at a loss for words. Still, he managed to maintain his composure and his lips fluttered looking for a response.

She held up a hand to silence him before he could say anything. “Mr. Rizzuto, please, I know that you used what amounts to a magic trick to steal that money. You gave it away when you told me about how much you enjoyed magic… that’s one of the magician’s basic tricks, isn’t it? Sleight of hand? Look over here,” she said, holding up one hand above her head and wiggling her fingers to draw his attention. “But secretly, I’m doing something over here,” she said, using her other hand and wiggling those fingers, but lower and near her pelvis.

Mr. Rizzuto only stared at her.

She couldn’t determine if he was angry, sad, or terrified. His expression sank back into a kind of neutrality that she found worse than anger, sadness, or terror. At least if he’d reacted with those she would have known what he felt. But with his face an unreadable blank, all she felt was her own sorrow building within her.

“It didn’t occur to me until I thought about what you’d said,” she pressed on, taking his silence as an invitation to keep talking about what she already knew. “You said, ‘sometimes you just have to keep things where people don’t look for it’. That’s also a magician’s trick, isn’t it? Misdirection? Whether it’s hiding pigeons up your sleeve… a rabbit in your hat… whatever the case may be, that’s what you did with the money, isn’t it? You didn’t actually steal it, it’s still there, and it’s paying for your time here in prison, isn’t it?”

She watched and waited. She could have said more, but the words wouldn’t form in her mind or mouth. She knew that there was more to this whole thing than what she was seeing and hearing from her client. A blind man should have been able to see as much. This whole thing had been a mystery from the beginning and it felt like it was one mystery built on another, built upon another under that.

Finally, it felt like she had reached the center of those problems and found only another mystery. And she had found that she’d grown tired of trying to solve those mysteries. Her career was in the balance, not to mention the future of a firm that was depending on her. She wished that her father was here, he would know what to do. The temptation to call him had been a powerful one, but she knew that she couldn’t drag her own father into this. Even that would be bad, branding her as the girl that ran to her daddy whenever things got rough.

Mr. Rizzuto sighed and put his hands on his waist. She could see something behind his eyes, at first, it had looked much like a storm before it settled into something that surprised her: a smile. Somehow, that was more worrisome than anything else he could have done.

“Well, I appreciate your directness in this matter, Jamie. And I can see no reason why I shouldn’t answer your questions, now that you’ve dropped the pretense and chosen to confer with me directly.” He folded his hands at his waist, very gentlemanly like, and his smile continued. “I’ll answer all of your questions – whatever they may be – if you meet my price.”

“Name it,” she said before she could stop herself, feeling as though she had already committed to this path and that there was no turning back now.

“Have dinner with me tonight. Not dinner like we’ve had at the lounge here before now… I mean a real dinner.”

She wondered briefly at that before realizing that the direct approach was all she had left. Her own theories in being able to whittle information out of someone with tact and subtlety had already proven true; last night had been proof enough of that. But she didn’t have time for that any longer. She needed to be direct or nothing.

“Alright,” she said with a nod. “Dinner.”

* * *

She had imagined perhaps a small dinner set upon a table in the receiving room. Possibly even something akin to a picnic on a blanket out in the yard where they had already shared so much time. Mr. Rizzuto had said that he didn’t care to visit the lounge, as was their usual fare when wanting something to eat. But he had said he’d wanted a real dinner with her.

She hadn’t expected this.

The rooftop of the prison proper was as flat as a helicopter pad and roofed with stones, on which a metal pathway had been laid for people to walk here and there. At the center of one large area, looking like some kind of a maintenance area she thought it was had been cleared away, just for them. A table had been set there, with all of the elegances of a romantic dinner. It had been that notion that surprised her more than anything.

She looked around, noting the absentness of any guards.

“We’re alone here,” he assured her as they walked, her arm in his. “We’re several stories above the ground and the guards made sure that there wasn’t climbing gear or any such thing here that I might try and use to escape. We’re still well within the wire and any fall from this high up would most certainly be fatal. They’ll not bother us here.”

He guided her to the table that sat waiting for them, like a romantic evening set for two. The table was round and covered in a silken tablecloth. Centered upon it were candles and flowers. There were two place settings where richly made silverware wrapped within silk napkins sat waiting for them. And waiting for her – for the both of them – were dishes holding steaming lobster tail dinners, complimented by what she knew was unmistakably a real bottle of wine.

Only one question came to mind as they ascended the metal work platform where the table sat. “How…?” she asked, witnessing the setting, and utterly bewildered.

Mr. Rizzuto shrugged as he guided her to the table and offered her a seat. Still being in her most casual clothes she felt terribly underdressed for an occasion like this. “Well, I have some connections and when you can afford such things, the warden, the guards, and the rest of the staff are quite agreeable.”

She looked at the bottle. “Real wine? Why didn’t you get this before?”

He chuckled. “I’ll be leaving here soon. As I understand it, most prisoners are gifted with a bottle like this when they leave. The warden was kind enough to give me mine in advance.” He rolled his eyes. “Well, he was kind enough to do so after I made a generous donation to the prison,” he added with a wink.

Not a bribe, she thought, but an honest donation. Dominic didn’t seem the sort to set bribes for anything. And if he did, it wouldn’t be something as simple as a bottle of real wine. It would have been for something far more important.

Settling into her chair she looked on at the lavish dinner that had been set out for them. She couldn’t escape the feeling that this was a date, not a business meeting as she had originally thought it would be. The idea sent an excited shiver down her back that she couldn’t deny that she enjoyed.

Mr. Rizzuto settled into his chair across from her and in true gentlemanly fashion, he offered to pour her a glass of the red wine that sat waiting for them. Eager for something – anything – to steady her nerves, she accepted. He poured her a generous measure of the scarlet liquid and did likewise for himself, then offered his glass in a toast.

“To full disclosure,” he offered simply.

She saluted him with her own glass, gently clinking it with his and hearing the ring of authentic crystal in the air. God, he didn’t pull any punches, did he? She sipped from the wine and felt an explosion of taste wrap itself around her taste buds and she looked at the wine with awe. “This is the stuff they give you when you leave?”

“Good, isn’t it?” Mr. Rizzuto said, setting his glass down and gesturing to her lobster tail. “Please, dig in.”

She set her napkin on her lap and as she had been taught, she began eating the offered meal with slow, small, and deliberate movements, though she felt a little ridiculous doing so. Lobster, she knew, was a gentleman’s dish and she had the distinct impression that she should eat it as a lady in gentleman’s company would. Being underdressed again added a keen embarrassment to her. And even though she knew she had pierced the veil of Dominic Rizzuto, she still felt that there was so much about him that she didn’t know.

“So, you have questions?” Mr. Rizzuto said, taking in a mouthful of lobster. “I asked for a price and you’ve met it, Jamie. Now comes my end of the bargain, I think.” He looked at her with the kind eyes that she had only ever known him to have. “Please.”

She had been chewing on these thoughts all day and had yet to decide on which question she wanted to ask first. She had only just put the first bit of lobster into her mouth when the first question rolled into her mind. She spared a moment to chew her food and swallow before she formed the words to speak. “Who are you? I mean, really?” She gestured to the table before them. “How can you set this up? Somehow I doubt that even in a place like this you could get away with it if you have the money.”

He smiled at her and sipped his wine. “Well, it’s not so much a ‘who’ as a ‘what’ that’s interesting.” He took a short breath. “To be honest, Jamie… ‘Rizzuto’ isn’t my real name. I changed it because I have an,” he rolled his eyes thoughtfully, “unfortunate tie to, shall we say, certain families,” he said pointedly.

The simplicity of the answer hit her as though she had been struck with a sledgehammer. There was no need for explanations either. Her eyes widened and she froze before taking her next bite. She looked at him, amazed, as he calmly sat eating his lobster. “Families… as in the Mafia?”

He nodded simply as though confirming the color of his prison shoes. “My father used to work for one of the original five families. That was how he wound up in prison.”

She sat aghast. “You’re a mobster?”

He laughed aloud at that and took another sip of wine. “A mobster? No, or at least, not in any such grotesque terms. When people hear the word ‘mobster’ they flesh out some thug with a fedora and a long coat carrying a Tommy gun in his pocket and a baseball bat up his sleeve who happily breaks people’s bones in broad daylight.” He gave her a reassuring wink. “I’ve done no such thing.”

She didn’t know what else to say. He had just let out – and willingly – a detail that could have landed him in a federal prison where inmates were ground up and fed to each other in pieces just because she had asked. Normally this wasn’t the kind of thing that one discussed over dinner.

Well, what the hell did I expect? It was a redundant question, being as how she didn’t have a damn clue.

“So, you’re not tied to the mob?”

“Well, no, I didn’t say that… I most certainly am now,” he said, though she noted a small kind of regret in his voice.

She measured the sound of his voice. “You’re not happy about that?”

He half-shrugged, “Sometimes you have to make deals in order to get what you want.” He picked up his wine and gently let the fluid roll around inside the glass before he took a drink. “But considering what I stood to lose, I guess I feel good about the deal that I made.”

There was something cryptic in that, but Jamie could not sense the need to delve deeper into it. She pressed on with her original line of questioning. “So… the money… your stay here?” she asked, two questions fighting for dominance at once in her mind.

He cut a piece of his lobster tail off and forked it into his mouth. “You’re a clever girl, Jamie. I’m sure that by now that you’ve figured out that the money that I allegedly stole isn’t really gone?” He gave her an approving look. “As you’ve already correctly surmised, misdirection was the key to my success, wasn’t it?”

“How did you do it?” she asked, her mind boggled with the question.

“Think of it as the rabbit in a hat trick, basically,” he said jovially. “It was a program that I learned about in school. A Squirrel Algorithm, it was called. It gathers information, bit by bit, like a squirrel hunting for nuts.”

“Information? You mean money?”

He gave her a salute with his fork to confirm her deduction. “All those bits of information that it collects, it takes and keeps it hidden, like a squirrel gathering nuts for winter. It did it cent by cent, slowly gathering money until it reached the ten million dollar mark. Then it took that money and vanished with it, like a pulling a net filled with fish from the ocean in one go. It didn’t remove the money from Lester & Desoto’s accounts, it just moved it. The money was still there, it just wasn’t where it had originally been stored. And I designed the program to move that money around at unpredictable intervals and to completely random locations. It’ll stay in one place, but not long enough for anyone to find it. It might sit in one account for as long as an hour or as little as a few seconds.”

She nodded at that. There was a strange kind of brilliance in what he’d done, but again she wondered what he could accomplish if he put his mind to it. “That’s why you said that even you didn’t know where it had gone.”

“I left a spile program embedded in the software,” Mr. Rizzuto went on. “The money that I “stole” is what pays for me to be here. It siphons off to pay whatever I need for my stay… bed and board, food, clothes, even this lovely dinner. I wrote the program so that it couldn’t do anything but that.”

“Yeah, I figured that much out,” she said, her mind absorbed in her own thoughts. “But what I can’t figure out is why.” She set her fork down and folded her hands over her plate, looking across the table at this strange man. “Why did you choose Lester & Desoto? What’s so special about them?”

“Because of my father,” he said simply.

“Your father?”

“He worked for Lester & Desoto… the bad news man for people who couldn’t afford to pay their bills. He worked with the banks and took their cars, their houses, their yachts… whatever they had as compensation when the rich and guilty couldn’t pay their bills. And he was good at what he did. He worked for the Bonnano Family doing that sort of thing and he did it for me, Jamie… so that I wouldn’t have to grow up doing the things that were expected of kids like me. I didn’t want to break knee caps or burn down people’s houses. My father didn’t want that for me either. So he opted to do the dirty – but legit – work for the firm. In exchange, my father and weren’t considered to be formal members of the organization. They left us alone.”

His eyes fell and he half-heartedly cut at the remainder of his dinner. “But then that year he was gone, the one I told you about, was when things broke badly for him.”

“What happened?”

He sighed. “I never got the full of the details myself. All I know for certain is that Lester & Desoto had a client that had some rather large legal troubles, one that the Bonnano family was entitled to. They couldn’t pay their bills and they needed a way out. So, somehow, someone made it look like my dad had stolen from them to recuse them of the debt.”

She saw all of the pieces fall into place without the need for further explanations. “He was sent to prison for it… and he died there.” She resisted the urge to drink more of the wine, wanting to keep a clear head. “So you went to school to learn banking and such and changed your name so that no one would recognize you when you went to work for Lester & Desoto. And you wanted to “annoy” your bosses by stealing their money.”

“Ten million is what they accused my father of stealing and it’s what they put him away for. But during the trial, the prosecution pointed out my father’s connection to the old families. There was no defense against that: a man with a hardcore connection to a violent crime syndicate and even his real work was presented as a cover for that. The prosecution got its way and he was sent to prison as a violent offender. In prison, he wasn’t afforded any protection because everyone thought he had stolen from a mafia family. And inmates think that they can score a lot of points by killing someone that wronged one of the old families.”

And he didn’t survive long without help from the inside, she realized. “So when you turned yourself in?”

“I did it fast so the prosecution wouldn’t have time to build a case against me. What I told you about seeing people being laid off and losing their pensions because of what I did was true, Jamie. Up until I saw that, I had no plans to go to jail. I was content to steal the money from the people that my father served faithfully and who also sent him away because he was a convenient scapegoat at the time.

“But after I saw that, I thought about everything that my father did. He sacrificed for me so that I could have a normal life. He wanted me to do good things with my life, and I had just stolen millions because I wanted to get even.” He looked mournful for a moment. “It was that more than anything that made me realize that I’d spat on him. So I turned myself in to atone for what I’d done. And since I had a new name, a new identity, there wasn’t any dirt that they could dig up in time to get me sent somewhere else.”

She registered that as a point against her. If she spoke up about it now, things would change for Mr. Rizzuto and not for the better. It was a terrible weight to hold on one’s shoulders and she didn’t relish the feeling.

“So when you pleaded no contest in your trial, it happened so fast that the prosecution or someone wouldn’t have the time to buy the judge or anything. And they didn’t have time to research you and find out who you really were. And if they did,” she said, closing her eyes and realizing the true depth of her being sent here, “they couldn’t formally acknowledge it because then they’d be humiliated for letting something like this slip right past them.”

That’s why they sent me here knowing as little as I did, she realized. It wasn’t because of my theories; they just wanted me to get this information out of him! “Bastards,” she muttered under her breath.

“And that’s why they sent you, I’d wager. And now you know the truth,” Mr. Rizzuto said as if he were reading her thoughts. He paused and set his fork aside. “I do appreciate you being honest with me, Jamie. But now, as they say, the time has come to conclude affairs.” He put folded his hands together. “What do you plan to do?”

“Do?” she asked, caught off guard by the question.

“About me.” He had a look on his face that bordered on fear. “This third party that you’ve mentioned before, I gather that it’s Lester & Desoto and all of your interest in how I grew up and all was your attempt to discover if I truly was who they feared and how best to slip the information of their missing money from out of me.”

She felt a tremendous amount of guilt building up within her. Yes, that was why she had been sent here, but discovering his true identity had never been on her agenda. And yet she had managed to get that out of him as well.

Oh, look at that… another of my little tricks worked without me even fucking realizing it!

That he could see through her, now that she had formally given over the truth of who she was and what she was doing here, felt like a knife in her back, but one that she had sharpened herself. She still had only the obvious conclusions: either give him up or don’t.

“You have to either report success, which will end with me being sent to trial again – this time for capital fraud – and it will send me to another prison. Naturally, I’ll be found guilty with the information that you, as an attorney, are obligated to disclose and they’ll put me away for life – or as long as I last. Or, you don’t… and I don’t have to think hard about what the ramifications would be for you if you did.”

That dug the knife deeper. She wanted to help him, but he was openly acknowledging that she had to think of herself as well. The tenderness evoked from that thought was enough to make her loathe herself.

He simply sat and waited, watching her. She could feel the weight of his stare as if every twitch of her muscles would yield an answer to his question. The moment of truth, literally, had come. She could either tell the truth and support the firm she worked for, sending a man that was – in her view – innocent after a fact to another prison where he, like his father, would not survive. Or she could lie, deface the firm she worked for, and allow a thief to go free.

“So?” Mr. Rizzuto asked after what felt like a long time, but she knew couldn’t have been more than a few minutes.

Sitting there, watching him as he watched her, she felt a nervous pang inside of her. She knew what she should do, and she also knew what she wanted to do. It was an interesting conflict to hold within herself. And in the span of a few heartbeats, she made her decision. And an impulse unlike any she had ever known overcame her.

“Dominic,” she muttered as she sprang up from her chair and reached across the table. She seized him by the collar of his prison-issue shirt and pulled him towards her like a starving woman reaching for a hot meal. When she drew his lips to hers and an excited gasp left her, not realizing how badly she had wanted this very thing.

She ran her fingers through his neatly combed hair, reducing it to a tattered mess. His lips were warm and inviting, his tongue flicking into her mouth with eager anticipation. She could feel the heat of his body even from across the table.

He responded with equal intensity. In a move that both enticed and excited her, he casually threw off the expensive silken tablecloth that had covered their table. The remnants of their pricey dinners and even the fine bottle of wine and mood-setting candles were cast away like so much garbage as he yanked her towards him, bringing her to rest her knees on the table before him. The kind-hearted gentleman that she had known was replaced but what she could only describe as a lustful savage.

She loved it.

He slipped his hand into the collar of her shirt and casually ripped the fabric wide open, revealing her torso beneath. With a loud tear, the fabric fell away and his hands eagerly found her bra, ripping that fabric away with equal enthusiasm. Her breasts bared and floating freely he buried his face between them, cupping her breasts with his hands and moaning with delight as he did so. All sense of gentlemanly conduct seemed forgotten.

She was glad for that.

She felt amorous, overcome by a desire that it seemed even she didn’t know was building within her. Something that went beyond carnal lust sprang up within her and for the first time, she felt glad that she had worn her casual clothes today. She had enough sense to realize that one of her more pricey suits wouldn’t have survived this encounter, but for her casual clothes she knew, she wouldn’t lament their loss.

He massaged her breasts, his grip firm but gentle as he expertly pinched her nipples between his fingers, making them hard. His tongue licked at the tender spot between her breasts, his breath was warm and soothing. The coolness of the night air, despite the heat of the summer day, did nothing to dispel the heat he was radiating.

Her hands found the hem of his shirt as he turned his attention to her left breast, taking the tip of it into his mouth. Gingerly she lifted his shirt from off of his body, exposing that muscular form that she had thought about only a few times before now. Free from his hands and mouth she settled upon the edge of the table, allowing her legs to dangle over the side.

His mouth again sought hers out and she could almost taste the fine wine that they had been sharing upon his breath. But the kiss was far more intoxicating, for every second that it lasted she wanted more. She craved more, yearned for more of his lips and tongue as they darted madly around her own mouth.

His fingers found the button of her jeans and he pulled it wide. He inserted his fingers and slipped inside her panties and she was surprised to find that she had already become wet. No man had ever gotten her this excited this quickly before. She moaned as his fingers caressed her, slipping inside her with ease.

He expertly found her clit and massaged it as his tongue worked in her mouth. It was hard to determine which had a more profound effect on her body, his tongue or his fingers. She felt the pressure of his fingers inside of her, sending city-leveling tremors through her body while his tongue, mixed with the hot moistness of his wine-sweetened breath, poured like lava into her mouth, melting her from the inside.

“Oh, god, yes,” she whispered into his ear.

Spurred by her words, he withdrew his fingers from inside of her and hooked them over the hem of her jeans. He pulled them and her panties down in a single swift motion as though their lives depended upon his speed. The coolness of the table, which she now realized was metal, kissed at her skin but the warmth of his body countered the sensation quickly as he dropped to his knees before her and used his mouth to finish what his fingers had started.

His mouth was even warmer as his lips closed around the folds of her vulva, his tongue licking at her clit. He hooked his arms around her legs and using his hands kept her legs pried apart, his fingers again adding to the magic of his mouth as they too dipped in and out of her. His depleted beard tickled and pricked at her, but she found no discomfort in it as it drove her further into the depths of her pleasure.

“More,” she whimpered, “more.”

He obeyed, plunging his tongue deeply within her. However and wherever he used his mouth was equally heady as it had been when first she had kissed him. He moaned as he lapped at her pussy, his mouth hungrily devouring her. She relished the feeling, never knowing another like it. She arched her back, rolling her hips against the force of his mouth and running her fingers through his already matted hair.

He took advantage of that as well. His hands stretched out to find her breasts, once more massaging them as though he were offering her some life-altering treatment. His fingers opened and closed like the folding petals of a flower over her breasts, sending more and more shivers down her back.

She hooked her legs over his shoulders and his tongue plunged deeper still inside of her. He expertly traced the inside of her vulva and mons as though he’d been practicing for her all day. She felt her toes begin to go numb and the curious tingling sensation she felt when her foot fell asleep slowly marched its way up her legs to her pelvis. The reaction was like none that she had ever felt before.

After what seemed a terribly short time, he pried his lips away from her and slowly he licked his way up her body. His tongue lost none of its heat as he moved further and further north along her body, his tongue tracing the route he took until finally, he reached her mouth again.

She saw him eagerly tug open his prison-issue trousers as his cock rose eagerly from inside, hard and ready for her. She felt her anticipation rising within her as he slowly rested the weight of his body on hers.

God, he’s so warm!

His mouth gently covered hers, his tongue softly probing the inside of her mouth once more as he slid inside of her. She moaned softly as he did so, feeling a gentleness there that matched her personality that instantly drove her to the edge of her control. He was hard and she could feel him growing harder still as he slowly began to rock back and forth upon her. His hands sought out hers, grasping her at the wrists and keeping her from moving.

He was domineering in that manner, something that no man had ever done to her, and she loved it. He reminded her of a powerful Viking, finding a wench that he wanted and taking her as only a true barbarian could. She found no trouble in that.

She began to grind her pelvis against his, keeping in time with his thrusts. She closed her eyes, lost in the passion that they shared. Somewhere in the back of her mind, a tiny voice was screaming, “Fool! You’ll be disbarred for this! You’ve done the dumbest thing that you could have ever done and crossed a line!”

She didn’t care.

She had an amazing man with her now, and they were making love underneath the starry skies of a Colorado landscape. And not just any man, but one that was well built, had principals and had a bad-boy streak in him that she couldn’t help but admire, as well as desire. Most women dreamed of things like this. But she had gone and done it and the larger part of her mind didn’t care for the repercussions.

She had made her choice and she was glad of it. She had no idea how she was going to reconcile the issue with her employers, but for the moment, she had no other concern but for him.

All she cared to do was encircle Dominic with her legs, holding him against her while he plunged in and out of her. She didn’t care that their bodies were entangled together on the roof of a prison where, as she best understood it, inmates were not allowed this kind of intimacy and were they to be discovered, she would most certainly suffer for it. None of that mattered. All that mattered was the two of them here and now.

He pushed himself up on his hands, looking down on her as he continued to thrust inside of her. She felt her body grow tense and sweaty, the cool night air blissfully kissing at every bead of moisture that formed on her skin.

She cradled his face in her hands. They were so close together that she could look into his eyes. She didn’t see the lust of a man long imprisoned looking down on her. She saw something else, something more profound. She saw the eyes of a man that had grown attached to the one that he was with. It was a feeling that she was all too familiar with and she was certain that he could see the same look reflected back at him through her eyes.

“Did you know that this would happen?” he whispered to her.

She shook her head. “No… did you?”

“No,” he said, grunting his answer. “But I’m glad it did.”

“Me, too,” she said, smiling up at him.

He began to thrust harder and more deeply inside of her and though her lungs beckoned her to moan under his power, she felt one final question forming within her before she could surrender to their complete ecstasy.

“So… what does happen next?”

She watched him as he continued to slide in and out of her with building power and sweat began to form on his face, the veins throbbing in his neck, but the look on his face remained that of one who was not being twisted by lust.

All he could do was smile at her. “I suppose we’ll find out together, won’t we?”

She smiled back at him and finally, having her last question answered, she surrendered completely to him.

* * *

When the gates to the prison opened, she was waiting for him on the outside. He was dressed much like a man that looked ready to enjoy his first taste of freedom. He wore a pair of jeans and a polo shirt, along with a pair of loafers that she thought looked positively adorable on him. His hair was neatly combed, the bulk of his body was only lightly contained under his clothes, and over his shoulder, he carried a small duffle that she was sure was filled with the few things that prison would issue him on his discharge.

She smiled at him as his approached, stopping just short of where she now leaned against the passenger door of her car, but close enough to lean in and kiss her if wanted. He didn’t, but she wanted him to. In the growing sunlight, he looked handsome, a free man… one that would never again know the inside of a prison’s walls if she had anything to say about it.

A wicked smile passed between them. The memories of what they had shared only two nights ago were still fresh in her mind and she was eager to relive those memories. She happened to have a motel room waiting where she was eager to give him his first true taste of freedom and all of the comforts that came with it.

“You didn’t tell them,” he said matter-of-factly.

She shook her head. “No… I didn’t.”

He gently reached up and touched her chin with the tip of his finger. “They’ll mark you as a failure for this, Jamie. You know that, don’t you?”

Yes, she knew that that was true. And she knew that they would say that Jamie Lombardo had a job that lasted only a few weeks at one of the top law firms in the country and she failed on her first real assignment. She had been given a chance to swim with the sharks and instead she turned out to be nothing more than chum in the water. That was what they would say.

But somehow, that seemed like something that she could live with when compared to sending Mr. Rizzuto – Dominic – back to prison for what she weighed as a crime of equality. He had done no less than what had been done to him and he’d opted to pay the penalty for it. It was a very un-attorney-like thing to think, but she admired him for it and believed that he had been right to do as he had.

“Yes, I know,” she said. But she found something interesting about that realization: she didn’t care. She had her little bag of tricks, she had some small experience now, and she knew that she could find a new job anywhere if anyone was just willing to give her a chance. “Come on,” she said, indicating her car. “I’ll give you a ride.”

Once on the road, all she could do was smile. It felt like the world should have been ending for her, but it didn’t. The world felt like new, like something that she had never expected to find when she looked out her window this morning. She had Dominic with her and somehow, that felt like enough. True, she had just ruined what had started out as a good career, but that was something that she had no care to worry about now.

“Can I borrow your phone?” Dominic asked as they drove. “I need to make a call.”

Jamie was curious about that for a moment, wondering who Dominic might need to call just now that he was out of prison. But she had no worries about it. “Sure,” she said, passing him her cell.

He dialed a number and put it on speaker, “You’re going to want to hear this. Just don’t say anything.”

She grew curious but did as he instructed.

The phone rang only once before a voice on the other end answered. The voice that answered was curt and irritated, like one being disturbed when they wanted not to be. And it was a voice that she recognized all too well that turned her blood to ice in the course of a second.

“Yes?”

Mr. Desoto? Her eyes went wide with shock as she looked at her lover, who only winked at her and put a finger to his lips, indicating that she should remain quiet.

“Jack,” Dominic began with a jocund familiarity, “how are you doing today?”

“Mr. Rossi,” said Desoto, his tone changing instantly like a grinning lackey would in the presence his master. “I take it that you were able to leave prison without incident, sir?”

Rossi? Jamie realized, but was more shocked to hear the half-owner of her law firm refer to a recently released convict as ‘sir’.

“I did indeed. And I have to congratulate you; Ms. Lombardo was a complete success. I think she’ll do well for us,” Dominic said, reaching out and taking her right hand.

She felt a chill creep down her spine. Suddenly it felt like she was riding in the car with the devil, but again she heeded his words and said nothing, her curiosity overcoming her caution. What? What the hell is going on? What’s happening?

“She didn’t snitch on you, sir. She reported failure to me yesterday evening. Even with as much as a leaned on her, she didn’t give you up. I believe that she’s one that we can thoroughly rely on, sir,” Desoto responded.

Dominic smiled at her, the expression deeper than what a professional relationship should have warranted. “In more ways than one, I’m sure.”

She blushed, but she still felt a curiously bewildered sense of fright about her. How does Dominic know Desoto? What does he mean that I’m one that they can rely on?

“How’d the buyout go?” Dominic asked, his tone becoming more businesslike.

“Worked like a charm, sir,” Desoto went on. On the other end of the phone, Jamie could hear the ruffling of papers as though the squat man were pouring through files. “Now that you’re out, the board pressed Lester to resign since he failed to recover the missing money before your release. They’re convinced that the money is irretrievable. It worked just like you said it would. The remainder of the balance in your squirrel program was more than enough for the buy-out and it was funneled into the firm’s finances… you bought Lester’s share of the controlling stock that finances the firm.” There was a chuckle of joy on the other end. “You now own half the controlling interest in Lester & Desoto, Mr. Rossi.”

Dominic’s smiled deepened and he brought Jamie’s hand to his lips and gently kissed it. “Sounds good, Jack. Is Ms. Lombardo’s office being cleaned out?”

“Lester is packing up as we speak, sir. She’ll be free to move in when she comes back. I’ve arranged for a meeting with her and I can–”

“No, that’s alright, Jack,” Dominic cut in. “It’s my responsibility. I know where she’s staying in town. I should be the one to tell her myself. Give her a chance to get used to the idea of her new position.”

Jamie felt a prickle of excitement surging in her heart that was rivaled by a tickle of fear. Her curiosity was running rampant now and the desire to speak and get some answers was growing stronger inside of her.

“Very good, sir. When can we expect you back?” Desoto asked.

Dominic looked at her, his eyes scanning the length of her body and she could almost feel him undressing her with his eyes. Part of her wished that he’d skip that part and go straight to using his hands. “A day or two,” he replied. “I want to enjoy myself a little before I settle in. Maybe unwind some knots.”

“Sounds good, sir. Will there be anything else?”

Dominic froze for a moment, his face looking slightly dour. “My agreement with the Bonnano’s?”

“Still intact, sir. After something like this, how could they not honor the agreement?”

Dominic nodded. “Alright, that’ll be all then, Jack. I’ll see you in a couple of days.” He clicked the phone off and the silence that filled the car was heavy enough to crush granite to gravel. But after the silence lingered only a moment, Dominic finally said, “Okay, you talk now.”

“What the hell was that all about?”

Dominic sighed. “Remember that deal I told you that I made?”

She vaguely recalled hearing about it the other night on the roof. “Something about having to do things you don’t like to get what you wanted?”

He nodded. “Those relatives that I told you about that helped me out after my mother died and my father went to prison? It was the Bonnano’s that helped me. My cousin was the one that owned that vineyard that I told you about. They were sympathetic to my dilemma. They had a bone to pick with Lester & Desoto and I offered them the means to level the playing field.”

She digested that for a moment. “So, you do work for the Mafia?”

“Like I said, I do now.”

“You might want to explain.”

He went right into it. “The client that Lester & Desoto represented that sent my father to prison was a, shall we say, adversary to the Bonnano family. They were none too happy when my father got sent away, it was bad for business and they were looking for a means to reconcile the damages. When I was old enough I agreed to get them control of the firm for what they did; since the Bonnanos they did like my father after all. I was motivated and I’d shown them what I could do and so they agreed. But in exchange, I have to turn control of the firm over to someone whom they know that they can trust.” He gestured to her.

“Me?!” she asked, stepping on the gas harder than she meant to and revving the engine hard for a few seconds before calming down. “You want me to run the firm for the mob?”

“No, you just to have run it in a way that they know you can’t be bought by someone with deep pockets like they were when my father was sent up. We had to test you, Jamie,” Dominic said apologetically. “The papers that you published in school… getting people to tell you what they know without directly asking them… they were enough to grab the attention of a lot of people who would happily put them to more selfish uses. We just wanted to make sure that we got them first. Those tricks of yours are skills that we can use, especially in a business like legal representation where the stakes can be high. We knew that you could do it, but what we weren’t sure of was how you would conduct your loyalty. That’s why I had you picked to counsel me.”

“You?!” she asked, her heart beginning to rev faster than the engine of her car. “You picked me to be with you inside?”

“If you chose to tell Desoto what you knew, we’d know that you couldn’t be trusted and we’d just send you on your way. Getting you to find out where I’d hid the money was never an issue; it was just the bait since Jack knew what I’d done with it all the time. But we did want to see how well your theories held up in the field. And from where I stood, someone that wasn’t as familiar with your work as I was wouldn’t stand a chance. I’m seriously considering putting you at the head of a seminar where you teach these little tricks to people that work for us… er, sorry, work for you now.”

He held up a patient finger. “But you told Jack that you’d failed. You were willing to take the blow to your career for me.” He kissed her hand again. “I wasn’t expecting to fall in love with you over this whole thing, but I–”

“Wait, wait, wait,” she said, trying to maintain control. “Love?”

He kept his gaze fixed on her. “Yes. Love.”

She was silent a moment, uncertain as to how to respond. She had never tried to define what they had before now and was thankful that he had beaten her to it.

“Is that wrong?” he asked, his tone becoming frightful.

She thought about it for a moment. No, it wasn’t wrong. She had a good man in her life now, and obviously, her future was secure. But working for the mob? Somehow she got the feeling that it wouldn’t be working for the mob so much as working for Dominic Rossi.

She had no problems with that.

“No,” she said, “not at all.”

His look was pleasing. “I’m glad to hear it.”

She licked her lips anxiously. “So, this was all just another magic trick, wasn’t it? Misdirection… sleight of hand… smoke and mirrors and all that?”

He shrugged. “What can I say?”

She felt a warm feeling pass over her heart, wondering what other tricks that he might have in store. And she was anxious to find out.

They drove on.