it, a rush of emotion came over her. Tears didn’t come, but Sal could tell they were threatening. He pulled her into his arms.
CHAPTER
TWO
After Gemma
drove through the tall security gate in her car and Sal followed in his, and as
soon as they walked through the double doors of their well-fortified Vegas
home, Sal headed straight for his office.
Gemma sat
her briefcase, keys, and purse on the table in the foyer, and was surprised
when he headed in that direction. “Where
are you going?” she asked him.
“To check
the video,” he responded.
“What
video?”
“From your
law office.”
Gemma
frowned, and began following him. “But
they took my cameras, Sal. And the hard
drive. They took my cameras.”
“But they
didn’t take mine,” Sal responded as he entered his office, walked behind his
desk, and sat down. By the time Gemma
arrived at his side, he had already pulled up live action shots, of her entire
office, on his computer screen.
Gemma was
amazed. She crotched down beside Sal’s
chair and looked at the video. “When did
you set all of this up?” she asked him.
But he
didn’t respond. When Sal was about
business, especially business involving his wife, he was singular in his
focus. And right now his singular aim
was to re-rack video until he saw exactly what happened in Gemma’s office
overnight.
Gemma
remained crotched down beside him watching the tape, and watching him. Sal was handsome in the way strong men were
handsome: more in his aura than strictly in his look. He had a jawline so sculptured that some
women would view him as runway model beautiful, as Gemma did when she first saw
him. But his forceful chin with its
constant five o’clock shadow, and his shockingly blue eyes with their absurdly
hard intensity, kept his look too edgy to be beautiful. And his physique was so muscular that he came
across more as a bodybuilder than some runway model. Which was fine by her. Because Gemma knew, given how supersized
Sal’s penis was, and how ripped his abs were, and how deliciously thick his
chest and biceps were, that any woman would love to see him rock a bedroom
rather than a runway any day of the week.
But first
they had to overcome his rough and gruff exterior, which Gemma also knew wasn’t
easy. He, in fact, was demonstrating that very point as she crotched beside his
chair. He was ignoring her in his quest
to help her. He was singularly focused
on the computer screen. So Gemma, knowing
Sal was not going to let up to explain a thing, looked at the screen and became
singularly focused too.
And then,
after several minutes into their search, they saw it. “There he is!” Gemma said excitedly after
coming upon a scene that showed a man outside of her law firm.
Sal pressed
a freeze on the frame, boxed the man’s face, and zoomed in. “You know him?”
Gemma looked
closer. He was a young white male in his
early twenties, with a goatee, with an ass so flat his jeans just sagged in the
back. She remembered him. “Yes,” she said. “That’s Jesse Crowler.”
Sal
continued the tape as Jesse began unlocking the office door. “I knew it was an inside job,” Sal said. “I’ll bet that law partner of yours set this
whole shit up.”
Gemma was
surprised. She looked at Sal. “Mark? Why would you suspect him?”
Sal had a
gut feeling about the guy, but Gemma would never understand that.
“And Jesse’s
no vandal,” Gemma said. “I got him a job
working for the janitorial company that cleans our offices at night.”
Sal looked
at the time on screen. “He’s coming to
clean at three in the morning? I don’t
think so. Where’s the rest of the
crew? And since when did he start
carrying his cleaning supplies in a garbage bag?”
Gemma knew
Sal’s observations were right, so she remained silent. And when Jesse entered the