Her eyes crinkled at the corners, the grey flaring brightly like sunlight through storm clouds. I watched her laugh, held her to me while it moved through her, and I felt better than I had in weeks.
“Let’s get to work then and you can kiss me when this is all done and you’re free,” she suggested.
“Just ignore me, that’s fine,” Yara called to us drily.
We laughed together and even though we got to work, we did it holding hands through the bars.
Yara and Elena had built a good case.
In fact, it was so iron clad, under normal circumstances, I would have felt positive about the outcome being in my favor.
But I knew Dennis O’Malley was not the kind of man to accept defeat laying down. He was a small man with a Napoleon Complex who was never happy unless he was the star of the show.
When I was escorted into the court room, he was sitting behind the table for the prosecution smiling like the cat who ate the canary and then all of its brothers and sisters.
This was obviously not a good sign.
It became immediately obvious why he was so smug when he immediately addressed the judge for a motion to disqualify Elena from remaining on my legal team because of a personal conflict of interest.
“Well, that is a serious accusation,” Judge Hartford said with faux shock. “What do you have to say for yourself, Ms. Lombardi?”
Elena stood, utterly unflappable and poised. “My name is now Mrs. Salvatore, Your Honor.”
There was a dead beat of silence where it seemed no one even breathed.
And then chaos exploded in the courtroom.
The clack of camera shutters falling and the snap of flashes, the rising murmur of people speculating about what the hell had happened when I’d fled the country and how had I returned married to my lawyer.
“Order,” Judge Hartford bellowed, thumping his gavel down mightily. “Order now. Anyone found talking will be held in contempt.”
Slowly, the noise petered off though in its wake was a silence so thick it seemed to buzz with anticipation.
“Your Honor, lawyers are allowed to represent their spouses as clients if there is consent,” Elena pointed out calmly.
She didn’t fidget or gesture when she spoke in court. Her posture was perfect, her language stripped of all traces of Italian and her voice carefully modulate in tone. It should have been disconcerting to see my ice queen back in play, but I found it arousing to watch her cold strength and beauty knowing I was the only one who could make her melt.
“Yes,” the Judge agreed. “If you had a pre-established relationship before you entered in to a lawyer/client relationship.”
We’d known this was a possibility going into trial. Dennis would throw everything at us to get something to stick and he knew now that she meant something to me. I’d humiliated him by fleeing the country under his nose and this was just a piece of his retribution.
I also knew Elena didn’t care whether or not she was actually on the bench when she had already done all the work she could, but it made my blood seethe to think that Dennis had timed this to embarrass her.
“We did, actually,” she said.
Another flurry of murmurs and camera flashes from the gallery.
“Do not make me close this courtroom,” Judge Hartford warned them before addressing Elena. “Are you saying that you had a sexual relationship with the defendant before you started to represent him?”
“I am.”
I shot a look at Dennis and found his face pinch, his eyes dark with anger.
They hadn’t thought of this.
“Permission to approach the bench?” Elena asked, picking up a folder. When the Judge nodded, she rounded the table and went to the bench, showing him the evidence contained within.
I knew there was a photo of Cosima Alexander, Elena and I at Osteria Lombardi from two years ago before Noel had set a bomb to go off in the bathroom. There was another of us at one of Giselle’s art shows that could be construed as intimate because we were standing side by side, gazing closely at a painting of a woman’s naked ass perched on her heels while she gave head to someone beneath an office desk. There was a signed Affidavit from Alexander explaining that we first met when Cosima was in a coma and that we started a relationship shortly after that.
There he was, the brother that had hated me for years, lying for me once again.
“Is that enough?” Elena asked, her voice saccharine even though I could see her eyes flash from where I sat.
Merda, but she was amazing to watch in her element.
The Judge stared at the evidence unhappily, sliding a quick look over at Dennis who was trying his best to seem unperturbed. Only his skin was flushed and he snapped his pencil in two in he went to write something down.
He caught me looking at him so I let one of my bestial grins dominate my face. He blinked, his chin canting in slightly in concession to his need to get away from me.
I almost laughed, but Elena crossing back to our table distracted me.
“Fine,” Judge Hartford allowed. “Mrs. Salvatore will remain. Are long as Mr. Salvatore knows the consequences?”
“Oh, I do, Your Honor,” I assured him, innuendo ripe in my tone.
Behind us, the crowd laughed.
Elena sat beside me and surreptitiously squeezed my thigh beneath the table.
“May we move on to the matter at hand now, Your Honor?” Yara had the balls to ask.
The Judge scowled, but agreed. “Yes, opening witness may take the stand.”
“Point one for us,” Elena murmured softly.
“Still have a long way to go, lottatrice.”
“Oh, I know,” she agreed, almost gleefully, so in her element she seemed to glow. “The fun is just getting started.”
It turned out, she was right.
The first witness was Ottavio Petretti, the man who owned Ottavio’s deli where Giuseppe di Carlo was murdered. The man Elena had gone to Staten Island to convince to testify and then been nearly run off the road by the di Carlos and the Irish mob.
Under Yara’s coaxing, he admitted that he’d been paid to leave the premises by Giuseppe di Carlo’s thug because they planned to do violence to the girl in the shop, Cosima Lombardi. He also confessed that he knew me on sight and had not seen me in Brooklyn the day of the shooting.
Dennis O’Malley looked annoyed, but not crestfallen. He spoke to his associate who scurried out of the room to do his bidding.
When he cross-examined Ottavio, he tore him to pieces like a carcass in the mouth of a wild dog. He mentioned the deli owner’s drinking problems, his poor vision, the fact that he had never met me formally, only in passing and therefore could have been mistaken about not seeing me there that day.
By the time he was done, Ottavio’s flesh, pink face was quivering and deeply unhappy.
Cazzo.
The next day, we brought in the big guns.
Carter Andretti.
He was mostly healed from the brutal beating I’d given him in the abandoned subway station under my apartment building, but he still had the look of someone who fought often and not every well. His nose was lumpy as a bad mattress as a result of poorly set breaks, his neck thicker than an average man’s biceps and short on his big shoulders. He looked like a mafioso caricature and I wasn’t sure if that would help or hinder the case.