Page 145 of My Mafia King

“Did you have time to go there and check?”

“He didn’t need to. I was there,” Gianni says.

“Why?” I ask.

“You said to look for clues on the FBI story.”

“And you thought about her?”

“I didn’t think about her. I just considered every possibility. And I’m not talking about her as much as the people who are after her. I don’t think she’d do anything bad to you. It would contradict everything I know about her. So it wasn’t about suspecting her of any wrongdoing. Regardless, she’s not there,” he says, his irritation obvious in his voice.

“Maybe she’s somewhere…” I say, unable to come up with an explanation, my eyes going to the screens.

I’m going back to the moment I left the casino, and I follow her every step.

She spent some time there before being escorted to my hotel suite.

Unfortunately, the security feed doesn’t capture my place.

I’m so paranoid about this type of surveillance I’m convinced it makes me vulnerable instead of protecting me.

Every access path is covered and surveilled around the clock. No one can get in without being recorded, not to mention being handled by my people.

“What about my bodyguards?”

“They didn’t see her.”

I suck in a strained breath and check another recording.

“The only way out is the secondary exit, but why would she go that way?” I murmur.

I don’t want to think she’d done it on purpose. That she’d have something to do with what happened tonight.

That they got to her without me even knowing.

Maybe she called her friend and something happened to her sister.

Maybe they set her up, and she’s on her way to meet her.

Maybe they set me up.

Maybe this is a trap.

A partial recording of the lower level catches her leaving the premises. She has her purse and a jacket on her shoulders. She looks like she’s planned to go out.

I put my cigarette out and watch her vanish through a door.

I don’t have any other view of her.

“She must’ve left the hotel,” I say when the view of the lobby fills the screens.

I can’t spot her.

I use the landline to call the concierge and talk to the woman who’s worked the entire evening.

It takes her a moment to stifle her surprise, and after a few seconds of mumbling and struggling to contain her emotions, she admits she didn’t see Carmina.

She was too distracted by the SUVs outside.

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