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The oldest Rosetti shrugged, and the younger one smirked sadistically before stating, “I survived the wrath of the Don. I’d like to see him try.”
“Sir.” Matteo interrupted from the doorway. “We have news.” Behind him, Saul and Dio stood ominously with death in their eyes. They took it personally that someone attacked Arianna in her own home right under their noses, and I intended to let them use that anger in her favor to figure this whole mess out.
“Send Molly in,” I replied, nodding for Carmine and Cristian to exit the room before leaning down and kissing Ari’s forehead. “I’ll be right outside, Little One. I love you.”
I hadn’t left her side since the entire thing began, but I needed to eliminate the threat to her safety, and I didn’t need to do that in front of her in case she could hear us. I didn’t want anything at all upsetting her.
Molly walked in and took my seat, picking up Ari’s hand and nodding to me.
She had her.
The young girl’s loyalty to my wife was fierce and there was no better feeling in the world than knowing that Ari had someone unapologetically in her corner beside me.
“I’ll be right back. Dio and Saul will be at the door.” I walked towards the hallway when her gentle voice called me back.
“Make it hurt, Nico.” Molly looked down at my wife, but I knew it was her that spoke. “Whoever did this to her.” She turned her gaze up to me with misty eyes, “Make it fucking hurt in repayment.”
“I will, Molly.” I bowed my head and walked out, feeling shaken by her viciousness. She was always calm and gentle, but she was as rattled by this whole thing as I was. And if she needed violence to settle her equilibrium, I’d give it to her.
An empty room sat across the hall, and I followed Matteo, Carmine, and Cristian into it, where we could all still see into Ari’s room.
“It took nine guys reviewing the security footage from the last two weeks, but we found who did it and sequentially found the mole leaking information to Emilio,” Matteo said, linking his phone to the tv and pulling up a picture of a woman in one of our maid’s uniforms. “Her name is Valentina Shaw. Though she went by the name Valentina Harlow when she applied for the job as a maid at Armarow. She was vetted, but the alias wasn’t picked up.”
Rage burned inside of me as I saw the face of the woman responsible for hurting my wife and unborn baby. “Show me.”
Arianna’s brothers tensed beside me as we watched clips of the security footage from the kitchen as Alec prepared dinner. He was mixing the pasta dough out on the counter when Molly walked in, followed by the provision staff that brought groceries to the estate a couple of times a week. Alec walked away from the food and took the list from Molly as the staff unpacked the items and started putting them away.
One of the provisions staff was the woman from the picture.
Valentina.
She took a couple of different loads of groceries through the kitchen to the pantry, and each time she looked around the kitchen and then into the mix sitting unattended on the counter. On her last trip by the dough, she flicked her hand over the top, pausing for only a fraction of a second as, and poured something, into the dough.
“Play it back,” I said, and Matteo rewound the tape, zooming in on the mix itself and playing it frame by frame as the woman walked by.
In the opening of her sleeve, a glass vial stuck out under her hand and as she flicked her wrist, a clear liquid poured into the dough.
I watched it over and over again, in forward and reverse, trying to figure out someone could take three and a half seconds out of their life, and come damn fucking close to killing Arianna because of it.
That was it.
Three and a half seconds from start to finish before all traces of the liquid inside the dough were gone.
After the provisions were done, Alec returned to the counter and finished preparing the dough to be pressed and rolled into tortellini for our dinner.
“Was the chef in on it?” Carmine asked.
“No,” I answered instantly, “He bloody adores your sister.” I shook my head. “His meal was just the weapon that woman used.”
“There’s more,” Matteo said grimly, drawing our attention back to him from the screen. “When the guys were watching the kitchen footage, they came across this.”
He switched video clips, and we watched his new footage.
The kitchen was busy, early morning prep was happening all around the space as maids and butlers filed in and out of the space. “When was this?” I asked.
“The day you and Arianna returned to Armarow,” Matteo answered. “Watch the top left corner.”
Seconds later the same maid walked into the room with a stack of linens in her hands, opening the door to the cabinet in the butler’s pantry to put them away.
