Devil's Advocate: A Dark Mafia Romance (Devil's Playground Book 1)

by Vivi Paige

  Dilbert shifted uncomfortably in his chair as the prosecutor droned on and on about the grisly details of the crime. I had to admit it was a good strategy. When your evidence is sketchy, you try to appeal to the jury’s emotions, get them riled up and angry, horrified, offended that a piece of work like Dilbert gets to walk around amongst the normal, law-abiding types.

  I wasn’t worried. I poured myself a glass of water from the pitcher on the table and drank it down. Casually, as if I weren’t even aware, I uncrossed my legs and spread my thighs wide. Judge Maroni’s bushy eyebrows rose just a hair on his wizened face. I knew I had him hooked.

  DA Miller wound up to a crescendo, gesturing toward my client.

  “And now, the people would like to present exhibit A, Mr. Wayne’s cell phone.” Miller lifted it up and paraded it around for their perusal. “Mr. Wayne sent numerous texts to Larry Hansen detailing how he had cold-bloodedly bludgeoned his seventy-year-old aunt to death with a garden spade in her own bed.”

  “Objection, Your Honor,” I said, standing up. “So far, the prosecution has only provided us with transcripts of these alleged text messages.”

  “That’s a standard practice, Miss Vercetti,” Judge Maroni said, pushing his glasses further up on his nose. “It would be hard for the jury to see the texts from the gallery.”

  “I’m aware, Your Honor, but we’re deciding a man’s fate here. Shouldn’t we be thorough?”

  Judge Maroni’s jaw worked silently. “Sustained. Prosecution will allow the jury to peruse these text messages up close and personal.”

  “I can’t just hand over evidence,” Miller sputtered.

  “You can and you will,” Maroni said flatly.

  Miller sighed and pushed the power button. The phone lit up to its loading screen, then the time and date flashed on the screen.

  Miller scrolled through the phone and I tried to hide my smile. His face paled, jaw going slack as he saw what I already knew: the phone had been wiped clean.

  “Problems, Mr. Prosecutor?” I asked.

  “No problem,” he said. “This phone doesn’t appear to be working, but I have a backup.”

  Miller motioned for a man at his table to come and assist. Using a specialized tool, he opened up the smartphone.

  “We backed up the phone’s data in case of this sort of eventuality,” Miller said smoothly. “Now we’ll just pop the SIM card into our brand new, unused smartphone and the jury will see…”

  Miller’s eyes narrowed. He looked over at me, gaze lancing out pure venom.

  “Mr. Miller?” Judge Maroni prompted.

  “I—I’m sorry, Your Honor,” he said. “The SIM card appears to be missing.”

  Now was my chance to strike.

  I stood up smoothly. “Your Honor, in light of the lack of any real physical evidence linking my client to this gruesome crime, I humbly request a dismissal of the charges against him.”

  “It was here!” Miller stammered. “It was right here! The evidence has been tampered with.”

  Maroni sighed. “Mr. Miller, I appreciate your dilemma, but the facts remain the facts. If you should happen to find out where you misplaced the SIM card in question, your office may file charges against Mr. Wayne in the future. For now, I’m dismissing the charges.”

  “You can’t do this,” Miller sputtered. He turned to point at me. “It’s her. Every time Sophie Vercetti steps into a courtroom there’s some type of… of… shenanigans.”

  “Those are serious accusations, Mr. Miller. Do you have any evidence to back them up?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then I suggest you calm down before I find you in contempt. The charge of murder in the first degree against Mr. Wayne is hereby dismissed.”

  The judge banged his gavel and Wayne let out a little whoop that made the courtroom chuckle. Except for the DA’s table, of course.

  “I don’t know how you pulled this off,” Miller hissed. “But I swear to God I’m going to find out. Your days are numbered, Vercetti!”

  I just smiled at him. At that moment, the SIM card in question sat in a hidden compartment of my desk back in my law office. I’d bribed Miller’s own tech expert, the one who’d opened the phone, into providing it to me.

  All I had to do was give him what he wanted: the address of his crazy ex-girlfriend, who had absconded with their infant daughter and fled to a state without an extradition agreement with New York.

  I guess it was underhanded. I mean, my client was guilty as hell and we all knew it. But there was no proof he was, and that was all that mattered.

  I’d won, again.

  Like always.

  Chapter Four

  Sophie

  I strolled into my office with a familiar post-dismissal high, Indian food in one hand and my heels in the other. Acquittals are great, but there’s nothing like the look on the prosecuting attorney’s face when a judge throws out the evidence. And it’s even better when it’s Eddie Miller. It was so easy to get a rise out of him, especially after I refused a coffee date a few months back. Ever since then, he couldn’t help turning beat red at the first sight of me in court.

  “I love having the upper hand,” I said as I walked in to see my receptionist, Katie, still hard at work. After a string of incompetent office temps at my old firm, Katie as a dream. And I paid her enough to keep her that way.

  “Sounds like it went well?”

  “Marconi dismissed the charges.”

  “Another guilty one goes free,” Katie laughed, accepting the Styrofoam container of food I handed her.

  “Don’t tell me it’s bothering you,” I said. “I made it clear when I hired you: I’m in this business to win.”

  “It’s what I love about you!” Katie assured me. “If you have a hunch you can win, you take the case. It doesn’t matter what they did.”

  “It’s not just the hunch,” I said, making my way into my office. “It’s the size of the check they can write me, too!”

  I tossed my dinner onto my desk and popped into my chair, letting the victory wash over me. My client, Dilbert, had looked so grateful when we walked out of the courthouse I thought he might kiss me. Give it another six months, maybe eight, and Dilbert Wayne would be in my waiting room again. A guy like that could only stay out of trouble for so long.

  Should I care more? I wondered as I dropped my heels below my desk and stretched out the arches of my feet. I’ve seen just how fucked up the legal system is. Hundreds of innocent people go to jail every day. And how many guilty ones get off even when they don’t have kick ass lawyers? I’m just another cog in the justice machine.

  Besides, the guilty ones are always the most interesting.

  “We should go over the schedule for tomorrow,” I called out to Katie through the open door as I opened the lid of my biryani.

  Before Katie could respond, the front door opened and Eddie Miller, the prosecuting attorney from this morning, burst in.

  “Where is she?” he asked.

  “Excuse me,” Katie said as she stood. “Do you have an appointment?”

  Eddie looked through the open door of my office and glared at me.

  “What you did in court today? That was bullshit.”

  I didn’t move and just gave him a cold stare from my desk. I knew I made an impressive picture with the floor-to-ceiling windows behind me and the view of downtown Chicago from my tenth-floor office.

  “I’m talking to you, sir,” Katie said, and this time she walked over to stand right in front of him. “I asked if you had an appointment.”

  “It’s all right, Katie,” I told her, slipping my sore feet back into my heels. “Come on in, Eddie.”

  Katie moved aside and Eddie stormed into my office, pacing back and forth in anger. He was older than me by a few years, but you wouldn’t know it to look at him. As young lawyers climbing the ranks in Chicago, we had seen each other in court throughout the years. And while I worked hard to cultivate a sophisticated and attractive appearance, poo
r Eddie couldn’t seem to lose the baby-face that made him look like he was dressing up in daddy’s suit.

  “Tough one today,” I smiled at him. “Do you think the tech messed with it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, Vercetti, but I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”

  “I was trying to win my case. Same as you, Eddie.”

  “Not like me,” he nearly yelled. “I don’t cheat the system. It’s called justice, Sophie.”

  “It’s Vercetti. And if you can’t scrounge together enough evidence to convict a blabbing idiot of a murderer, then I’d say justice won out today, didn’t it?” I smiled sweetly at him.

  “Karma’s a bitch, Vercetti. It’ll catch up to you.”

  “Oh, really?” I asked. I was enjoying this conversation a bit too much and couldn’t resist the opportunity to tease him. “Do you think it’s going to ask me out for coffee? I’d hate to hurt karma’s feelings.”

  “Watch yourself,” Eddie spit out, but now he looked red from embarrassment instead of rage.

  “Katie will show you out,” I said. Katie had been dutifully listening to the conversation, and she swooped in immediately, sliding her arm into Eddie’s. He looked a bit stunned as she led him out of my office and then into the hallway before closing the door behind him.

  “What a nut job!” Katie said, returning to my door frame. “Eat in peace. Let’s chat schedule in fifteen.” She reached in for the door handle and closed my door, leaving me alone.

  I took a deep breath and fished the keys from my purse. With the smallest key on the keychain, I opened the lower left drawer of my desk. Inside there was nothing but papers and paper clips, but if you knew where to press… with a click, the false bottom of the drawer opened to reveal a tiny compartment. I slipped my finger inside and felt the hard plastic of the SIM card. Still there. Still safe.

  The buzz from my work phone startled me, and I quickly lifted the false bottom back into place and closed the drawer, locking it.

  “What is it, Katie?”

  “There’s someone to see you. He says he’s your future client,” Katie said through the phone.

  “Tell him to make an appointment and come back tomorrow.”

  “I tried that,” Katie said. I could hear uncertainty in her voice, which was odd.

  “Enough of this,” I heard from the other side of the door. A man’s voice.

  Just then, my office door swung open and trouble, in the shape of a handsome, 6’3” stranger, walked through it.

  Chapter Five

  Indro

  Che cazzo. Che cosa è con i numeri cazzo. Of course this broad had to work at 111 Jackson Ave. Not a good omen. Sicilians got a thing with omens, and I got a thing with numbers. My brother Flavio says I got ‘obsessive compulsive something or other,’ but I just like even numbers, all right? They scratch an itch somewhere in my brain. I don’t play spreads or lay down on ponies if the numbers don’t end in zero, or can’t be cut cleanly in half. It’s so satisfying when something gets cut cleanly in half. I guess it’s a good thing I joined the family business.

  The little dessert at the front desk—Kathy? Katie? —was cute, tryin’ to keep me from going into this Vercetti broad’s office, but I had business to attend to, and the clock was ticking. On top of that, I’m not accustomed to being told what I can’t do.

  “Enough of this shit,” I said politely, and gently moved the little dessert to the side. When I opened the door to Vercetti’s office I was met with an unanticipated surprise. I was expecting a frumpy, hard-nosed lawyer type, with bad skin and a saggy rack. What I was staring at was hot enough to make the Devil ask for ice water.

  Merda santa—holy shit. I helped myself to a seat across from this beautiful work of art and kicked my Bontonis up onto the desk, so she knew that I was callin’ the shots. She stared me dead in the eye for what seemed like an eternity.

  “I don’t care what little old pig fucker from the Old Country hand-tooled your guido shoes, but they don’t belong on my desk. I’m the leading criminal defense attorney in this state and you’ll show me the respect I worked for,” she said curtly.

  “All right. All right.” I said, offering my hands in a mea culpa, and lowered my shoes. “That’s a lotta bark for a broad what looks like she walked out of a magazine.”

  “You will refer to me as Counselor, Counselor Vercetti, or Your Majesty, now what do you want? Because if it's just a chit-chat and some not-so-casual misogyny, I have cases that need my attention.”

  Gesú Cristo. This one’s got balls. I like her. “My name is Indro L—“

  “Indro Lastra from the Maloik family. I know who you are. I don’t represent organized crime. Too risky.”

  “Crime? Who said anything about crime? We’re in the waste management business.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, returning to her lunch.

  “What is that? What are you eating?”

  “Biryani… Indian food.”

  “It smells like it,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “C’mon. Let me take you down to Carmine’s and we can talk over a proper lunch. They got a cacio e pepe that’ll make you swear you were in your mother’s kitchen. It’s almost as beautiful as you,” I said, kissing my fingers.

  “I told you, I don’t get involved with Families.”

  “And I heard you, but I’m gonna need you to make an exception in this case. I’m in a lot of trouble here, and if you help us out on this, we will remember that favor when, say… elections for District Attorney roll around.”

  Vercetti closed the Styrofoam container and bent forward over her desk. She clasped her hands like a kid praying at her bedside, and the way she was leaning gave me an enticing view down the front of her silky blouse. This salty chick had it goin’ on everywhere that mattered. My eyes followed her curves into that olive-toned canyon, and, for a moment, I forgot why I was there.

  “Mr. Lastra?”

  “Please, call me Indy,” I said, returning my eyes to hers with an impish grin.

  “Mr. Lastra, why are you here? Why me? Doesn’t your family have a tank full of sharks that could twist the arms of any prosecutor in the city?”

  “If I’m being honest with you, Miss… excuse me, Counselor Vercetti, most of our guys have been flagged by the ABA for… non-traditional tactics. The suits we have that aren’t on probation won’t get anywhere near this.”

  “And why is that?” she asked stiffly.

  “I was witnessed in the act of… taking out some garbage, let’s say, by someone in the wrong place at the wrong time. To make matters a touch more complicated, this tizio del cazzo is a uh.. well, he’s a Catholic priest.” Perdonami Padre, I thought with a quick sign of the cross.

  “HA!” she exploded with a single, short guffaw. “If you want my professional opinion, Mr. Lastra… Indy, you’re fucked like an altar boy in the 80s.”

  “That's exactly why I need you, Counselor. You come with very high recommendations. I hear you’re the best.”

  “I am the best. I’m the best precisely because I don’t take cases I can’t win. You have a first-hand eye-witness to a murder—“

  “—alleged—”

  “—alleged murder, who also happens to be a Catholic priest. That’s a prosecutor's wet dream. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

  The cute, brassy business act was beginning to lose its charm, and I could feel heat starting to rise from under my collar. “Listen to me carefully. I’m about to lose my patience, and I promise you, I’m much less understanding when I’m angry. Capisce?”

  “Are you threatening me? I’ve already lost my patience with you and your bullshit bravado. Please leave my office before I have somebody escort you out.”

  “Puttana,” I hissed, sending her desk organizer across the room and into the wall. “I’ll be back, Vercetti.”

  “No… you won’t.”

  I paced on the street below her office, smoking a cigarette and trying to defuse the rage boiling in my
blood. Nessuno mi unfungulo, I cursed to myself, kicking over a trashcan and scattering the passers-by on the sidewalk. Calm down, Lastra. Everybody has a breaking point. Just find hers, apply the right leverage, and do it fast. If this thing goes south you’re going away for a long, long time.

  I pulled up my collar and headed off into the blustery Chicago air.

  Chapter Six

  Indro

  “Little Columbo, you got a law degree?” I asked, tossing the crumbs of my pretzel to the fat white pigeon on my left. Little bastard didn’t answer, just took my crumbs and took off.

  Pigeons know what’s up. That’s why I like them. My Nonno Lastra kept pigeons on our roof. He used to take me up to feed them when I was little. It was magical up there, a rare pocket of peace in my deafening family. The beat of wings from a flight of doves was my lullaby. Maybe that’s why I always found myself feeding pigeons when I needed to get my head together.

  I’d spent the whole afternoon trying to dig up dirt on Counselor Vercetti. Every delinquent in the city knew her name. Hell, half of them already had her in their phones, in case they needed her services, but the bitch was crafty. None of them had even a crumb of dirt on her. Not that she wasn’t crooked. I’d heard plenty of stories, but nothing I could use. I was at a dead end.

  Suddenly, a little girl appeared at the edge of the park. She was moving at warp speed. She had pulled away from her dad and was shrieking into my flock. She couldn’t have been more than four, in a little red coat, long black hair flying out behind her. The birds rose around her in a beating cloud of sound and feathers. She laughed and twirled and I laughed ruefully with her. This kid and these pigeons were going to be my last happy memory if I didn’t figure out my next move.

  The dad trotted up, muttering apologies. He had one of those embarrassing white pods in his ear and was gripping a thousand-dollar Chinese tracking device disguised as a phone. I had one, too, but I hated it and kept it off most of the time. The SIM cards in those things are like a narc in your pocket. And then it hit me. The SIM card.