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After they killed him, they would leave there and go kill Jaylinda and Epps. He thought about dropping the whole thing on Epps, but Rex knew that Epps would give her up to save his own ass. So, Rex remained silent and took the brutal beating from Geno until Rain stood up.
She took out her gun and walked over to Rex.
“I don’t know who or what you’re protecting, but I’ll find out. I just hope that whoever or whatever it was, was worth dying for,” she said, and shot him once in the head.
Chapter Ten
The following morning, Valencia was in the conference room at her office, listening to the presentation that Pooja was going to give to a prospective client. As Pooja enthusiastically talked about how their cloud platforms would allow data aggregation from multiple sources without latency or hefty financial overhead, she was barely paying attention. Her mind was drifting to the night before for more reasons than just one.
“Older analytical models typically rely on very tedious processes, and workers often have to resort to outdated methods such as printouts and manual spreadsheet entries to share data back and forth.”
Seeing Geno again after all these years was great. He was just as handsome as the last time she saw him, and Valencia would be extremely interested in seeing him again.
In fact, I plan on it.
But where her mind was, was on the fact that she saw her opportunity to get to Mike Black slipping away. Valencia had hoped that Shy could have delivered on her promise of face time, especially when she saw some of the people that were at the party. Her first clue that she was in the right place to broach the subject with Black was the woman standing next to Shy waving the gun around. Then there was the appearance of Carter Garrison.
“In contrast, cloud application integration facilitates communication, and the collaboration of reports and analytics,” Pooja explained.
One night, while they were sharing pillow talk, Geno told Valencia about his best friend Carter, and even went as far as to share a kind and gentle Carter Garrison story. At the time, Geno never made any mention of Mike Black, whom she had heard of, or that Carter worked for him. She found that out when Ezequiel Simmonds began telling her about The Family, and what he needed her to do for him and the Comodoro Cartel. And unless she heard wrong, the Rain who was waiting for Geno and Carter was Rain Robinson, the new boss of Mike Black’s criminal organization.
“Stock market traders and financial organizations depend on analytics and up-to-the-minute reporting and notifications. This kind of real-time data gives stock traders a serious edge over their competition. On-site servers can be costly to maintain under the best of circumstances, and those expenses multiply when you have numerous office branches. Businesses must pay not just for hardware, but also for physical space to house the machines.”
But all of the hopes that she had of being free of the hold that Ezequiel Simmonds had over her when she walked through the door at Purple the night before, turned out to be disappointing. She never saw Black, much less had a chance to talk to him. And even though Shy invited her, Valencia didn’t think it was appropriate for her to just go over to the table and join the party. Besides, Ryder scared her, so she left and went home.
The only bright spot in the evening was seeing Geno. During some of the darker days of her marriage to Gustavo, Valencia would think about Geno and wonder how things would have turned out if she had followed her heart instead of her mind.
“Communication and document-sharing between multiple workplaces can get clumsy and ineffective in the absence of the cloud,” Pooja said, as Adrianna burst into the conference room.
“Excuse me for barging in,” Adrianna interrupted.
“What is it, Adrianna?” Valencia may have barked, but she was glad for the interruption.
“You have a call holding on two.”
“Who is it?”
“Geno Crocker. He didn’t say what company that he represented,” Adrianna said, and Valencia laughed.
What was he going to say; I’m Geno Crocker with Gangsters incorporated?
“I need to take this call, Pooja. So let’s pick this up sometime after lunch.”
“Sounds good,” she said as she began packing up her materials.
“You may also want to include that using cloud-based solutions makes it easier for workers to access tools and information remotely,” Adrianna offered, and Pooja rolled her eyes as she followed Valencia out.
As she walked across the hall to her office, Valencia was excited about getting together with Geno again after all these years. She closed the door, as an image of them on the balcony in Vegas crossed her mind. She smiled over the memory, sat down and was about to pick up the phone, when it occurred to her that maybe Geno was her ticket to getting to Black.
“Hello,” she said, no longer sure if she was excited about talking to Geno, or just that he might be able to get her to Black.
“How are you today, Valencia?”
“Wonderful. Full of life and enthusiasm. What about you, anything amazing going on in your world today?”
“Not today. But last night I ran into an old friend that I haven’t seen … or heard from in years, and I am excited about the chance to see her again.”
“Really?”
