Dangerous…

Tori Carrington

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty One

Epilogue

Copyright

TORI CARRINGTON

Romantic Times BOOKreviews Career Achievement Award winning husband-and-wife duo Lori and Tony Karayianni are the power behind the pen name Tori Carrington. They call Toledo, Ohio, home base, but travel to Tony’s home town of Athens, Greece, whenever they can. For more information on the couple, their books and where they plan to appear next with a fresh batch of Tony’s Famous Baklava in hand, visit www.toricarrington.net.

Dear Reader,

Part of what we love about writing is the opportunity to immerse ourselves in worlds that are utterly foreign to us. To examine the people who inhabit these places, and ultimately not only understand them and accept that this is their reality, but to come to love them for who they are and root for them.

This has never been more true for us than it was with Dangerous… Gia Trainello is a Mafia princess who is elevated to Lady Boss when her father and brother are assassinated, sucked back into a life she left behind a long time ago along with love Lucas Paretti. But Lucas is not what he appears. Gia must find out the hard way that the road to hell is, indeed, paved with good intentions. And that lost love is the ultimate sacrifice.

We hope you’re riveted by Gia and Lucas’s sometimes heartbreaking journey towards happily-ever-after. We’d love to hear what you think. Contact us at PO Box 12271, Toledo, OH 43612, USA, (we’ll respond with a signed bookplate, newsletter and bookmark), or visit us on the web at www.toricarrington.net.

Here’s wishing you love, romance and HOT reading.

Lori & Tony Karayianni aka Tori Carrington

we dedicate this book to all those who ceaselessly strive toward a greater understanding of the world around us and the people who inhabit it. And to our spectacular editor Brenda Chin, who knows what we’re trying to say when we’re having a hard time saying it.

Prologue

CLAUDIO LANCIONE WAS the last person who would normally attract Gia Trainello. She’d known him for most of her life and he’d always been a part of the family. A fixture, really. Handsome, yes. But she’d never so much as shared a suggestive smile with him, much less a kiss and promise of something more. But grief, it was said, made people do strange things.

And Gia was definitely grieving.

The four-star hotel-room sheets chafed Gia’s bare legs as she curled into a ball. Had it really only been four days since her father and younger brother, Mario, had been gunned down in broad daylight? A day since she’d said her final good- byes at a burial service attended by hundreds she hadn’t wanted to face? Twenty-four hours since she’d watched her older brother, Lorenzo, being pushed away in a wheelchair, barely conscious of what had happened because his private nurse had given him enough sedatives to make a bull lie down before a matador during his brief excursion from the hospital?

A few hours since she’d slipped Claudio a note asking him to meet her, desperately wanting, needing to feel something other than the pain crowding her chest, making it almost impossible for her to breathe, and then virtually ripping off his clothes the instant he’d entered the hotel suite?

Oh, she’d managed to throw herself into the physical sexual activity. Had even achieved a shallow climax or two. But always, always there were the images of her father’s and brother’s closed caskets. Always, always there was the memory of the line of nonstop visitors milling through her father’s house to offer their condolences and to drink wine from his carefully stocked cellar. Always, always there was the feeling that she no longer belonged in the house where she had grown up and which she had long since left, even though she felt obligated to receive the visitors—especially with Lorenzo— the third victim of the tragedy—still hospitalized.

Always, always there was the gaping hole in her life that she feared might never be filled again.

The image of Luca Paretti claimed her mind’s eye. Striking Luca Paretti, standing to the side of the casket, forever present during the reception, reminding her of times better forgotten. Luca Paretti, who had once willingly played young Romeo to her teenage Juliet…and then disappeared when she’d needed him most, only to reappear again a few months ago.

Luca Paretti, the one she truly longed to be in bed with just then even though the two of them hadn’t shared more than a few cordial words in four days.

Even if allowing him entrance back into her life and her heart would be the ultimate mistake.

Claudio moved beside her and Gia went still, hoping he hadn’t awakened. She just needed a few moments more to herself. A little longer to feel the warmth, however fleeting and deceptive, against her skin before she had to force herself out of the bed and on with the rest of a life that wouldn’t include her father, brother…or Luca Paretti.

Her cell phone vibrated on the night table. Gia stared at it, and then the clock next to it: 4:30 a.m. Who would be calling her at such an ungodly hour? Only someone wanting to share ungodly news.

Claudio curved against her backside. “Are you going to get that?”

Gia uncurled her legs and entwined them with his. “I was thinking about it.”

The phone went silent and the decision was taken away from her.

Like most decisions over the past few days. Not only in connection to the funeral arrangements. Her interest in her Bona Dea Fashion Designs had been nil and her partner, Bryan Dragomir, had had to step in to fill both pairs of shoes.

She rubbed her forehead with the heel of her hand and closed her eyes. For so long she’d lived outside the cone of the family’s influence. While only the East River had separated her from the Venuto crime family, it had seemed like an ocean when she’d originally gone into the city to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology. Farther still when she’d started Bona Dea with her dearest friend, Bryan, spending the past five years building the company into a force to be reckoned with in the New York fashion world. They owned three upscale boutiques in Manhattan and had plans to expand even further, with shops in Chicago, Dallas and L. A.

But the death of her father and brother had sucked her back into the family with the strength of a riptide. Reminding her of the fear she’d had growing up. The worry that her father might be killed had shadowed every moment of every day. And when her two brothers signed on, she’d feared they’d been added to death’s list.

A list she’d escaped first because she was a woman, second because Luca Paretti had made it impossible to stay in a place that reminded her forever of him.

But while she’d been aware of the danger that surrounded many of her family members, she’d never expected that they’d all be taken from her in one fell swoop.

Or by one assassin’s gun.

And while Lorenzo was still on this side of the earth that covered her father and younger brother, he wasn’t walking it. And might never walk it again.

The telephone began to vibrate anew even as she felt Claudio’s hand slide around her waist then shift up to cup her breast.

She reached for the phone.

The number was unlisted.

“Hello?”

“Gia?”

“This is she.”

“Vito here.”

Vito. Her father’s second in command. The man who had been as broken as any blood relative by recent events. And had taken care of so much over the past few days when she’d been incapable of seeing too much of anything at all.

“Sorry to call you so late. But I’ve got some information on the people responsible for the killings. And you said you wanted to know the instant it came in.”

That seemed so long ago, when she’d stood over her father’s casket and told the man she called Uncle Vito that she wanted revenge.

“I’ve come up with one name so far. Claudio Lancione.”

Gia lay frozen for a full minute, trying to assimilate the information. She didn’t question Vito. If he said the man who was stroking her breast even now had been involved in the shooting, then he’d been involved. It was as simple as that.

Her stomach clenched tightly, filling her throat with bile as shame and fury fought for control within her.

“Where are you?” Vito asked. “I want to send a couple of guys to keep an eye on you until we figure out how deep inside the family the conspiracy goes.”

Vito apparently understood enough to know that she wasn’t at her Upper West Side penthouse apartment. But not enough to know that she was with Claudio right that moment.

She told him where she was and then slowly closed the phone.

“What’s going on?” Claudio asked.

Gia swallowed thickly, afraid she might be sick as she gathered her wits tightly around her. “They have the name of one of those responsible for the hit.”

He rolled on top of her, his manhood hard and pulsing between her legs. “Oh, yeah? Who?”

Gia arched her back, and stretched her arms above her head, appearing to be doing nothing more than bracing herself against the headboard for another round of sex.

Instead she reached for Claudio’s holster where he’d hung it on the far bedpost, her fingers trembling. She kissed him deeply, hot tears blurring his features, even as she freed the gun, blindly sought and found the safety and switched it off, and then brought the cold metal muzzle to rest against Claudio’s temple.

“You.”

She squeezed the trigger.

1

One month later...

LUCAS PARETTI STOOD off to the side of the wide front steps to the Long Island Trainello estate, watching as people came and went, none of them leaving a particularly lasting impression. It was at times like these when it was all too easy to forget the past seven years existed. Too easy to remember himself as little more than a kid fascinated by, and proud to be associated with, the family. More specifically, the Venuto crime family, one of the most powerful of five mafia families in the New York City area that had been headed by Giovanni Trainello.

Too easy to imagine that he and Gia Trainello were the same young couple in love, stealing a few, precious minutes alone whenever they could.

Then he remembered his younger brother, Angelo, and he felt the warmth leave his blood.

He fished for a cigarette from a pack he’d had for a month and lit up, squinting through the blue smoke at the street.

Angelo. There was a time when not a moment went by when he wasn’t acutely aware of the loss. When he went to his parents’ small walk-up Brooklyn apartment and felt that emptiness everywhere he looked, including in his parents’ faces, and saw the way they appeared twenty years older than they were.

Angelo had been seventeen when he’d vowed to follow in Lucas’s footsteps.

Seventeen when he began going to the Trainello business front in Brooklyn begging for odd jobs.

Seventeen when he’d been gunned down, forever losing his rights to turning eighteen.

Lucas looked down the long, curving driveway bordered by lush, mature trees, suddenly surprised that he was out in Long Island instead of in Brooklyn where his brother had been killed. For a moment he could smell the wet concrete sidewalk that had recently been watered down, the exhaust from cars on a nearby busy street. In his mind’s eye, he saw the yellow crime scene tape and the stain made by Angelo’s blood.

And the spot on his own shirt, made as he’d cradled his brother’s head in his arms, pleading for him to come back.

The flashbacks didn’t happen as often as they once did. Which was a good thing. Because if he thought about what had happened to his brother every moment of every day, he would never be able to function. Never be able to focus on what he had come back to New York, come back into the family, to do.

Another part of him supposed he’d purposely pushed thoughts of his brother aside over the past month because the entire reason for him being there had changed, and by all rights he should have quit his cover position as Venuto family attorney and have been on the first plane back to St. Paul, returning to New York only to occasionally visit his parents.

A black Lexus sedan pulled up the driveway, the reason why he wasn’t on that plane and was instead still working undercover sitting in the back seat. Gia Trainello. He took another drag off the cigarette, watching her black stiletto heels hit the pavement, her black stockings clinging against her shapely calves as she got out. Her gaze locked with his beyond her large sunglasses and she looked surprised to see him. Just as she had nearly every day over the past month since her father and brother had been killed.

Then the moment passed and she’d either nod or say hello, and circumstances returned to normal.

“Morning, Luca,” she said softly.

“Good morning.”

And just like that the driver handed her her bags from the trunk of the car and the connection was broken, restless ghosts chased back into the shadows of the past as she walked up the stairs to the sprawling Italian villa-style estate and disappeared inside the house.

Gia Trainello. The reason why he’d stuck around.

And the number-one reason why he should still catch the first flight out for St. Paul.

THE QUIET MOMENTS in Gia’s life were few and far between now. Which wasn’t entirely a bad thing. The busier she was, the less likely she was to remember that night at the Seasons when she’d shot Claudio with his own gun and then lay there with his motionless body on top of her until Vito’s men arrived. It had taken the sound of them gaining access to the room to bring her around to the reality of the situation. And as soon as they’d removed his body, she’d curled into a fetal position, ignoring attempts to get her to move, to leave the room before anyone started snooping around. Or, worse yet, called the police.

She couldn’t remember who had dressed her and taken her back to her place. All she could recall was that when she awakened twelve hours later and clawed her way to the shower, her skin was still covered with Claudio’s blood.

And twelve long hours after that, when her known world had refused to start revolving again, and she’d felt the shadows of the Venuto family sucking at her heels, she’d known what she had to do if she hoped to ever return to any kind of sense of normalcy: she had to step into her father’s shoes until her father and brother’s assassins were brought to justice.

Family justice.

In the past month, her days had come to look very different from the life she’d known before. She’d packed her penthouse apartment in mothballs and then moved back into the family house in Long Island. There wasn’t a time when there weren’t at least five armed men around her, and more guarding the compound. It was almost as if the past seven years in Manhattan had never existed…except for when her partner, Bona Dea Bryan, came to visit her to discuss company business.

Like he was this morning.

She stood at the window, watching where Luca spoke to Vito on the back balcony. Luca was smoking a cigarette, which likely explained why the conversation was taking place outside. Longing, pure and strong, swept through her veins. Both for the man now, and the man she’d known in the past.

“Gia? Are you still with me?” Bryan asked from behind her. She turned to face him.

That was the question, wasn’t it? Was she still with him? Physically, she was in her father’s old- world office, the new designs for the spring collection spread out on a polished oak conference table between the two of them, but emotionally she was far, far away.

“I’m sorry. I missed the last part of what you said.”

Bryan sighed. “I don’t think you’ve heard a single word since I arrived an hour ago.”

“Don’t be silly.” She took in his dubious look. “I heard half. At least.”

He chuckled and then closed the sketchbook. “That’s okay. We can do this another time. I mean, a couple of days isn’t going to make that big of a difference.”

But she knew that it would. New York Fashion Week was only a month and a half away and it would be then that they would spotlight their spring collection. Which meant important decisions needed to be made. Pieces chosen and rushed into production. Ads taken out. Meetings to arrange. Magazine editors to wine and dine.

Bryan zipped up his case. But rather than kiss her goodbye and leave, he let the case drop back to the table, then gestured for her to sit with him in the chairs facing the fireplace, left cold in the August heat. Gia caressed the arms of the leather wing chair. Her father’s favorite.

“I’m worried about you, Gia,” Bryan said, watching her closely.

That was a switch. Ever since they’d become fast friends in college, she’d been the one to look after him. Despite his macho demeanor, Bryan was a big softy and she’d often spent time talking him through heartache or an attack of nerves. Their individual strengths shored up the other’s weaknesses, making them great business partners. And even better friends.

She managed a smile. “Don’t be. I’m fine.”

“Are you?”

She averted her gaze. No, she wasn’t. But she would be. Soon.

“Are the rumors true?”

“What rumors?”

“That you’re the new Lady Boss of the Venuto family.”

Gia stared at him, his words at odds with his WASPish good looks and friendly grin.

Of course, it wasn’t the first she’d heard the reference. The New York dailies had been running pieces on her for weeks following the funeral, most times with bold headlines calling her the same.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “I’m just straightening out some unfinished business.”

“Estate matters?”

She didn’t answer immediately. Then she said, “Something like that.”

“How’s your brother?”

Lorenzo. Her heart ached. “Getting better.”

Gia wondered when lying had become so easy for her. The truth was that Lorenzo wasn’t doing well at all. He’d developed an addiction to the pain pills prescribed to help him deal with his spinal-injury pain. So rather than seeing to the therapy sessions necessary to help him regain his mobility, he passed his days lying in a hospital bed she’d had set up in his old bedroom upstairs, with twenty-four-hour nursing care, and only doctor visits as the highlight of his days.

“Look, Bry,” she said, leaning closer to him, “I appreciate your concern. But I’m fine. Really. All this is…just temporary. If you can continue to hold down the fort a little longer without me…I’ll be back on the job in no time flat. You just wait and see.”

He appeared doubtful. And she couldn’t blame him.

Still, he nodded and then looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get back to the city. I have an eleven o’clock with Elite to close the deal on the models we want for the show.”

Gia stood up to give him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for coming out.”

He shook his finger at her as he picked up his case from the table. “Next time you come to the office.”

Gia walked him to the door, noticing how the armed men blended into the shadows to let him pass. He got into the car he’d hired to bring him out and then disappeared down the driveway.

She turned around to find the last person on earth she needed to see standing behind her. And her throat tightened to the point of pain.

Luca Paretti.

2

LUCAS HAD BEEN WAITING for over an hour for Gia to finish with her meeting. He supposed that was part of the price he paid for expecting to see Gia— now referred to as Miss Gia by family members— without an appointment. But every time he’d called over the past month to book a time when he might talk to her, she’d avoided him at every turn.

So he’d had to push his luck by confronting her when she wasn’t expecting it.

“Luca,” she said on what might have been a sigh, using the Italian pronunciation of his name rather than Lucas.

“Gia. You look well.”

She took his hands and kissed him on both cheeks, but the movement was perfunctory, with no warmth behind the action. At least not the kind of warmth he may have wanted. Despite the way she seemed to linger after the second kiss, as if reluctant to move away from him.

But she did, stepping back so that he could look into her wide, dark eyes.

“Sorry to have to resort to subterfuge to see you,” Lucas said, following her to Giovanni’s office without waiting to be invited. “But I have several important matters to discuss with the head of the family. And since I understand that title has been bestowed on you, then you’re the one I need to discuss them with.”

The first time he’d seen her after so many years, he’d felt like someone had hit him in the chest with a two-by-four. While she’d been pretty when he’d known her before, there had been a girl-child innocence about her. Now…well, now she was one hundred percent smoky Mediterranean beauty, whose dark eyes spoke of a mystery and wisdom that surpassed her years.

He’d seen countless pictures of her in the paper in recent weeks. Whether the shots focused on her in a black veil weeping over her father’s and brother’s caskets, or getting out of a family limousine, she always seemed to be looking elsewhere, her features set in dark determination. An elusive beauty always dressed in black.

And today was no exception. She wore a stylish clingy black top and skinny black pants, the flats she wore making her six inches shorter than him, but still tall by female standards at around five-nine.

Over the years, he’d followed her career from afar and knew that many questioned why she would choose a role behind the fashion scene instead of up front and center. She easily equaled, if not eclipsed, many of the models she used for her shows and print ads.

But the media didn’t know what he did about Gia: namely that after her mother died when she was seven, she’d escaped into a world of her own making. A cerebral world of books and art and fashion. And, aside from his few carefree months with her, that’s where she remained.

He remembered saying that when he grew up, he wanted to be attorney to the mob, and that she had wanted to be the next Donatella Versace.

He supposed they both got what they’d wanted.

He could tell her she looked good but knew that would have little impact on her. In fact, it might hurt his cause, because she’d likely shut him out. He’d heard the stories about her having seen to the Claudio Lancione hit on her own. Some said that they’d even been having sex at the time. But he couldn’t think about that in order to do what he had to.

“What can I do for you, Luca?” she asked, as if she hadn’t spent the past month avoiding him.

But he knew she had been avoiding him. Not because she was grieving, although he knew she was. He saw it in the faint circles under her eyes. In the extra paleness of her skin.

But because he had left her without explanation seven years ago.

“There are some legal matters you need to attend to immediately unless you want everything to come crashing down around your ears.”

She raised a black brow. “I’m sure Vito can help you with whatever you need.”

Lucas shook his head. “No. Only the person in charge can see to these matters.”

She held his gaze for a long moment, as if trying to read beyond his actions. He wondered when she’d become so guarded. No, he didn’t have to wonder. He knew. And he knew he’d played a role in one of her first understandings that life wasn’t all sunshine and daisies and good intentions. Oh, she’d certainly been aware of danger—after all, she’d been born and raised under the Trainello roof. But he’d been among the first to wrong her.

And now she’d been wronged again.

“I’m in charge only until my brother Lorenzo can take over.” She finally broke their gaze and walked toward her father’s old desk. He caught the way she ran her fingertips across the top before sitting down in the chair and looking at him again. He took the seat opposite her.

“I understand he’s doing better,” Lucas said, even though he knew that that wasn’t the case at all. Her older brother was little more than a functioning vegetable by choice.

Still, Gia nodded, giving away nothing with her expression as she folded her hands on top of the desk. “What do you need, Luca? I don’t have much time.”

He opened his briefcase and took out a series of documents. “These are the Trainello estate papers. I assume that you’d like to be named power of attorney. You know, until Lorenzo can take over.”

She nodded.

“Well, you have to do that legally. There have already been several claims made against the estate having to deal with outstanding debt and the like that you’ll have to see to. And, of course, there’s probate that you’ll have to go through.”

He put the papers in front of her.

“Can’t someone else do all this?” she asked.

“Yes,” Lucas said. “Me. But you’d have to sign that power over to me.”

Finally, a show of emotion via a spark in her dark eyes. “I’m not signing any power over to anyone.”

Lucas sat back, mildly amused. “That’s what I thought you’d say. Which means you need to sign where I’ve indicated. You won’t have to do much. I’ll take care of overseeing what needs to be done…with your supervision, of course.”

She finally appeared to give the papers in front of her the attention they deserved.

Lucas fought the urge to tug at his collar. In all his imaginings, he would never have thought that being in Gia’s company again after so long would bring back a few memories of his own. Or inspire in him a desire to relive a great many of them.

Despite what his actions might have left her to believe, she’d touched a place inside him no one else had been able to reach. And even now that spot ached in a way he was helpless to stop.

At least not in her presence.

He cleared his throat and started to get up. “Why don’t I just leave the documents with you and come back for them.”

She blinked at him, apparently surprised by his abrupt change in behavior. Hadn’t he been the one to insist on the meeting? Why, then, was he in a hurry to get out of there?

She sighed. “Fine.”

She put the papers aside and then rose to lead him to the door.

Lucas followed. “How about dinner?”

She looked at him so quickly a strand of her shiny, long black hair stuck to her red lips. “What?”

“Dinnertime,” Lucas explained, watching as she put the strand back into place.

One simple move. One tiny blip in time. One undeniable distraction that switched his mind from the matter at hand to the woman who was close enough to touch.

He breathed in the smell of her perfume. A subtle mixture of lemon and vanilla. It was all he could do not to lean in closer so he might get a better sense of how the scent mingled with her own personal aroma.

He quietly cleared his throat, but the act did little to return his voice to normal. “Why don’t I come back around dinnertime. Surely you take time out to eat, don’t you? I can collect the papers then and talk to you about other matters at hand.”

Gia apparently caught on to his attentive state and his preoccupation with the pulse at the base of her neck where he imagined she’d applied her perfume this morning. She swallowed thickly even as her pupils grew large.

Lucas was powerless to stop his mouth from moving toward where hers loomed temptingly within reach.

“Miss Gia?” one of the Trainello goons that had been hiding in the shadows emerged, wearing an earpiece he was apparently listening to. “Your next appointment has arrived.”

The connection snapped.

Lucas squared his shoulders and Gia took a physical step away.

“Very good, Tony,” she said, louder than necessary. “Um, escort Mr. Tamburo into the library until I call for him.”

She turned back toward Lucas, looking mystified by him, bewildered by her own emotions.

And—he hoped—perhaps on a level she was loath to admit, still anticipating his kiss.

“How’s six o’clock?” he asked.

She looked toward where Tony had been a moment before and then back at him. He fully expected her to refuse the dinner meeting.

Instead, she met his gaze head-on and said, “Make it seven.”

Lucas watched her make her way back down the hall, appearing more self-conscious of her movements than she had been before.

Then he turned, opening the front door at the same time as Vincenzo Tamburo, the head of the Peluso crime family, climbed the last step, two of his henchman in tow.

Whatever lingering emotions might have remained after nearly kissing Gia vanished instantly, yanking him soundly back to the reality of the here and now.

Lucas gave the other man a nod and the mafia don nodded back.

Christ.

Vincenzo Tamburo headed the second most powerful crime family in the city and was not a man to be taken lightly even when he was smiling, as he was doing now. He was ruthless and deadly, known to go to any and all lengths to keep his power intact. It was said that last year he’d had his own son-in-law whacked, the man’s body found at a Queens dump site, while his severed head had never been recovered. It was rumored that Tamburo had it preserved in a jar in his safe to remind himself that he could trust no one.

The son-in-law’s crime? Taking some initiative in his new role in the family and making his father-in-law a fortune from a Brinks-truck robbery that Tamburo hadn’t authorized.

Lucas stared at the older man’s wide back. Jesus, he hoped Gia knew what in the hell she was getting herself into.

And he hoped that when all was said and done, he would be able to protect her from the worst of it.

3

AN HOUR LATER, Gia stood at the French doors of her father’s office, trying to soothe her nerves by rubbing her hands up and down her bare arms. It wasn’t that her meeting with Tamburo hadn’t gone as expected. It had. What she hadn’t anticipated was that the overbearing man would shake her to the core with his leering stares and arctic smiles.

She’d suspected that her familiar connection to her father’s old “friends” would change somewhat for the duration she sat at the helm. After all, she’d known these men all her life and they had been like uncles to her, providing her with lavish birthday gifts, big bear hugs and enthusiastic cheek pinches. They were probably as surprised as she was by her new title, however temporary. At worst, she’d allowed that perhaps they’d try to treat her like that child they’d watched grow up.

She’d never expected Uncle Vincenzo to look at her as if he’d prefer to see her hanging from a meat hook.

The question was, could Vincenzo Tamburo have given the order to pull the trigger of the gun that took her father’s life?

“Romulus! Stop!”

Gia blinked the backyard into focus. Or, more precisely, she watched as a hundred pounds of lean, mean Bucciuriscu canine lumbered onto the patio outside the doors she stood in front of, covered in soapsuds.

“Come back here right now, you,” a guy that was more gangly teen than man demanded as he followed the stubborn dog.

Romulus’s red tongue rolled out of his mouth in a doggie grin as he considered his pursuer and then proceeded to shake off the suds, covering the teen and the doors, causing even Gia to take a step back.

“Oh, Romulus, you no good hound,” the kid said in exasperation. “If you were my dog, I’d be having you for supper.”

Gia smiled for what felt like the first time in months. Romulus was one of two of her father’s purebreds, the other, Remus, of course, after the infamous mythological Roman twins.

She watched as Romulus planted himself, making it impossible for the kid to budge him from the patio.

Gia opened the soap-speckled doors. The kid looked up at her, having to shield his eyes from the sun. “Oh, God. I’m sorry, Miss Gia. I didn’t see you there.” He grimaced. “You didn’t hear what I said, did you?”

“What’s your name?”

“Fusco, ma’am. Frankie Fusco.”

“Please, just call me Gia.”

She bent over and stroked the snout of the hulking guard dog.

“Yes, Miss Gia.” Frankie tugged on a handful of fur at the back of Romulus’s neck and nearly lost his fingers to the dog in the process.

“No, he won’t do anything for you that way,” she said. “Buccuriscus are highly aggressive dogs. You have to show them who’s boss.” She whistled for Romulus’s attention and then snapped her fingers, pointing to her side. “Here, Romy.”

The dog instantly obeyed, coming to stand next to her.

“Sit.”

He sat.

She patted the back of his wet head. “Where are you washing him?”

“Out by the garage, Miss Gia.”

That meant that Frankie had chased the dog a good ways around the grounds. Not surprising.

“Just Gia,” she said again.

“I couldn’t call you by your first name, Miss Gia. It wouldn’t be showing you the proper respect.”

Respect definitely had its drawbacks.

“You try commanding him,” she suggested.

Frankie followed her lead.

Romulus barked once at him and stayed put.

And then he stood again and shook himself out, spraying Gia with whatever suds and water remained on his thick fur.

She and Frankie looked at each other and laughed.

“Come on,” Gia said. “Now that I’m dressed for the job, I might as well help you out.”

“Oh, no, Miss Gia.” Frankie looked stricken. “I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

“Are you disobeying an order, Fusco?”

“Me? Oh, no. No, I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Come on, then.”

Gia ordered Romy to heel at her side and she and Frankie walked the span of lawn behind the house toward the garage.

“How long you been working here?” Gia asked.

“Two months tomorrow, Miss Gia.”

“And your duties?”

He reached down to pat Romy, who growled at him threateningly. He snatched his hand back. “Well, washing the dogs. Running errands for the guys. Stuff like that.”

“Do you like it?”

“Like it? I love it. I’ve been trying to work for the family for years.”

Gia smiled at his exaggeration. He couldn’t be more than a day over eighteen.

“I was bussing tables at the Guarinos’ and running numbers when I met your father, God rest his soul.” He looked awkward about mentioning her dad. “My condolences, Miss Gia.”

“Thank you.”

“Anyway, I met your father and he brought me out here to see to some things. I stay in the stables with the other guys.”

Gia looked toward the converted stables in question that were barely visible through a thatch of trees and flowering bushes, and then turned back toward Frankie. She could see why her father had been taken with the teen. He didn’t appear to have an insincere bone in him. His obvious youth aside—she’d met more eighteen-year- olds who looked forty than she could count over the past month—he was open and enthusiastic and apparently relished his connection to the family.

Of course, she’d seen much of the same misplaced interest growing up. Especially from the kids who came up in the area of Brooklyn that the Venuto family had controlled since Prohibition. Where teens in other neighborhoods might join gangs, in the Venuto neighborhood, the family was the gang. And, it seemed, every kid wanted to be a member.

They rounded the corner of the garage to find one of Vito’s goons standing in shirtsleeves in the summer heat, his shoulder holster and firearm clearly visible. Romulus’s brother, Remus, sat quietly waiting his turn for a bath.

“Romy, sit,” Gia ordered.

The dog whined at her and then did as she asked.

“Thanks, Miss Gia,” Frankie said, appearing not to know what to do. He held out his hand to shake hers, and then stared at where it was covered in suds and drew it quickly back. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

“No bother,” Gia said, looking around. She’d have to ask Vito to have his men cover their weapons.

Just as she thought his name, she spotted Vito at the edge of the part of the driveway leading to the garage, speaking to a man she didn’t recognize. Of course, she had yet to name all of the personnel around the sprawling estate, but she was pretty sure she hadn’t seen this guy before.

She watched as the two men shook hands, and then the dark stranger rounded the front of a BMW sedan and climbed inside. Moments later, he disappeared down the long driveway toward the road.

Frankie looked as if he had things well in hand, so she began making her way back toward the office’s back entrance.

She turned slightly. “Frankie?”

He immediately snapped to attention, the soapy sponge he held covering his face in suds. He wiped them away with the back of his hand.

“How would you like a promotion to personal assistant?”

LUCAS LET HIMSELF into the small studio apartment he’d rented in Queens, careful to avoid being seen. Of course, that he’d left his car on Queens Boulevard, changed into a tracksuit, Mets cap and athletic shoes in a subway bathroom, and then caught the next train to the apartment had helped in his subterfuge.

He threw the five different locks on the door and flicked on the one light in the cramped space. There was only a sofa bed, a desk and a small kitchen and bathroom. The walls bore peeling wallpaper that revealed a different pattern wallpaper underneath. The floorboards beneath his shoes were scratched and gouged, multiple coats of paint having come up over the years.

He tossed his keys onto the desk and shrugged out of the track jacket, removing the palm-size tapes he’d put in the pockets and staring at them. They represented more than thirty hours of conversations he’d had over the past week. One with Gia, herself.

Sitting down in an old wooden chair, he considered the tapes, dumping the ones that held conversations with Vito and other family members into one shoe box, the last tape that included today’s conversation with Gia into another.

Like clockwork, the cell phone that he left in the apartment rang.

He picked up on the second ring.

“What have you got?” his FBI handler asked.

“Not much. Things have been quiet.”

Silence. Then, “How are you going in your effort to get closer to Gia Trainello?”

Lucas rubbed his forehead. His handler even asking the question made him feel like dirt.

Yes, the bureau knew the rumors that Gia had taken over in her brother’s stead. And he’d been ordered to get closer to her. His handler didn’t know his past with the onetime mafia princess. And if he had any say in it, he wouldn’t, either. What had happened between him and Gia seven years ago was between them. Period. It didn’t enter into his current job assignment. Which, simply, was to bring down the Venuto crime family, and possibly any other families he could along with them.

Still, he said, “I’ve established contact in order to discuss estate papers.”

“And?”

“And that’s it.”

Lucas leaned back in the chair, causing it to creak, a part of him daring his handler to press him for more information.

Damn it. He should have asked to be reassigned the moment Giovanni and Mario Trainello were hit. Forget the years’ worth of tapes and wiretaps and his hands-on investigation into the crime organization.

But he hadn’t asked. Because every time he’d thought about doing so, he remembered Angelo. Recalled his younger brother’s pale face against the satin that lined his casket. And that alone was enough to remind him that what he was doing now was the culmination of seven years of hard work. Any day now, he would have the revenge he’d craved for the better half of his adult life.

He would see to it that the family responsible for his brother’s death paid the ultimate price for its crimes.

Gia…

A small voice whispered her name in the back of his mind.

Of course, he’d try to protect Gia any way he could. He was determined to keep her out of it, both because of their past together…and because she didn’t deserve to be hurt by him again.

But if push came to shove…

Well, he’d have to wait until it came to that.

4

LATER THAT EVENING, a while after Luca had gone following dinner, Gia bent over the additional papers he had left with her, trying to concentrate on the words instead of trying to interpret the meaning of his actions.

It had been so long ago that she’d been in love with him. But not so long that she couldn’t remember what it was like to look at him and feel something larger than herself expand within her. Experience a desire that made her feel like she might combust if she couldn’t kiss his mouth, feel the cool texture of his hair under her fingertips.

Luca represented a time in her life when all was good. When family was family and when one look into his eyes had been enough to make her smile for a week.

But that time was long past. No matter how much a part of her wanted to believe differently.

And if she needed any reminder of that fact, all she had to think about was what happened after he’d left. What she had gone through alone that had left a jagged scar across her soul that could never be forgotten.

She unfolded her legs from under her on the overstuffed couch in the library and walked to the French doors, staring out into the deep summer night. A shadow moved and she started, still not used to having armed men around in order to protect her. She hadn’t needed them in seven years.

She needed them now.

But rather than their presence making her feel safe, she felt as if she was imprisoned. The reminder that danger lurked everywhere unnerving.

What did Luca want? Oh, she’d known the instant he’d come back to New York a year ago and rejoined the family as one of the lead attorneys. It had been all her father had talked about at the time. Luca had been his golden boy years earlier, second only after Lorenzo, rating a spot even before headstrong Mario. Luca was a man who instilled trust in others and was more than capable of seeing any assignment through to the end.

The description had been her father’s. She hadn’t asked what he’d meant by “any assignment.” She hadn’t wanted to know.

What she did want to know was what Luca had done while he was gone.

And why he’d left the city after his younger brother had been killed during a random mugging.

Was it the tragedy of losing his brother? Was that why he’d left?

But his parents had remained in Brooklyn. Gia had even visited them. Once.

She’d never gone back again.

After everything that had happened since, every ounce of common sense told her that she shouldn’t care why Luca had left, what he had done while he was gone, and why he was back now.

But, God help her, she did care.

She absently rubbed her arm. While it was still August hot outside, the air-conditioned temperature inside was kept low. Just as her father had liked it. And she hadn’t had the heart yet to change even the thermostat.

The trivial detail brought a memory flooding back as if it could have happened yesterday instead of nearly twenty years ago.

It had been a cold, rainy March day. Most of the mourners had left the grave and her grandmother was in the waiting limousine with her brothers. She and her father were all who remained.

Holding her father’s hand, the new patent- leather shoes her grandmother had bought her sinking into the mud, Gia had watched as the shiny mahogany casket had been lowered into the ground. The top had been covered with yellow roses, her mother’s favorite. Gia had felt numbed by her emotions and the weather.

“She looks lonely,” she’d said.

Her father had blinked then, as if he’d been in a trance, and looked down at her, his hand squeezing hers. “She’s with family now.” He looked up at the rain-soaked skies. “In heaven.”

“But we’re family.”

Her father had stood for a long moment, staring down at her. Then he’d crouched so that they were close to eye level. “Yes, piccina, we are family. But the family in heaven needed your mommy more than we did.”

Gia had spotted the pain on his face even as he said the words and had wondered if he was comforting her or himself.

“I miss her.”

Gia wasn’t sure if it was the rain trailing down his handsome face or tears as he enveloped her in a hug, holding her tight, holding her close. “I do, too, sweetheart. I do, too.”

They stayed like that for a long moment.

And then Vito had cleared his throat from somewhere behind them, and an umbrella appeared above their heads, casting a gloomier shadow over them.

Her father had looked at his close friend, then back at Gia. “You have family, Giovanna. Lots of family. And you’ll always have them. Remember that. You’ll always have them.”

Gia had tried to find comfort in his words, but she’d only been seven and hadn’t really understood what he’d meant in light of losing the closest member of her family. Now she saw what he meant. Now, so many years later, the family had welcomed her back with open arms when she’d decided to return to the fold. Each and every one of them working in unison to help find the person behind her father’s death.

Luca included.

She rubbed her arm again, the memory of him sitting across the informal kitchen counter from her a short time earlier replacing the image of her father’s rain-stained face.

“Why are you so surprised I came back?” he’d asked her over a simple pasta dinner she’d prepared herself with the help of a jar of homemade pesto sauce the housekeeper/cook had stored in the refrigerator.

Gia had pretended she might not answer the question, even though she’d known she would. “You didn’t seem to want anything to do with the family when you left. It just seemed odd that you would come back.”

She’d seen something in his blue eyes then. Something that signaled that the still waters of his appearance ran deep within him.

She remembered the many family nicknames for him. The most popular being Pretty Boy Paretti because he had the blond-haired, blue- eyed good looks of the northern Italians rather than the dark intensity of the Sicilians.

It had been those same good looks that made her easy prey when he’d spent a lot of time around the house doing odd jobs for her father while he attended college and then law school. She’d fallen for him, hard.

And the same, she’d thought, had applied to him.

And then his brother was killed and the man she’d fallen in love with had become cold and distant. And then he’d disappeared altogether.

Another movement outside the windows caught her attention. Only the movement hadn’t come from outside, had it? Rather she’d caught the reflection of someone moving behind her in the glass.

Gia’s heart lodged in her throat as she helplessly watched a masked man wearing gloves reach above her and then stretch a thin wire cord around her neck.

She moved her right hand up in time to fit it between her neck and the wire before her assailant pulled. Still, she coughed from the sudden, intense pressure even as she kicked at his feet and legs. But she was no match for his height and strength. The strong smell of onions filled her nose as he leaned closer to her ear.

“A lady mob boss. You should be glad that you lasted as long as you did, Giovanna. Your father would have been proud.”

The voice was unfamiliar to her. Then again, many of the voices that now filled her father’s house fell into the same category. Where once she could have foretold someone’s arrival by his or her footfalls, now the sound of the house settling kept her up at night.

With good reason, she realized.

She watched her own reflection in the glass. Blood drained from her face and the cord felt dangerously close to severing her fingers as she tried to pull it away, serving only to pull it tighter to the unprotected part of her neck.

Gia kicked out, aiming for the doors, desperately trying to attract the attention of the guard outside. Her bare foot hit a lower pane of glass and the door rattled. She tried again, but found herself jerked out of reach by her assailant.

Death. It had been a way of life for her growing up. Forget that every now and again the house had been the gathering place when someone in the family caught a bullet with his name on it. There were also the more personal deaths. First, there had been the loss of her mother when she was but a girl. And then her paternal grandmother, who had spoken only Italian and had essentially raised her and her brothers until her own death when Gia was seventeen.

But somehow she’d never considered that her own death would take place here. And that it should happen in such a way that she should bear witness to it seemed especially disheartening. She tried to penetrate the mask of the man holding her, catch a glimpse of his eyes, the shape of his jaw, even though the attempt was futile at best. She knew that within a matter of seconds she’d begin to lose consciousness, and soon after that her heart would stop beating due to lack of oxygen.

Still, she searched for a way to fend off her attacker.

It was then she grew aware that when he’d jerked her back from the doors, he’d moved her closer to a side table where a brass lamp sat. She shifted her free hand from around her neck and reached for the light, coughing when he pulled harder on the cord and then reaching again. Her fingertips slid against the cold metal but she couldn’t seem to get a grip around the wide base.

The room began to blacken. She slowly blinked, her arm falling to her side.

That was when she caught another reflection in the doors. That of a man coming up behind her attacker.

Luca…

LONG MINUTES LATER, Gia sat against the sofa cushions of the library, her fingers at her raw throat, staring at the man who had appeared out of nowhere and had seen to her attacker with the efficiency of a paramilitary trooper. At least until the last minute when the masked man had landed a punch that set Luca back on his heels and gotten away despite the armed guards who were supposed to be protecting the house and its inhabitants.

Finally, Luca finished talking to the head of the guard detail, who apologized over and over again, and then he closed the library doors,

turning to face Gia.

“What are you doing here?”

For the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why she was being openly antagonistic toward the man who had just saved her life. Actually, she’d been rude to him pretty much since she’d returned to Long Island. It probably had something to do with the fact that when it came to Luca, it was better to avoid the past than to confront it head- on.

He crossed to a concealed bar, pushed the door to spring it open and poured two glasses of whiskey. He walked toward the couch and handed her one.

He considered her over the rim of his glass as he drank. “I should think your first words to me would be ‘thank you.’”

Gia dropped her gaze, the contents of her own glass blazing a trail down her throat. “For all I know, you could have been in on it with him.”

His eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. “Is that what you think?”

She shrugged and then put her glass down on the end table nearest her. “It doesn’t matter what I think. Facts speak louder than words. And the fact is that I said good-night to you over an hour ago.”

Luca stood staring at her for a long moment, then retrieved something lying on the floor near the door. She realized it was the file of papers he’d had her sign earlier. “I got all the way back to my place before realizing I’d forgotten these.”

Gia looked from his hands to his face. “So I should count myself lucky then, shouldn’t I?”

He didn’t appear to know how to respond so he said nothing. Instead, he moved to sit on the couch next to her.

“Did you get a look at him?” he asked.

“He was wearing a mask.”

“That doesn’t mean you might not have recognized him.”

“I didn’t.” Her gaze was steady. “Did you recognize him?”

“No,” he said easily. “Did he say anything?”

“What was there to say? Beyond ‘see you in hell’?”

But he had said something, hadn’t he? She put her hand to her temple and rested her elbow against the back of the couch. “Wait. He did say something…” She swallowed hard. “He called me Giovanna and said that I was lucky to have lived as long as I had.”

She left out the part about how her father would have been proud. She wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was because she wasn’t so sure her father would have been proud. She had not yet avenged his death, she couldn’t even keep herself safe.

Besides, he’d never approve of his daughter following in his footsteps. He’d always tried to keep everything involving the family business well away from her. She suspected part of the reason was the sexist double standard to which most men from the old country subscribed. Being a mobster was a man’s job. Not a woman’s.

Mostly, he probably wanted to protect his only daughter.

She recalled another old-country man with whom she’d had an unnerving visit just that morning. Could Vincenzo Tamburo have been behind the attempt on her life?

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to stay here,” Luca said.

Gia looked at him. “Where would you have me go? My place in Manhattan?”

She’d meant the suggestion as a half-assed attempt at a joke. But Luca wasn’t laughing. Neither was she, for that matter.

Fact was, he was probably right. She’d known she’d pinned a target to herself when she’d vowed revenge against those responsible for the hit against her father and brother. She’d only thought that so long as she stuck to the house, and stayed away from the windows, she wouldn’t be that much at risk.

Mistake number one.

Her gaze dropped to the stern lines of Luca’s mouth. And if she wasn’t careful, she might give herself over to mistake number two.

A knock at the door and then it opened.

“Miss Gia?”

She sat up a little straighter. “Come in, Vito.”

The older Italian entered and stood, taking in the couple on the couch. “I just got word on what happened.”

Luca got to his feet to face him. “Aren’t you in charge of security, Vito?”

Gia winced. “Luca…”

“No, no, he’s right, Miss Gia. I am in charge of security. And there’s no excuse for what happened tonight.” He looked at the red mark around her neck. “I can only thank God that no more damage was done.”

“What did happen tonight?” Luca continued.

Gia sighed, suddenly feeling like she hadn’t slept for days. “That’s enough, Luca. Thank you…for stopping by.” He hiked a brow at her purposeful understatement of his activities. “But I’ll be fine now that Vito’s here.”

Luca looked between her and the old Italian. Then he finally said, “If you’re sure.”

“It won’t happen again,” Vito said. “I stake my life on it.”

Gia spread her hands palm up as if to say, “See.”

Truth was, though, she didn’t trust herself where Luca was concerned. In light of all that had happened not just that night, but over the past five weeks, she might be tempted to give in to that soft spot inside her that yearned to curl up in his embrace and take whatever he might have to offer by way of comfort…and sex.

But considering what had happened the last time she’d given herself over to fundamental urges…she looked everywhere but at Luca’s questioning gaze.

“Vito will see you out,” Gia said.

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