Tori Carrington - Dangerous...

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.”