Dangerous

by Carrington, Tori

  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.

  Chapter 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. Sh
e 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.”