Dangerous

by Carrington, Tori

  In his case, his questioner had used his brother to bring him to his emotional knees after two days of using various torture methods, appealing to his anger in his weakened state to get access to what he was looking for.

  Of course, in the case of the New York City prosecutor’s office, they were legally prevented from employing most methods used by the FBI, but that didn’t stop Lucas from wanting to protect Gia from any questioning whatsoever.

  And he needed to devise a way to stop it.

  He hadn’t had to worry about Claudio Lancione’s murder. Nobody cared about a known hit man ending up in the East River. But a well-known restaurant owner was another matter entirely, despite his ties to the mob.

  He heard voices in the other room. He put his coffee cup down and went in search of them. Vito, probably, up and ready for another day.

  He halted in the doorway to the foyer. It was, indeed, Vito. He was talking to a man Lucas didn’t recognize. And as part of his undercover job, he had the 411 on everyone closely associated to the Trainello family, and by extension, the Venuto crime family.

  The man was probably about his age, but looked at least a decade older because of his thick, pockmarked skin and a little extra weight that was pure muscle, probably because of weight lifting.

  Vito spotted Lucas and he whispered something to the man, who promptly left.

  “You’re up early,” Vito said by way of greeting. “Have you made coffee yet?”

  He passed him and walked into the kitchen and Lucas followed.

  “I’ll pour you a cup,” Lucas said, going about it. “Who were you just talking to?”

  Vito didn’t say anything.

  “Nothing related to the law yesterday?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that.”

  Lucas already suspected as much. But he was curious as to why Vito didn’t offer more.

  Over the past year he’d spent working undercover with the Trainellos, he still knew his position was precarious. Vito had never much liked him, for reasons he apparently preferred to keep to himself. And that personal wariness had carried over into professional affairs. There was a great deal that Lucas wasn’t privy to, no matter how he tried like hell to make it otherwise.

  Vito Cimino was true to the old way. He trusted no one. Not even his own mother, as it was said. And that wariness had stood him in good stead with Giovanni Trainello.

  It also made it impossible to nail him for any wrongdoing.

  “I have some things I need to get from my office,” Lucas said. “Should Gia ask, tell her I’ll return later this morning.”

  Vito nodded. “I’ll do that.”

  But as Lucas walked away, the tiny hairs on the back of his neck prickled in alert and he knew that something had changed. A dangerous wind seemed to blow in through the door he opened and swirl around inside the Trainello house.

  And he couldn’t help feeling as if he was the one responsible for letting it in.

  * * *

  Gia took her breakfast in Lorenzo’s room. She kept up the hope that normal activity would bring him around.

  The ritual was more enjoyable in her mother’s old bedroom than it had been in Lorenzo’s. Her mother had liked beautiful things and her room boasted a bowed window seat where Gia had one of the nurses set up a table on which she could place the tray she brought up. A nurse followed with a similar tray for her brother filled with all his favorites. Up until now, he hadn’t even blinked at the offerings. But this morning, she’d requested the nurse only inject half his usual pain medication into the intravenous tube. So when his breakfast was put on the retractable table in front of him, he shifted and made a face.

  “Good morning, Lorenzo,” she said from her spot on the window seat, picking up her coffee and sipping it. “Maria fixed eggs Benedict this morning.” She made an exaggerated sniffing sound. “Smells delicious.”

  He cracked open his eyes, squinting at the tray before him and then slowly turning his head toward her. He raised a hand to shield his eyes. Gia adjusted the blinds so the sunlight wasn’t shining directly on him.

  “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

  He made a few swallowing sounds. The nurse fed him ice chips. He waved her away after eating a few. “I’d prefer to be dead.”

  Gia pretended that his words were of no mind to her, although they sliced through her heart. “But you’re not. So you’re just going to have to deal with it until you’re well enough to see to the task yourself.”

  “What did you do to my drugs?”

  “After being on them for so long, your tolerance is probably greater, so my guess is that your regular dose isn’t as effective as it was.”

  “Then increase it.”

  Gia took a bite of eggs and forced it down her throat as if it were the best thing she’d ever eaten. It tasted like chalk. “Sorry, but you’ll have to talk to your doctor about that.”

  “Call him in.”

  “You have an appointment for later this afternoon.”

  “Fuck the afternoon.” He raised his hand and it fell on top of his tray, upsetting a glass of juice there, the lack of use of the limb lessening his power over it. He swept the entire tray from the table in frustration. “Call him in now.”

  Gia sipped her coffee and then shook her head. “No can do. He’s booked solid for the morning.”

  “Then unbook him.”

  “I’d really like to, but—”

  “You did this, didn’t you? You lowered my dose, that’s why I’m awake now.”

  Gia finished chewing a bite and swallowed with slow deliberation before wiping her mouth with her napkin. She rose from the window seat so that she stood next to her brother’s bed.

  “What’s the date today, Lorenzo?”

  He blinked at her. “What?”

  “You heard me. If you can tell me today’s date, I’ll have the nurse increase your medication.”

  He blinked at her, only half-lucid. For which she was glad, because she was afraid of what he might do if he was completely awake.

  “Fuck you.”

  “No, fuck you, Lorenzo. Today is Thursday, August 22. You’ve slept for almost six weeks solid. Save for those times when you had to meet with the doctor to increase your medication.”

  “I’m in pain, damn it! Don’t you understand that?”

  “Are you?” She reached over and took his hand and then turned it over in hers.

  She piched the skin there. He jerked his hand away.

  “What are you doing? Playing doctor now, little sis?”

  “No. I’m just trying to get my brother back.”

  “Yes, well, your brother is not available at the moment.” He’d turned his head to gaze through the window, taking in where her breakfast still sat, barely eaten.

  “Well, could you please tell me when he will be available?” she asked quietly, trying to keep the edge of desperation from her voice. “Because I really need him right now. Things are falling apart around my ears because I’ve been doing the job he was meant to do. The job he was raised to do. And I’m afraid that the next thing that I do on his behalf will see us all killed.”

  “It’s no less than I deserve.”

  “And me?” she whispered.

  He looked at her then, and for the first time in a month and a half she viewed something other than self-pity.

  “Do you want me to die, Lorenzo?”

  “You’re not going to die.”

  “Aren’t I? What, am I invincible? If that’s the case, then maybe you’ll want to tell Gino Guarino that after an order I made resulted in his brother Joey being killed. Or how about Tamburo, who’d like nothing better than to see me hanging from a meat hook? Because right now I don’t have a clue how to change any of it.

  Do you?”

  He looked away.

  Gia took his hand again. “You’re all I have left in this world, Lorenzo. Please come back to me. Come back to the family.”

  He jerked his hand a second time as if th
e pain of her words was greater than her earlier pinch. “Nurse! Get the doctor on the phone. Now!”

  The nurse looked to her.

  “What are you waiting for?” Lorenzo demanded.

  The young woman cleared her throat. “For Miss Gia to confirm the order.”

  “Miss Gia…” Lorenzo stared at her. “So you’re Miss Gia now?”

  “In my brother’s absence, I’m the head of this household.”

  “Then give her the order.”

  “I’ll do no such thing. The doctor will be here this afternoon.”

  Lorenzo glared at her.

  Gia walked toward the door. “Oh, and by the way? After he’s done with you, he’ll be talking to me. And I’m going to tell him to start reducing your medication.”

  “You bitch. You wouldn’t dare.”

  Gia knew it was the lack of medication and his dependency on it that was causing him to be so crass and cutting. But it didn’t lessen the hurt his words caused.

  “I would and I will,” Gia said, even though her heart was breaking in her chest.

  “You’re still alive, Lorenzo, like it or not. And it’s about damn time you started acting like it.”

  She walked into the hall, closing the door after her and the nurse who followed.

  The vase of fresh roses that she had arranged to be placed on Lorenzo’s nightstand every morning crashed against the closed wood. Gia flinched, trying to quell the flow of tears that threatened.

  * * *

  “Where’s Luca?” Gia asked Vito a little while later, after having composed herself.

  She’d found the older man in her father’s office taking a meeting with one of the higher lieutenants.

  Vito dismissed the lieutenant and didn’t answer until after the man had left the room. “He went out. He’ll be back later this morning.”

  Gia caught herself with her hand against her chest and removed it.

  Ever since waking up this morning she’d wanted to see him again. Verify that what she thought had happened last night, had. She’d felt lighter than she had in a long, long time. And recognized that part of the reason was that she’d finally told Luca a truth she’d kept hidden from him for far too long.

  A truth that would always be a bruise against the love that they shared. But that had made them realize that that love still existed.

  “What time is the meeting today?” she asked.

  She didn’t have to specify to which meeting she was referring. There was only one meeting on her agenda. And that was with the four other heads of the New York mafia crime families.

  “One o’clock.”

  She nodded, hoping that Luca would be back in time to attend with her. In the midst of everything that had happened last night, she hadn’t had an opportunity to tell him about the meeting.

  “You can still cancel,” Vito said.

  She looked at him. “Why would I want to do that? It’s the only way I’m going to find out who was behind my father’s and brother’s hit.” She absently hugged herself. “And hopefully stop all this from escalating into full-out war.”

  Chapter 14

  “I want you to pull the locals off Miss Trainello,” Lucas said from the confines of his safe room in Queens.

  He waited for his handler to respond. Which didn’t appear to be something he was interested in immediately doing.

  “Smith, did you hear me?”

  “I know I ordered you to get closer to the subject, Paretti, but it sounds like you’re getting a little too close.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Tell me about the meeting today.”

  Alarm bells went off in Lucas’s head. “What meeting?”

  A prolonged silence and then, “Another example of you withholding information from us? Or are you genuinely in the dark? Either way, such a major development doesn’t reflect well on your investigative abilities.”

  “What meeting, damn it?”

  “Our inside with Tamburo says that a meeting has been requested between all family heads for today at one. And that your girl Giovanna is the one who asked for it.”

  “Jesus…”

  Lucas rang off, grabbed his jacket and rushed from the room, ignoring the chirping phone as he slammed the door behind him.

  * * *

  What did one wear to a meeting with four of the most dangerous men in New York City?

  Gia recognized the question as frivolous and blamed it on her nerves as she straightened her black jacket with white piping over black pants and made sure her white blouse wasn’t bunching around her breasts. She couldn’t remember a time when she’d been this anxious. Not even when she and Bryan had appeared at their first major fashion show and had three of their models come down with the stomach flu an hour before they were to hit the runway.

  Of course, the difference between the two events was that while all participants might want to kill each other, in the case of the mob bosses, they didn’t hesitate to act on their desires.

  There was a knock at her bedroom door. After calling out, Frankie cracked it open. “The car is waiting, Miss Gia.”

  When wasn’t it waiting? But she didn’t say the words. She merely thanked her assistant, took the briefcase he handed her and then preceded him out into the hall, down the stairs and outside, where he opened the door to the car for her.

  For security reasons, Vito was riding in a separate vehicle that would follow hers.

  Gia glanced around. She didn’t have to wonder what she was looking for. She knew. Luca.

  She hadn’t seen him all morning. And the thought of attending this meeting scared the hell out of her.

  Frankie hesitated. “Is there anything else you need, Miss Gia?”

  She smiled at him and sat back in the black leather seat, slipping on her Dior

  sunglasses. “No, thank you, Frankie. That will be all.”

  “All right, then.” He closed the door and stood back.

  The late-model black Mercedes smoothly pulled away from the curb.

  When she’d requested the meeting yesterday, she hadn’t expected that the others would be agreeable to it, or that it would come about so quickly. She guessed that the reason for the first part was that the other heads probably hoped she’d name the person set to inherit the Venuto family holdings. Because nobody, including her, believed she’d take the land for long….

  As for the second, the sooner they gathered and dispersed, the worse for any feds or local law enforcement that might want in on the meeting themselves.

  Gia reached for her briefcase and looked in the front pocket of her designer bag for her cell phone. It wasn’t there. She searched the rest of the compartments and inside, only then realizing that she must have left it at the house.

  She sighed and reached for the car phone. “What’s the number for the phone in Vito’s car?” she asked the driver.

  He told her.

  She punched it in and then sat back, watching as the Mercedes headed farther out in Long Island rather than inland, the remote location of the meeting at mob boss John Mangano’s estate allowing for a moderate margin of safety from law enforcement.

  Or for a secluded place to dump the bodies of those not left standing.

  Gia swallowed thickly. “Yes, Vito, it’s Gia. Have you heard anything from Luca?”

  “No. Haven’t you?”

  “No.”

  “At the risk of sounding like a broken Sinatra record, I just want to tell you one last time that it’s still not too late to cancel.”

  “Thanks, Vito. I’ll see you there.”

  She disconnected the extension and then called Frankie for Luca’s cell number.

  “You want me to patch you through, Miss Gia?” he asked, having recently begun to learn the phone system.

  She hesitated. Her mind really should be on the impending meeting, not Luca. But somehow she couldn’t ignore the small pang in her stomach that was growing into a larger one.

  Wher
e was he?

  * * *

  Lucas watched the expensive cars pull in to the multicar garage of the Mangano estate one by one. He hadn’t had time to get out to the Trainello house before Gia left, so he’d come straight to the meeting place. He knew he was taking a huge risk since the only ones who would know where the meeting was were Gia and Vito.

  He only hoped that one or the other of them didn’t figure out that neither of them had told him.

  Gia got out of the back of the next Mercedes that pulled in, looking directly at him and smiling…before she spotted the dozen or so men armed with automatic weapons posted around the garage.

  “Thank God you’re here,” she said quietly as she came to stand next to him.

  Vito had exited his vehicle and joined them, eyeing Lucas with open interest.

  Vincenzo Tamburo was the next to join them.

  “Gentlemen?” a man in a white suit with a black tie said from the doorway. “And lady,” he added with a nod in Gia’s direction. “Everyone is assembled. If you’ll follow me.”

  “What is this about?” Vincenzo asked Vito as they walked.

  Gia shared a glance with Lucas.

  “Miss Gia called the meeting against my advice,” Vito said.

  They reached the door and Lucas stepped aside to allow Gia to go first, realizing only after she passed that chivalry probably was moot in present company.

  He followed after her, cutting off Vito when he tried to elbow in. Let the old man make of his actions what he would. He wasn’t going to give him a chance to ask her what he was doing there. As he saw it, his cover was a thread away from being blown, anyway.

  As he looked around the room packed with countless men that topped the FBI’s most wanted list, his only wish was that it would happen after the meeting.

  As was the custom during such meetings, a traditional Italian meal was being served up to the participants. Lucas guessed it was because the Italians believed that everyone got along better and thought more clearly on a full stomach.