Dangerous

by Carrington, Tori

  People kill people.”

  “If you want to throw platitudes my way, how about the one that says ‘the buck stops here?’ The trail of bucks in this case ended in your father’s hand. And in the hand of every egomaniacal mafia family head in this city and every other city.”

  “And what makes you think you’re better than any one of them?”

  * * *

  Lucas stared at her, her question catching him up short.

  She had him there. And if someone had made the same query seven years ago, he may never have chosen the path he had.

  But what about the alternative? Would he have gone on to become a lawyer for the mob? Spent the past seven years repping the thugs that thrived on bloodshed and violence? Would he have crossed the line and given into bloodlust himself?

  But most important, would he and Gia have gotten married, had the baby she’d been pregnant with, the first of many?

  The pain that was reflected on her face tore at his own heart.

  A sound outside caught his attention. Alarm swept through him as he went to the window and looked out. The sun had almost completely set.

  Why did he sense it was a countdown of sorts?

  “Gia, where is everyone?”

  She shifted on the bed and ran her hand through her tousled hair. “What?”

  He looked at her over his shoulder. “Vito? The family goons? Where are they?”

  She got up from the bed to stand next to him, going out of her way not to touch him as she stared out the window at the quiet grounds. “I sent Frankie back to the stables earlier.”

  “No one’s here, Gia. There are no cars in the driveway, no one around anywhere.

  Even the housekeeper appears to be gone.”

  She looked at him in unease.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered.

  “Come on.” He grasped her arm and led her out into the hall and then down the stairs. She looked around as they moved, as surprised as he had been at the utter silence.

  The automatic floodlights outside the house switched on in the waning daylight, the only source of illumination inside the house. Lucas paused in the foyer, gripping Gia’s hand so tightly she made a small, muffled sound.

  “Sorry,” he said, lessening his grip. “We need to get out of here.”

  “Lorenzo…” Gia whispered.

  “We’ll send an ambulance for him.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant. I mean…”

  Her words drifted off and he waited for her to continue.

  Her dark eyes welled with tears.

  Lucas drew her closer, praying she wouldn’t refuse his touch. “What is it?” he murmured.

  “My father’s own son conspired to kill him,” she said so quietly he nearly didn’t make out her words.

  “Who told you that?”

  “Lorenzo, himself.”

  He pulled her fully into his arms. “Oh, Gia. I’m so, so sorry.”

  It made a twisted kind of sense once he heard it. Over the past year he’d watched father and son butt heads more times than he could count. Giovanni had wanted to see Lorenzo step up to the proverbial plate, and Lorenzo kept kicking the dirt as if the last thing he wanted to do was take a swing at any ball his father threw his way.

  “He didn’t do it alone, Gia,” he told her, the scent of her sweet-smelling hair filling his senses.

  “What do you mean?” She drew back to look at him.

  “I mean that while he may have helped, he wasn’t the power behind the trigger.”

  “But Tamburo…”

  He shook his head. “The Peluso family didn’t have anything to do with this. None of the other families did.”

  She appeared not to be following him.

  “Giglio hit Tamburo at the meeting today. And he wasn’t working on behalf of any of the other families,” he told her.

  She searched his eyes. “But if Giglio wasn’t working for someone else, then…”

  She trailed off and then her face went pale.

  “Vito,” she said in a hushed whisper.

  Lucas held on to her tightly as she laid her head against his chest, seemingly powerless to stop herself, seeking comfort from any source that wouldn’t cause her hurt.

  “Don’t worry, Gia. We’ll get him.” He kissed the top of her head, smoothing his hand over her back. “But…”

  “But what?”

  “But I’m going to have to ask for your cooperation.”

  Her expression turned stony. “You mean rat Vito out to the feds?”

  He let his gaze linger on her lush lips. “Do you hate me, Gia?”

  She didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then, finally, “No, Luca. I could never hate you.”

  “Look, I don’t know what other choice we have. The way I see it, everyone you trusted has turned on you. If we don’t get Vito first…”

  He didn’t have to finish his sentence. They both knew what would happen if they didn’t stop Vito. He wouldn’t stop until he got them.

  “Come on,” he said, grasping her hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

  He began moving toward the door when Gia stood stock-still. “I think it’s already too late.”

  * * *

  Gia caught a beam of light that wasn’t connected to the spotlights outside. It swept the front lawn and then pierced the sheer curtains on the front window.

  Luca spotted it at the same time she did and yanked her back just as the flashlight would have caught her legs.

  Somewhere out back the dogs barked loudly.

  “Damn!” Luca let go of her hand and took his cell phone out of his pocket while she tried to figure out how many might be outside.

  The phone beeped oddly. Luca cursed and continued to try to dial out. It beeped again.

  He flicked it closed. “They must have a jamming device set up so we can’t call out. I might be able to catch a signal from an upper floor.”

  “What about the hard line?” Gia asked.

  “If they jammed the cell frequency, they most certainly cut that.”

  The flashlight beam swept the foyer again and this time Gia pulled him away from it.

  There was a brief, shrill canine shriek and then suddenly the barking stopped.

  Gia’s heart beat an unsteady rhythm in her chest, heightened by the adrenaline pumping through her veins.

  The mafia had taken away her entire family. And now they were trying to kill her.

  “Gia, we—”

  She grabbed the front of Luca’s shirt in both her hands. “Can I trust you?”

  He stared at her as if the last thing he would have expected was her question.

  “With your life.”

  “No, Lucas, I mean, can I trust you. Really trust you?”

  “Tell me what you want me to do.”

  Chapter 19

  Lucas followed Gia to the office only to find the door locked, the key she tried to open it with refusing to work. The enclosed hallway protected them from anyone outside.

  It would prove a gauntlet if anyone was inside.

  “Vito must have changed the locks and security code.”

  Lucas couldn’t claim full knowledge of the estate, but he guessed that Giovanni’s old office would have proven a refuge of sorts, most likely more secure than any other room in the house. It was centrally located and had probably been reinforced with bulletproof glass and door.

  “What about the basement?” he asked.

  Gia shook her head. “No. Come on.”

  She led the way back toward the foyer, being careful about possible watchful eyes, and then went into the library. With frantic movements, she ran her hands along a line of books and then pulled one out on the upper left-hand shelf.

  Nothing happened. She continued with a succession of books.

  “Come on, come on, where is it?”

  Lucas was about to ask what she was looking for, when he heard a click and the middle section of the bookcase swung outward, knocking a few leather-bound nove
ls to the floor.

  He’d worked there for over a year and had never known a secret door existed.

  Then again, he was coming to understand that there were a lot of things he didn’t know about.

  He followed Gia through the doorway, where she pressed a button and the bookshelf closed behind them with a loud, metallic click. Another button and the twelve-by-twelve-foot hidden room was illuminated by a fluorescent light fixture on the ceiling.

  “Christ, what is this?”

  “Dad had the room built when he bought the place. He showed it to us kids when we were young, told us if anything ever happened, we were to make our way here where we’d be safe. He even held fire drills of sorts. Whoever was the first to get here got his or her choice of gelato.”

  She busily typed on a keyboard that sat on a shelf before a dozen television monitors.

  “Then Vito would know about it,” Lucas pointed out.

  She stared at him. “No, he wouldn’t. Papa trusted a lot of people, but he trusted no one completely. Including Vito.”

  “Wouldn’t Lorenzo have said something?”

  She blanched. “I don’t see why he would have. He seems preoccupied with his own sins right now. Let’s hope that isn’t one of them. And if he should tell him now, it would be too late.” She knocked on the wall. “The room is encased in twelve inches of steel. There are three separate air sources in case any should be blocked. And should the outside air be unusable…”

  She pointed toward a series of metal cabinet doors to her left.

  Lucas opened the first and found canister upon canister of oxygen as well as gas masks and bodysuits.

  When he turned, he found that the monitors in front of Gia had lit up.

  “Here we go.”

  Lucas moved to stand behind her, watching as images from all the security cameras placed inside the house popped up. Cameras he hadn’t even been aware of.

  One after another she scrolled through them. The foyer, the kitchen, the library, only the office didn’t show. He supposed that Giovanni hadn’t wanted the interior of his office broadcast over a closed-circuit television system.

  Smart man.

  “They’re not inside yet,” Gia said almost to herself. “Let’s see what’s going on outside…”

  Another few keystrokes and the images changed.

  And what they revealed caused her to stand upright and take a step back from the console, bumping into Lucas. He put his arms around her.

  “My God, there must be at least a dozen of them out there.”

  Lucas had to agree. And those were only the ones they could see.

  Twenty feet out, men in camouflage crouched or hid behind bushes, each of them using their weapon sights and flashlights strapped to the top to scan the exterior of the house and what they could make out of the interior. They looked like a paramilitary team instead of mafia hit men. And they were all armed to the teeth.

  If he didn’t know better, he’d think that an official tactical team was bearing down on the house.

  But he did know better, because Smith was waiting for him to give the signal.

  And he couldn’t give it.

  Besides, he knew that many of the young men now serving in the mafia army had also served in the U.S. Army. And that bootcamplike operations had been set up in upstate New York primarily for the training of the new wave of mob soldiers.

  “What are we going to do?” Gia whispered.

  * * *

  The room should have made Gia feel safe. But as she tried to keep track of all the men outside methodically advancing on the house, she instead felt like a mouse caught in a trap.

  “Is there any way to get a line outside?” Luca asked.

  She turned to face him. Strangely, the betrayal she’d felt earlier had fled, flushed away by the urgency of their situation. “I don’t know. I think there’s a separate phone line that runs into the room…”

  As she talked, she scanned the small room. She found a telephone handset in a cradle on the wall next to the monitors. She picked it up. Nothing. She punched a couple of buttons on the base. Still, nothing.

  “Looks like your father was expecting WWIII.”

  Gia turned toward where Luca had opened the other cabinet doors. Arms of all shapes and sizes were racked and sorted along with boxes of ammunition. Luca took out a semiautomatic rifle, checked the chamber and then quickly loaded it.

  He put it aside, picked up a pistol, and then exchanged the empty clip for a fresh one. That one he tucked into the back waist of his pants.

  The sight of him looking so comfortable around guns made her wonder if she knew him at all. Yes, while he’d been associated with the family seven years ago, her father had kept him close, his going to law school exempting him from the most criminal jobs.

  No, he hadn’t picked up his arms skills from the family. He’d learned them from the FBI.

  “You’re not thinking about trying to fight them off,” she whispered.

  He loaded another pistol and held it out to her. She didn’t move. He took her hand and placed the cold, heavy metal in her palm. “What do you suggest? That we hide in here until they all go away?”

  “Why not? They’ll search the house, find no one here…”

  She trailed off, realizing there was one person there: Lorenzo.

  “We need to move your brother to the safe room,” he said as if he’d read her mind. “Before they breach the house.”

  “How do we do that?”

  He turned back toward the cabinets, taking out a headset and a handheld radio.

  “I’m going out. You’re going to keep me informed via radio.”

  “But it won’t work through the steel.”

  He looked at her meaningfully. “We’re going to have to leave the door open.”

  Gia felt sick to her stomach. But it had to be done. The camera in her brother’s room showed him alone and sleeping. And she couldn’t find a sign of any of his nurses anywhere. Either they had caught wind of what was going down, or they’d been warned by one of Vito’s men to leave.

  Only, she’d been so obsessed with her emotions she hadn’t realized that while her inner world and everything she thought she understood was crashing down around her ears, the outer world was, too.

  Gia met Luca’s gaze. “If you’re going to do it, you’d better do it now.”

  He cut the lights, the monitors casting an eerie blue glow around the room, and moved to open the door.

  Gia caught his arm and turned him toward her, looking up into his eyes. She couldn’t think of anything to say. And since he wasn’t saying anything to respond to, she did the only thing she could think of to show how she felt: she kissed him.

  She’d swung through so many extremes that afternoon. The meeting where Tamburo was killed and she’d been in fear for her own life even as she tried to ascertain who was responsible for robbing her father of his. Returning home to Vito’s revelation that the man she loved was out to destroy her family. Seeking details from her only blood relative left in Lorenzo only to find out he’d been the one who’d wanted their father dead. Then discovering that Uncle Vito, her father’s most loyal friend, had not only betrayed him, he’d betrayed her, working in concert with her brother in order to gain control over the Venuto family.

  And now, the realization that family wasn’t about a collection of those who shared the same lineage, went to the same church or were born of the same parents.

  Family was love.

  And she loved Luca Paretti with every ounce of her being.

  And she trusted him the same way.

  She finally broke off the kiss and stroked his cheek with her fingers. “Be careful.”

  “You do the same. You see anyone coming in the monitors, close that door, do you hear me?”

  She nodded, hating to send him out there alone. Hating that she was going to be alone and exposed.

  But there was no other choice. Even though Lorenzo had been in on their father’s killi
ng, she couldn’t just leave him lying there, vulnerable to the gunmen moving ever closer to the house where they’d waste no time gaining access.

  Her father might be dead. But her brother was still alive. And it was not her job to judge him. That would come when he stood facing St. Peter at heaven’s gate. And she’d prefer his journey there be a natural one, after a long life spent considering his sins and trying to make amends for them.

  “You’re clear,” she said into the radio, watching as the men outside were still a good few feet away from the front of the house. “But you don’t have much time.

  Go up the stairs. Now!”

  He did as she ordered. She switched monitors to watch him hurry down the second-floor hall, his handgun stretched out in front of him.

  He was in her brother’s room in no time.

  Gia sagged slightly in relief.

  Her mother’s old bedroom looked strange in the fishbowl view that allowed the camera to take in most of the area. The bed that dominated it looked extralarge, and Luca seemed to grow as he got closer to it. In the dark, everything appeared in various shades of black and white and gray.

  She watched as Luca tucked his pistol into the back waist of his pants and neared the bed. Only, Lorenzo wasn’t waking up.

  And then a third person entered the picture from the far corner.

  “Luca!” she cried into the radio. “Behind you!”

  Chapter 20

  Lucas reached for his pistol and turned around at the same time so that he was holding his gun on none other than Vito Cimino.

  The older man had his own weapon trained on him.

  “Weaknesses,” Vito said, his smile flashing in the semidarkness, only the outside floodlights relieving the shadows. “It’s important in this business that you know everyone’s weaknesses.”

  Lucas glanced quickly at Lorenzo, not feeling good about how still he was.

  “I knew Gia would come after her brother. All I had to do was stay here and wait. Little did I know that she’d send you to do the job for her. Maybe the girl’s smarter than I gave her credit for.”

  Lucas narrowed his gaze on him. “How long have you known I was with the FBI?”

  Vito shrugged, stepping closer. “Since you signed on. That was part of my job, checking out new personnel.” He looked pleased with himself. And well he should, because Lucas and Smith had done everything they could to cover their tracks.