Luca smoothed down his tie. “Vito’s right, Gino. By refusing to pay on this considerable debt, you’re showing blatant disrespect to both Miss Gia and the entire Venuto family.”
Gia added, “This is money you borrowed from the family. It’s money you owe. It’s a simple as that. Pay it.”
Gino sat back and looked a breath away from spitting over his shoulder. “There ain’t no Venuto family anymore. That died along with your father and brother.”
“Not so long as I’m on this side of the ground,” Vito said, nearly catapulting from his chair.
Both Gia and Luca grasped the older man before he could put his hands around Gino’s neck.
Both Gino and Joey rose from their chairs, picked up their hats and began backing toward the door.
“Yes,” Gia said. “Perhaps it would be best if you both left now. Took some time to think about what you’ve just said. Reconsider your position.”
She released Vito when she was sure Luca had him under control. She rounded the table and stood over the two men, crossing her arms. She towered over them by at least five inches.
Joey put on his hat, openly scowling at her. Gino looked a little more sheepish, holding his hat against his chest. “You gotta know, I had the utmost respect for your father, Gia—”
“That’s ‘Miss Gia’ to you,” Vito spat out.
Joey looked at him and back at Gia. He shrugged. “Sorry. But word’s out that there ain’t no Venuto family no more. And Gino and me…well, we gotta look out after our own interests, if you know what I mean.”
Gia stared at him for a long moment, and then she smiled. Mostly to cover for her clenched teeth. “I understand, Joey. I understand.”
She took him by the arm and led him toward the door, Gino following after them.
She kissed them both on the cheeks. “Thanks for letting me know where you stand.”
The two men looked at each other, then walked into the hall, expressions of triumph visible on their faces.
Gia closed the door, waited a moment, and then looked at Vito.
“Torch their restaurant.”
Chapter 9
Much later that night, Lucas closed the door of the Queens safe apartment behind him, the complicated happenings of the day forefront in his tired mind. He’d had to wait to leave the estate until he was sure Gia was settled in for the night, but needed to get out of there before any permanent damage was done to the Guarino brothers’ restaurant.
Then again, there might be little he could do. He’d found out pretty quickly a year ago that the FBI wasn’t interested in small fish. They wanted the big ones.
They wanted to bring the entire New York City syndicate down, no matter how far-reaching and improbable that goal was. He’d only been on the job for a week and had stumbled across information on a bank-truck heist. He’d fully expected the FBI to intervene. Instead, the robbery was allowed to go ahead as scheduled and one of the truck’s guards had taken a bullet that had paralyzed him for life.
When he’d talked to his handler later that night, he’d been furious. His handler had merely told him to get over his inexperience and accept that an interception would have revealed that the burden had a source planted within the family. And that it would be only a matter of time before they figured out it was Lucas.
He’d suffered innumerable incidents since, many of them inspiring him to wonder if he was making any impact at all against the crime family. If they were allowed to go ahead with the violent side of their business as usual, what was he accomplishing?
Of course, he eventually came back to the understanding that his satisfaction would come in the end. That while his actions didn’t stop the dozen or so incidents in the past year, they would end any future episodes.
Although, every now and again he pondered whether that would even be the case.
Because it seemed that for every criminal that was knocked out of the ring, another five popped up to take their place.
The thought brought the memory of Gia’s beautifully determined face to mind.
“Torch their restaurant.”
The restaurant, of course, referred to Joey and Gino Guarino’s Italian eatery in Brooklyn. And that within the blink of an eye Gia had gone from successfully talented fashion designer to ruthless mob boss.
It didn’t really matter that she’d qualified her order, requesting that only a small kitchen fire be set—one that would only do enough damage to get her point across. The fact that she was already resorting to violence to solve family problems indicated that she’d crossed from the tentative shadows into broad daylight. And that he would have a harder time protecting her. Not only from rival families. But from the FBI and himself.
What role she might or might not have played in Claudio Lancione’s death could be written off as a crime of passion.
What she was involving herself in now was willful criminal conduct.
One of the Quantico criminal psychologists had spoken to his freshman class on the thin line between right and wrong and how easy it was to mentally justify crossing it.
“If your family is hungry and you pass a casserole cooling on a windowsill of a house, you may think yourself justified in taking it. But what if you learned that the family you had stolen from hadn’t eaten a decent meal in over a week, either, and that they’d just scraped up enough money to buy the ingredients necessary to make that casserole?” He’d held up a finger. “One minor detail changes the whole schematic. And it’s those details you’ll have to master in your role as an agent, because they’re what make all the difference.”
The cell phone finally rang.
He picked up on the second ring.
“What delayed you?” his handler asked.
“A lot of activity at the house.”
“Do you have it on tape?”
“Yes.”
“Take them to the usual drop-off point.”
After arranging a time for their next exchange, the phone call ended. Lucas hadn’t even had a chance to consider whether he should have mentioned the order for a fire at the Guarinos’. He frowned.
Rising, he shrugged into the track jacket that made him look a little shorter, a little wider, and then picked up the box with the tapes—tapes that didn’t include Gia or her orders—feeling a bit like the man who’d just stolen the casserole from the windowsill.
* * *
Gia sat next to Lorenzo’s bed in her mother’s old room, a single lamp throwing a warm pool of light onto the off-white area rug covered in tightly knit rosebuds.
When her mother was still alive, Gia used to like to come in here and watch her get ready for a night out with her father. She’d lie across the canopy bed, chin propped on her hands, and gaze lovingly at a mother as beautiful outside as she had been inside.
But it was the memory of her father’s words that haunted her.
“Trust no one, Lorenzo. No one. Even family will betray you under the right circumstances.”
Gia looked from the rug to her brother’s sleeping face. She recalled the scene as clearly as if it had taken place yesterday instead of nearly twenty years ago. Her mother had finished with dinner, and Gia had been asked to call her father and brothers to the dining room. Of course, calling meant going to get them, not actually shouting for them to come.
But when she’d found the door to her father’s office ajar, and heard his voice, she’d hesitated from barging right in and instead had stood outside and peeked around the frame.
Giovanni Trainello had been standing over a twelve-year-old Lorenzo, one hand on the boy’s skinny shoulder while he shook his index finger between them.
“Do you hear me? Trust no one.”
“Okay, Father. I won’t.”
“You can only rely on yourself in this world. The rest…well, the rest will do its damn best to surprise you at every turn.”
Lorenzo had always been anxious to please their father. Coming when he was called. Enduring adult directives like the ones
he’d received that night.
The words were in sharp contrast to what Gia had been used to hearing, and while she hadn’t completely grasped the importance of them, they had remained with her, always. If only because of the somber, serious tone her father had used when normally he was a jovial, happy man. At least when it came to his wife and three children.
Now she wondered if he’d ever had a meeting similar to the one she’d experienced today. And pondered if that was the reason she remembered that exchange between father and son so long ago.
She glanced at her watch, feeling a pang of regret that she’d had to give the order she had. The Guarino brothers had worked so very hard to make their restaurant into a place where everyone in the family was welcome. They’d opened it forty years ago and it had always been a Brooklyn mainstay. It hurt to have to order that a part of it be destroyed, even if it was just a small part.
But the only alternative was to have Joey and Gino roughed up. And seeing as both of them were in their sixties, she didn’t think that was such a good idea.
Her moral code wouldn’t allow her to do anything of that nature.
Then again, the unspoken threat that they’d lose the restaurant altogether if they didn’t pay up would probably hurt the brothers more than a leg fracture. It would probably break their very hearts.
She closed the design book she had open on her lap and stood, stretching the kinks out of her neck before kissing Lorenzo on the cheek and then shutting off the light.
She let herself out into the hall, turned toward her room, and ran straight into Luca.
DAMN. Lucas had done everything in his power to make sure he didn’t bump into anyone on his way back into the house. Especially not Gia.
Which amused him not at all, because he usually went out of his way to make sure he did see her.
“Oh!” she said, clearly surprised by bumping into him.
He caught her arms before she either toppled over or dropped the book she held.
“I was just calling it a night,” he said.
She blinked at him, her beautiful features in shadow. “I was just sitting with Lorenzo before going to my room.”
He looked toward the closed door. “Any change?”
She dropped her gaze to the floor and shook her head.
Lucas tried to make it up to see Lorenzo at least once a day. He had yet to have a meaningful conversation with the eldest Trainello brother since the hit. No one had. Even the NYPD detectives working the case wanted access to him so that they could piece together what had gone down that night. Seeing as he was the only survivor, he was the only one who might give any of them any clue.
He looked at Gia more closely. Of course, she had other reasons for wanting her brother to recover.
“Were you out?” she asked. “You smell of fresh air.”
Lucas grimaced. “Yes. I went outside for a cigarette.”
He didn’t like lying to her. Particularly since she was one of the few people he had never been very good at lying to.
Present circumstances aside.
Although he suspected that if she came straight out and asked him if he was working undercover for the bureau, he would tell her the truth.
“I don’t smell smoke.”
He smiled even though inside he berated himself for his stupid mistake. He couldn’t afford to arouse any suspicion now. Not when he was afraid things were about to get very dangerous, very quickly. “I decided against it once I got outside,” he told her. He took the pack of cigarettes from his pocket. “You want one?”
She laughed quietly. “You don’t know how good that sounds right now.”
He put the pack away. “Rough night?”
“Rough month.” She sighed and hugged the book she held to her chest.
He nodded. “It couldn’t have been easy to make that call this morning.”
“No. No, it wasn’t. That restaurant is the brothers’ life.”
“I know. But the order had to be made.”
“I suppose. It’s just that…”
Lucas waited, taking the opportunity to appreciate her pretty face. Hoping against hope that he hadn’t lost her yet.
“I wish things could have worked out differently.”
“Yes,” he said. “I do, too.”
He discovered that he was touching her, his hand on her right arm. He caressed her skin left bare by her silky black tank top.
He took his hand back. “Look, Gia, about the other night…”
She blinked up at him.
“If I did or said anything to upset you, I’m sorry.”
Gia looked everywhere but at him. He hoped that she’d tell him what he’d done.
What he’d said.
But she remained quiet. Perhaps rethinking the situation herself.
“You know,” she said finally, “there was a time when I thought the sun rose and set on you. That I couldn’t imagine taking a breath without smelling you.
Couldn’t imagine living without you walking beside me.” Her chin was tucked into her chest as she said the words. But she looked up at him now, the dampness in her eyes making them appear luminescent. “I can’t do that again, Luca. I can’t.”
She shook her head as if trying to control her emotions.
“I see you and I’m torn between wanting to run flat out in the other direction and holding on to you so tightly that you can’t get away again.” She laughed softly without humor. “When it comes to you, it’s all about extremes. Either or.
In or out. There is no middle ground. No compromise. And, frankly, that scares the hell out of me.”
Lucas threaded his fingers through the hair over her right ear and pulled her close, cradling her head against his chest. “I know. Trust me, I know.”
A sense of powerlessness burst within him, but so did a command so all consuming that he was nearly knocked back on his heels by the strength of it.
Or was Gia, herself, responsible for that?
“You can’t possibly know,” she whispered, flattening her hand against his chest, though she didn’t try to move away.
Lucas reached down and tipped her chin up with his free hand. “Yes, I can,” he murmured, allowing his gaze to roam over her beautiful face. “I know because I feel the same.”
Chapter 10
Time and distance should have erased the memory of Luca’s gentle touch and quietly spoken words from the night before, but as Gia stared out the conference-room window of Bona Dea’s Manhattan offices, not really seeing the city’s soaring, jagged skyline, she imagined that she could feel the warmth of his touch even now. As if somehow the tender contact had branded her more lastingly than any flesh-melding grasp made in the throes of passion.
She turned back toward the conference table where Bryan and the rest of the staff animatedly discussed the final details of the coming showing of the company’s spring collection. The heated debate had turned to the selection of the ensemble that would appear as the centerpiece of the show.
But somehow what had once been the reality of her life emerged surreal. She sensed that she could as easily have been dreaming the scene before her as living it.
“Gia?” Bryan asked.
She realized the room had gone quiet and that most likely a question had been asked of her. A question she hadn’t heard.
She lightly shook her head and smiled. “I’m sorry. I was just thinking about how I don’t like this color much. It’s so retro early 90s.”
She crossed the room to the three models standing there and adjusted the sash on the raincoat-like shirtdress the one on the right wore.
The table erupted into “I told you so’s” and objections, just as Gia predicted it would.
In all honesty, she really didn’t care about the color or its relationship to a prior fashion year. She’d been looking to divert attention from her distractedness, and she’d succeeded.
Her new position in the room allowed her a view outside the glass window separating the confere
nce room from the rest of the Bona Dea offices. The sight of the armed gunman that had escorted her inside, watching passersby, made her shiver.
“I think we’ve accomplished all that we’re going to accomplish this a.m.,” Bryan said, rising from the table.
Everyone agreed, and after a few moments, the room was empty but for Bryan and Gia.
She turned to face him. “I guess I was as helpful here as I am from Long Island.”
Bryan didn’t say anything. He merely gathered his papers together on the conference table.
Gia moved to stand next to him, laying her hand on his sleeve. “I’m sorry, Bry.
I truly am. I…when I decided to look after my father’s estate, I never planned that I’d be there this long.”
He straightened from his slightly hunched posture and looked directly at her.
“Didn’t you?”
She didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing.
He sighed heavily. “That was uncalled for. It’s just that I was afraid something like this was going to happen when you went out there.” He looked at her beseechingly. “I need you here, Gia. This is a make-or-break time for us. And I can’t do it on my own.”
She raised her hand to touch his handsome cheek. “I beg to differ. From what I can see, you’re doing a bang-up job of it by yourself.”
“That’s because you don’t see what’s going on behind the scenes. Designer rebellions, lost pieces, sick models…”
“Sounds like a normal day at work to me.”
He chuckled quietly. “Yes. Maybe you’re right. But we both agreed when we partnered up that we were doing it because neither one of us thought we could toe the line on our own.”
“Agreed. But that was five years ago.”
“What difference does that make?”
“Five years’ worth of difference.”
He turned his attention back to putting sketches into his case. “Is there something you’re trying to tell me here, Gia?”
Was there?
Gia had certainly not come there this morning with any sort of agenda. Bryan had asked her to come, and she had.
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