The sight of the men already seated forking pasta into their mouths as they glared at the latest arrivals chased away whatever was left of his own appetite.
As expected, he’d been frisked upon his arrival, the only arms present left behind in the garage along with the goons from the various families. This was also done on purpose. Essentially it guaranteed that should the meeting not go well, gunfire wouldn’t break out.
At least not from inside the room that was little more than an extended garage.
He pulled out a chair for Gia while Vito took the seat on the other side of her.
He noted with interest that rather than take the seat next to Vito, Tamburo opted for one on the other side of the tables that had been set up in a U formation so that everyone could see everybody else.
He and Gia didn’t refuse the offered dinner but neither of them made more than a perfunctory show of eating any of it. There was some conversation between the others present, but the hushed tones spoke more of unease than camaraderie.
Not surprising. Lucas was lightly surprised the room could contain the egos of the city’s largest crime families.
Five minutes into the meal, Vincenzo Tamburo broke the proverbial ice.
“The reason behind this meeting had better be important, Gia. The families haven’t met in one room in over a decade. With good reason,” he said, wiping his mouth and putting his napkin down on top of his own barely touched plate.
The gesture wasn’t a comment on the quality of the food. Because even though Lucas’s taste buds were a bit distracted, even he noted that the pasta and marinara sauce was excellent.
Lucas watched Gia square her shoulders. “The reason is valid. And I expect that each of you would have done the same if you were facing the same questions I am.”
“With all due respect,” John Mangano said, indicating that what he was about to say would lack all respect. “Shouldn’t your brother, Lorenzo, be the one calling this meeting?”
Gia stared him and then each of his fellow family heads down one by one, ignoring their seconds in command and any others they had brought along. “Since I’m the current leader of the Venuto family, it’s my duty to attend to such matters.”
“Why did you order a hit on Guarino?” one of the members wanted to know.
The question prompted several like questions and comments around the table, Joey Guarino’s death apparently having hit a nerve.
“That’s a Venuto family matter,” Gia said. “And it will be handled accordingly.”
Tamburo snorted as he put down his wineglass, appearing to be enjoying the proceedings so far. “That’s the reason why I and my brothers—” he gestured toward the others “—agreed to this farce of a meeting. Because as far as we’re concerned, there is no Venuto family anymore. Additionally…the Guarinos are no longer members of the Venuto family.” His thick chest puffed out. “They came on board with the Pelusos last week.”
Lucas noted Gia’s well-handled shock. The desired dissolution of the Venuto family wasn’t new…but that the Guarinos had signed on with Tamburo was.
Thankfully a couple of the other family heads disagreed with Tamburo’s latter statement.
“The Guarinos are with us,” Mangano said, his silverware hitting his plate with a clatter.
“Joey Guarino’s death was an accident—” Gia had to raise her voice to be heard over the hubbub “—brought about by the refusal to honor a family debt. A debt Gino has now made good on.”
Everyone quietly considered her. She cleared her throat and went on.
“The remaining Guarino, I was assured just this morning, is still very much a part of the Venuto family. A family that still exists and is as strong as ever under my guidance.” She crossed her hands and laid them on the table in place of the plate that had been removed. “And any more suggestions to the contrary will be taken as a threat to the family’s autonomy and treated as such.”
John Mangano’s chair legs scraped against the painted concrete floor. “Are you sure about what you’re saying, little girl? Are you making a declaration of war?”
Gia looked at him directly. “I’m saying that I and the family will not tolerate or accept anyone else’s disrespect from here on out.” She paused. “And I haven’t been anyone’s little girl for over a month and a half since my father was killed. By someone in this room.”
There was much exchanging of gazes, but silence reigned.
“So what did you call this friggin’ meeting for?” Tamburo wanted to know, his meaty face turning an unhealthy shade of red.
“I called this meeting for a very good reason. I don’t care how, I don’t care why, but I want one of you to tell me who was ultimately responsible for the death of my father and my brother Mario. And I want him dealt with accordingly.”
Chapter 15
Outwardly, Gia might look like a cool operator. Inwardly, her heart beat a million miles a minute.
But what had to be done had to be done. And she was tired of being given the runaround, having roadblocks thrown up in her face, and being treated like the little girl Mangano had called her.
Her father and brother had been killed. And she intended to make the man responsible for the hit pay.
Mangano looked to Vito. “You support Gia in this, Vito?”
Gia glanced at the older man seated two chairs down from her.
“Vito’s presence at this table next to the Venuto family head should speak for itself,” Luca said instead.
Gia looked at him and her heartbeat calmed a bit. The thought of facing the families without him had nearly sent her into a state of panic. But she realized she would have been fine even if he hadn’t shown up at the meet. She supposed she had Vito to thank, no matter how opposed to this meeting he’d been, for inviting Luca.
Then again, just knowing Luca was beside her, and behind her, gave her a courage she hadn’t known she possessed until that moment.
There was a loud clap outside the room that sounded ominously like gunfire. Gia stared in the direction of the doorway, only realizing that the sound had come from the opposite direction, more specifically from the windows behind her.
Another shot and the glass shattered.
“Get down!” Lucas shouted, grabbing her and nearly body slamming her to the concrete floor while everyone scrambled for cover, the room erupting in chaos.
“Are you hit?”
Gia couldn’t do more than stare up into Luca’s face, so close to hers it was little more than a blur. She couldn’t seem to draw a breath.
“Damn it, Gia, have you been shot?”
She slowly blinked at him as more gunfire sounded, probably in response to the first gunman.
Lucas opened her jacket and then turned her over.
Gia finally snapped out of it and righted herself. “I’m fine. I haven’t been hit.”
The other heads scrambled for the entrance to the connecting garage and their cars, the ones nearer the door already squealing away from the enclosure in their limos and Mercedes.
Luca hauled her away from the window and she watched as Vito ducked through the door into the garage.
“Do you think you were the target?” Luca asked, not trusting her words and still giving her a thorough check-over.
“I don’t know,” she said, staring at something on the other side of the room.
“But if I was, they got the wrong person.” She swallowed hard. “Or did they get the right one?”
Luca turned to see to what she was referring. And he sank to the floor next to her as he took in the sight.
Vincenzo Tamburo was still sitting in his chair, leaning slightly backward, his eyes wide open and unseeing. He had been shot in the middle of the forehead, a thin trail of blood trickling down over his brow. On the wall behind him was a red spot the size of a Frisbee.
Gia’s stomach lurched as she realized it was the back of his head.
“Come on,” Luca said, hauling her to her feet. “Let’s get out of here
.”
It was the best idea she had heard all day.
* * *
Lucas sat next to Gia, longing to touch her but not daring to, as her car headed the half hour inland toward the Trainello estate. For a few precious minutes she’d allowed him to hold her close, but once they were well away from the meeting site, she’d slid away from him to the far side of the seat and sat staring through the window.
He felt powerless to reach out to her, to allay her fears. He couldn’t even contact his handler and ask if he knew what in the hell had gone down at the meeting site.
All he could feel was gratitude that Gia was all right.
And anger at himself for not having been there to prevent her from going to the meeting at all.
What had she been thinking? While he admitted that she’d handled herself not only admirably, but commandingly, no one entered into such a meeting to make demands of people the likes of Tamburo and his fellow family heads. Not as a junior head yourself. And not when you had yet to be accepted as the legitimate head of the largest family that everyone had their sights on.
Common sense told him that he should have driven back in his own car rather than having the help see that it was returned to the estate. Right now he could have been placing a call to the emergency line for his handler and been setting things in motion to confirm his suspicions on who the shooter was and who he was working for. Pass on that Tamburo had been hit. By a bullet possibly meant for Gia.
Instead he’d chosen to drive with her, needing to be by her side in case she wanted him. Needing to convince himself that she had, indeed, made it through unscathed.
While he had chosen Gia over his job a few times the past couple of weeks, he had never done so in a situation of this magnitude. And now that he had, he wondered where that left him in terms of his job. Because after everything that had happened, he knew only one thing for certain: he would choose Gia every time.
* * *
Gia sat back in the car’s seat feeling numb. For some reason she couldn’t pinpoint, the last conversation she’d had with her father surfaced in her mind, barely managing to eclipse the afternoon’s events.
She’d last seen Giovanni Trainello the Sunday before he was murdered when he’d come to her Manhattan apartment for dinner. It was a rare occasion when he left the safety of his estate and Gia had made sure she’d cooked all of his favorites, relishing having her father in her environs rather than her being in his.
“You’re going to make someone a great wife one day, Giovanna,” he’d commented with pride after having taken his last bite of gelato and wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Speaking of which, are there any candidates you might want to introduce me to?”
Gia had laughed as she poured them self a cup of coffee. “No, there aren’t.”
He’d made a tsking sound. “Shame. What are you? Twenty-six now? By twenty-six, your mother and I had been married for seven years and we’d already had all three of you kids.”
Gia had known that, of course, but she’d never applied the knowledge to her own life. Only a couple of decades ago, women had gotten married younger, had their families younger. Nowadays it was different.
Still, somehow it had struck her that she had been nineteen when Luca left.
Had he stayed…
She looked at him now, even as more of her father’s words filled her mind.
“You know I don’t buy into any of that romantic love-at-first-sight horse crap, Giovanna,” he’d said, and Gia had laughed, because her mother had always said that her father was the most romantic man she’d met. “But I do believe that when you meet that one person meant for you, you’ll know it. This is true. Because it happened to me. I knew it the moment I met your mother that she would be my wife. And no matter what, even if I had known what would happen down the road, that I would lose her to cancer, I wouldn’t have changed anything if I could.”
Gia had sipped her coffee, considering him over the rim of the cup. “Is there somewhere you’re going with this conversation, Papa?”
He’d leaned back in his chair. “No, no. Nowhere in particular. I was just wondering if maybe the reason you haven’t found your husband yet is that you’re being too picky.”
She’d raised a brow at that. “Picky?”
“Uh-huh. Like maybe you expect too much from a man.” He’d leaned forward then, clasping his hands on the tablecloth. “Remember a man, any man, is only human.
Imperfect. It’s the way we’re made. There are going to be things about him that maybe you don’t like. That maybe you don’t want to know.”
A shadow had passed over his eyes and she realized he was again talking about his relationship with her mother.
“But that don’t mean he won’t love you. And that you can’t love him.” He’d waggled his finger at her then. “Remember that.”
Gia wasn’t sure why she’d recalled the conversation so clearly. Possibly because it was the last time he’d spoken to her before he was gunned down in cold blood.
Possibly because she’d nearly joined him in the family burial plot a little while ago.
“Gia?” Luca said softly, gently cupping her face and rubbing his thumb along her cheekbone. “Are you all right?”
She nodded her head and leaned into him. “I’m fine.”
Her response referred to more than just her physical state. It reflected what was going on in her heart.
Because she knew with certainty that no matter his flaws, no matter what had gone before, Luca was the one man in the entire world meant exclusively for her.
No matter what.
Chapter 16
“Aren’t you coming in?”
Gia stood on the top step of her father’s house and faced Lucas where he had stopped on the first.
Her nerves were raw and she still feared she might be sick to her stomach. She needed more than anything to make sense out of everything that had happened. And she’d prefer to do that with Lucas by her side.
“There’s someone I need to see first,” he said quietly, his gaze steady on hers, intense.
He stepped up so that he could kiss her lingeringly.
“I’ll be back before you miss me.”
Gia watched him walk to the first car in line in the driveway and get in, silently telling him that she missed him already.
She turned and walked inside the house, expecting the familiar surroundings to provide her with peace.
Instead, she felt worse. Unsafe.
Men milled about everywhere. Gia touched the sleeve of one as he passed. “What’s going on?”
Had something happened here as well as at the meeting site?
“Mr. Cimino ordered us to lock down the place,” he told her and then continued on his mission.
Gia went in search of Vito. When she didn’t find him in the library where he usually was, she went to her office. She was surprised to find the door locked.
That was funny. She’d thought she was the only one with a key.
She knocked twice but didn’t receive an answer.
Frankie popped up next to her. “Mr. Cimino is in there with some man in a suit.”
Gia frowned. All the men around the estate wore suits. “How do you mean?”
“Someone official looking.”
“Like the police?”
“I don’t know. The guy just didn’t look like anyone I’m used to seeing.”
“Thanks, Frankie.”
She raised her hand to knock again.
“Do you want some coffee or something?”
Gia smiled. The kid seemed completely oblivious to the frenetic activity around him. “Sure, Frankie. That would be nice.”
He hurried down the hall.
She knocked again, but before she could call out to Vito, the door opened inward. She moved aside as the suited man Frankie had referred to stepped out, barely making eye contact with her before heading toward the front door.
Gia turned to where Vito stood just inside the off
ice. “What’s going on, Vito? Why was the door locked?”
“I think you’d better come inside, Miss Gia,” he said quietly. “And lock the door behind you. I have something to tell you that I don’t think you want anyone overhearing.”
* * *
“Damn it, i want verification on the name of the shooter,” Lucas said to his handler after demanding a one-on-one. This time they’d met at Astoria Park, overlooking the East River. Smith was wearing a city jumpsuit and was pushing a cart that held a garbage bag and a broom. “Which family is he associated with?”
“Calm down, Paretti. Take your cell phone out and pretend you’re talking on it.
And, for God’s sake, turn toward the river away from me. You’re being about as subtle as a spurned woman.”
“I don’t give a damn what I’m being. Gia…I could have been killed this afternoon.”
“The shooter wasn’t interested in you.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
Smith stared at him. “You report to me. Not the other way around. Remember that.”
“Trust me. I don’t think it’s something I’m going to soon forget.”
Trying to rein in his anger, Lucas took out his cell phone and then turned toward the East River, staring at the churning waters where countless bodies had been known to float to the surface, not all of them mob related.
“So who’s the shooter?”
Smith swept up a crumpled piece of paper, staying true to his temporary undercover character. “Giglio.”
“I knew it.” Lucas had gotten a brief glimpse of the man, but he had been too far away for him to be sure it was the former Venuto family hit man. “Which family has he signed up with?”
“Well, that’s the thing,” Smith said quietly. “There’s no evidence that he has taken up with another family. In fact, all indicators point to him still working with the Venutos…”
* * *
Gia sat back in the office chair staring at the locked door. She was alone in the room now, Vito having left to oversee the lockdown some twenty minutes ago.
Dangerous Page 11
