Dangerous...

Dangerous…

Tori Carrington

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty One

Epilogue

Copyright

TORI CARRINGTON

Romantic Times BOOKreviews Career Achievement Award winning husband-and-wife duo Lori and Tony Karayianni are the power behind the pen name Tori Carrington. They call Toledo, Ohio, home base, but travel to Tony’s home town of Athens, Greece, whenever they can. For more information on the couple, their books and where they plan to appear next with a fresh batch of Tony’s Famous Baklava in hand, visit www.toricarrington.net.

Dear Reader,

Part of what we love about writing is the opportunity to immerse ourselves in worlds that are utterly foreign to us. To examine the people who inhabit these places, and ultimately not only understand them and accept that this is their reality, but to come to love them for who they are and root for them.

This has never been more true for us than it was with Dangerous… Gia Trainello is a Mafia princess who is elevated to Lady Boss when her father and brother are assassinated, sucked back into a life she left behind a long time ago along with love Lucas Paretti. But Lucas is not what he appears. Gia must find out the hard way that the road to hell is, indeed, paved with good intentions. And that lost love is the ultimate sacrifice.

We hope you’re riveted by Gia and Lucas’s sometimes heartbreaking journey towards happily-ever-after. We’d love to hear what you think. Contact us at PO Box 12271, Toledo, OH 43612, USA, (we’ll respond with a signed bookplate, newsletter and bookmark), or visit us on the web at www.toricarrington.net.

Here’s wishing you love, romance and HOT reading.

Lori & Tony Karayianni aka Tori Carrington

we dedicate this book to all those who ceaselessly strive toward a greater understanding of the world around us and the people who inhabit it. And to our spectacular editor Brenda Chin, who knows what we’re trying to say when we’re having a hard time saying it.

Prologue

CLAUDIO LANCIONE WAS the last person who would normally attract Gia Trainello. She’d known him for most of her life and he’d always been a part of the family. A fixture, really. Handsome, yes. But she’d never so much as shared a suggestive smile with him, much less a kiss and promise of something more. But grief, it was said, made people do strange things.

And Gia was definitely grieving.

The four-star hotel-room sheets chafed Gia’s bare legs as she curled into a ball. Had it really only been four days since her father and younger brother, Mario, had been gunned down in broad daylight? A day since she’d said her final good- byes at a burial service attended by hundreds she hadn’t wanted to face? Twenty-four hours since she’d watched her older brother, Lorenzo, being pushed away in a wheelchair, barely conscious of what had happened because his private nurse had given him enough sedatives to make a bull lie down before a matador during his brief excursion from the hospital?

A few hours since she’d slipped Claudio a note asking him to meet her, desperately wanting, needing to feel something other than the pain crowding her chest, making it almost impossible for her to breathe, and then virtually ripping off his clothes the instant he’d entered the hotel suite?

Oh, she’d managed to throw herself into the physical sexual activity. Had even achieved a shallow climax or two. But always, always there were the images of her father’s and brother’s closed caskets. Always, always there was the memory of the line of nonstop visitors milling through her father’s house to offer their condolences and to drink wine from his carefully stocked cellar. Always, always there was the feeling that she no longer belonged in the house where she had grown up and which she had long since left, even though she felt obligated to receive the visitors—especially with Lorenzo— the third victim of the tragedy—still hospitalized.

Always, always there was the gaping hole in her life that she feared might never be filled again.

The image of Luca Paretti claimed her mind’s eye. Striking Luca Paretti, standing to the side of the casket, forever present during the reception, reminding her of times better forgotten. Luca Paretti, who had once willingly played young Romeo to her teenage Juliet…and then disappeared when she’d needed him most, only to reappear again a few months ago.

Luca Paretti, the one she truly longed to be in bed with just then even though the two of them hadn’t shared more than a few cordial words in four days.

Even if allowing him entrance back into her life and her heart would be the ultimate mistake.

Claudio moved beside her and Gia went still, hoping he hadn’t awakened. She just needed a few moments more to herself. A little longer to feel the warmth, however fleeting and deceptive, against her skin before she had to force herself out of the bed and on with the rest of a life that wouldn’t include her father, brother…or Luca Paretti.

Her cell phone vibrated on the night table. Gia stared at it, and then the clock next to it: 4:30 a.m. Who would be calling her at such an ungodly hour? Only someone wanting to share ungodly news.

Claudio curved against her backside. “Are you going to get that?”

Gia uncurled her legs and entwined them with his. “I was thinking about it.”

The phone went silent and the decision was taken away from her.

Like most decisions over the past few days. Not only in connection to the funeral arrangements. Her interest in her Bona Dea Fashion Designs had been nil and her partner, Bryan Dragomir, had had to step in to fill both pairs of shoes.

She rubbed her forehead with the heel of her hand and closed her eyes. For so long she’d lived outside the cone of the family’s influence. While only the East River had separated her from the Venuto crime family, it had seemed like an ocean when she’d originally gone into the city to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology. Farther still when she’d started Bona Dea with her dearest friend, Bryan, spending the past five years building the company into a force to be reckoned with in the New York fashion world. They owned three upscale boutiques in Manhattan and had plans to expand even further, with shops in Chicago, Dallas and L. A.

But the death of her father and brother had sucked her back into the family with the strength of a riptide. Reminding her of the fear she’d had growing up. The worry that her father might be killed had shadowed every moment of every day. And when her two brothers signed on, she’d feared they’d been added to death’s list.

A list she’d escaped first because she was a woman, second because Luca Paretti had made it impossible to stay in a place that reminded her forever of him.

But while she’d been aware of the danger that surrounded many of her family members, she’d never expected that they’d all be taken from her in one fell swoop.

Or by one assassin’s gun.

And while Lorenzo was still on this side of the earth that covered her father and younger brother, he wasn’t walking it. And might never walk it again.

The telephone began to vibrate anew even as she felt Claudio’s hand slide around her waist then shift up to cup her breast.

She reached for the phone.

The number was unlisted.

“Hello?”

“Gia?”

“This is she.”

“Vito here.”

Vito. Her father’s second in command. The man who had been as broken as any blood relative by recent events. And had taken care of so much over the past few days when she’d been incapable of seeing too much of anything at all.

“Sorry to call you so late. But I’ve got some information on the people responsible for the killings. And you said you wanted to know the instant it came in.”

That seemed so long ago, when she’d stood over her father’s casket and told the man she called Uncle Vito that she wanted revenge.

“I’ve come up with one name so far. Claudio Lancione.”

Gia lay frozen for a full minute, trying to assimilate the information. She didn’t question Vito. If he said the man who was stroking her breast even now had been involved in the shooting, then he’d been involved. It was as simple as that.

Her stomach clenched tightly, filling her throat with bile as shame and fury fought for control within her.

“Where are you?” Vito asked. “I want to send a couple of guys to keep an eye on you until we figure out how deep inside the family the conspiracy goes.”

Vito apparently understood enough to know that she wasn’t at her Upper West Side penthouse apartment. But not enough to know that she was with Claudio right that moment.

She told him where she was and then slowly closed the phone.

“What’s going on?” Claudio asked.

Gia swallowed thickly, afraid she might be sick as she gathered her wits tightly around her. “They have the name of one of those responsible for the hit.”

He rolled on top of her, his manhood hard and pulsing between her legs. “Oh, yeah? Who?”

Gia arched her back, and stretched her arms above her head, appearing to be doing nothing more than bracing herself against the headboard for another round of sex.

Instead she reached for Claudio’s holster where he’d hung it on the far bedpost, her fingers trembling. She kissed him deeply, hot tears blurring his features, even as she freed the gun, blindly sought and found the safety and switched it off, and then brought the cold metal muzzle to rest against Claudio’s temple.

“You.”

She squeezed the trigger.

1

One month later...

LUCAS PARETTI STOOD off to the side of the wide front steps to the Long Island Trainello estate, watching as people came and went, none of them leaving a particularly lasting impression. It was at times like these when it was all too easy to forget the past seven years existed. Too easy to remember himself as little more than a kid fascinated by, and proud to be associated with, the family. More specifically, the Venuto crime family, one of the most powerful of five mafia families in the New York City area that had been headed by Giovanni Trainello.

Too easy to imagine that he and Gia Trainello were the same young couple in love, stealing a few, precious minutes alone whenever they could.

Then he remembered his younger brother, Angelo, and he felt the warmth leave his blood.

He fished for a cigarette from a pack he’d had for a month and lit up, squinting through the blue smoke at the street.

Angelo. There was a time when not a moment went by when he wasn’t acutely aware of the loss. When he went to his parents’ small walk-up Brooklyn apartment and felt that emptiness everywhere he looked, including in his parents’ faces, and saw the way they appeared twenty years older than they were.

Angelo had been seventeen when he’d vowed to follow in Lucas’s footsteps.

Seventeen when he began going to the Trainello business front in Brooklyn begging for odd jobs.

Seventeen when he’d been gunned down, forever losing his rights to turning eighteen.

Lucas looked down the long, curving driveway bordered by lush, mature trees, suddenly surprised that he was out in Long Island instead of in Brooklyn where his brother had been killed. For a moment he could smell the wet concrete sidewalk that had recently been watered down, the exhaust from cars on a nearby busy street. In his mind’s eye, he saw the yellow crime scene tape and the stain made by Angelo’s blood.

And the spot on his own shirt, made as he’d cradled his brother’s head in his arms, pleading for him to come back.

The flashbacks didn’t happen as often as they once did. Which was a good thing. Because if he thought about what had happened to his brother every moment of every day, he would never be able to function. Never be able to focus on what he had come back to New York, come back into the family, to do.

Another part of him supposed he’d purposely pushed thoughts of his brother aside over the past month because the entire reason for him being there had changed, and by all rights he should have quit his cover position as Venuto family attorney and have been on the first plane back to St. Paul, returning to New York only to occasionally visit his parents.

A black Lexus sedan pulled up the driveway, the reason why he wasn’t on that plane and was instead still working undercover sitting in the back seat. Gia Trainello. He took another drag off the cigarette, watching her black stiletto heels hit the pavement, her black stockings clinging against her shapely calves as she got out. Her gaze locked with his beyond her large sunglasses and she looked surprised to see him. Just as she had nearly every day over the past month since her father and brother had been killed.

Then the moment passed and she’d either nod or say hello, and circumstances returned to normal.

“Morning, Luca,” she said softly.

“Good morning.”

And just like that the driver handed her her bags from the trunk of the car and the connection was broken, restless ghosts chased back into the shadows of the past as she walked up the stairs to the sprawling Italian villa-style estate and disappeared inside the house.

Gia Trainello. The reason why he’d stuck around.

And the number-one reason why he should still catch the first flight out for St. Paul.

THE QUIET MOMENTS in Gia’s life were few and far between now. Which wasn’t entirely a bad thing. The busier she was, the less likely she was to remember that night at the Seasons when she’d shot Claudio with his own gun and then lay there with his motionless body on top of her until Vito’s men arrived. It had taken the sound of them gaining access to the room to bring her around to the reality of the situation. And as soon as they’d removed his body, she’d curled into a fetal position, ignoring attempts to get her to move, to leave the room before anyone started snooping around. Or, worse yet, called the police.

She couldn’t remember who had dressed her and taken her back to her place. All she could recall was that when she awakened twelve hours later and clawed her way to the shower, her skin was still covered with Claudio’s blood.

And twelve long hours after that, when her known world had refused to start revolving again, and she’d felt the shadows of the Venuto family sucking at her heels, she’d known what she had to do if she hoped to ever return to any kind of sense of normalcy: she had to step into her father’s shoes until her father and brother’s assassins were brought to justice.

Family justice.

In the past month, her days had come to look very different from the life she’d known before. She’d packed her penthouse apartment in mothballs and then moved back into the family house in Long Island. There wasn’t a time when there weren’t at least five armed men around her, and more guarding the compound. It was almost as if the past seven years in Manhattan had never existed…except for when her partner, Bona Dea Bryan, came to visit her to discuss company business.

Like he was this morning.

She stood at the window, watching where Luca spoke to Vito on the back balcony. Luca was smoking a cigarette, which likely explained why the conversation was taking place outside. Longing, pure and strong, swept through her veins. Both for the man now, and the man she’d known in the past.

“Gia? Are you still with me?” Bryan asked from behind her. She turned to face him.

That was the question, wasn’t it? Was she still with him? Physically, she was in her father’s old- world office, the new designs for the spring collection spread out on a polished oak conference table between the two of them, but emotionally she was far, far away.

“I’m sorry. I missed the last part of what you said.”

Bryan sighed. “I don’t think you’ve heard a single word since I arrived an hour ago.”

“Don’t be silly.” She took in his dubious look. “I heard half. At least.”

He chuckled and then closed the sketchbook. “That’s okay. We can do this another time. I mean, a couple of days isn’t going to make that big of a difference.”

But she knew that it would. New York Fashion Week was only a month and a half away and it would be then that they would spotlight their spring collection. Which meant important decisions needed to be made. Pieces chosen and rushed into production. Ads taken out. Meetings to arrange. Magazine editors to wine and dine.

Bryan zipped up his case. But rather than kiss her goodbye and leave, he let the case drop back to the table, then gestured for her to sit with him in the chairs facing the fireplace, left cold in the August heat. Gia caressed the arms of the leather wing chair. Her father’s favorite.

“I’m worried about you, Gia,” Bryan said, watching her closely.

That was a switch. Ever since they’d become fast friends in college, she’d been the one to look after him. Despite his macho demeanor, Bryan was a big softy and she’d often spent time talking him through heartache or an attack of nerves. Their individual strengths shored up the other’s weaknesses, making them great business partners. And even better friends.

She managed a smile. “Don’t be. I’m fine.”

“Are you?”

She averted her gaze. No, she wasn’t. But she would be. Soon.

“Are the rumors true?”

“What rumors?”

“That you’re the new Lady Boss of the Venuto family.”

Gia stared at him, his words at odds with his WASPish good looks and friendly grin.

Of course, it wasn’t the first she’d heard the reference. The New York dailies had been running pieces on her for weeks following the funeral, most times with bold headlines calling her the same.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “I’m just straightening out some unfinished business.”

“Estate matters?”

She didn’t answer immediately. Then she said, “Something like that.”

“How’s your brother?”

Lorenzo. Her heart ached. “Getting better.”

Gia wondered when lying had become so easy for her. The truth was that Lorenzo wasn’t doing well at all. He’d developed an addiction to the pain pills prescribed to help him deal with his spinal-injury pain. So rather than seeing to the therapy sessions necessary to help him regain his mobility, he passed his days lying in a hospital bed she’d had set up in his old bedroom upstairs, with twenty-four-hour nursing care, and only doctor visits as the highlight of his days.

“Look, Bry,” she said, leaning closer to him, “I appreciate your concern. But I’m fine. Really. All this is…just temporary. If you can continue to hold down the fort a little longer without me…I’ll be back on the job in no time flat. You just wait and see.”

He appeared doubtful. And she couldn’t blame him.

Still, he nodded and then looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get back to the city. I have an eleven o’clock with Elite to close the deal on the models we want for the show.”

Gia stood up to give him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for coming out.”

He shook his finger at her as he picked up his case from the table. “Next time you come to the office.”

Gia walked him to the door, noticing how the armed men blended into the shadows to let him pass. He got into the car he’d hired to bring him out and then disappeared down the driveway.

She turned around to find the last person on earth she needed to see standing behind her. And her throat tightened to the point of pain.

Luca Paretti.

2

LUCAS HAD BEEN WAITING for over an hour for Gia to finish with her meeting. He supposed that was part of the price he paid for expecting to see Gia— now referred to as Miss Gia by family members— without an appointment. But every time he’d called over the past month to book a time when he might talk to her, she’d avoided him at every turn.

So he’d had to push his luck by confronting her when she wasn’t expecting it.

“Luca,” she said on what might have been a sigh, using the Italian pronunciation of his name rather than Lucas.

“Gia. You look well.”

She took his hands and kissed him on both cheeks, but the movement was perfunctory, with no warmth behind the action. At least not the kind of warmth he may have wanted. Despite the way she seemed to linger after the second kiss, as if reluctant to move away from him.

But she did, stepping back so that he could look into her wide, dark eyes.

“Sorry to have to resort to subterfuge to see you,” Lucas said, following her to Giovanni’s office without waiting to be invited. “But I have several important matters to discuss with the head of the family. And since I understand that title has been bestowed on you, then you’re the one I need to discuss them with.”

The first time he’d seen her after so many years, he’d felt like someone had hit him in the chest with a two-by-four. While she’d been pretty when he’d known her before, there had been a girl-child innocence about her. Now…well, now she was one hundred percent smoky Mediterranean beauty, whose dark eyes spoke of a mystery and wisdom that surpassed her years.

He’d seen countless pictures of her in the paper in recent weeks. Whether the shots focused on her in a black veil weeping over her father’s and brother’s caskets, or getting out of a family limousine, she always seemed to be looking elsewhere, her features set in dark determination. An elusive beauty always dressed in black.

And today was no exception. She wore a stylish clingy black top and skinny black pants, the flats she wore making her six inches shorter than him, but still tall by female standards at around five-nine.

Over the years, he’d followed her career from afar and knew that many questioned why she would choose a role behind the fashion scene instead of up front and center. She easily equaled, if not eclipsed, many of the models she used for her shows and print ads.

But the media didn’t know what he did about Gia: namely that after her mother died when she was seven, she’d escaped into a world of her own making. A cerebral world of books and art and fashion. And, aside from his few carefree months with her, that’s where she remained.

He remembered saying that when he grew up, he wanted to be attorney to the mob, and that she had wanted to be the next Donatella Versace.

He supposed they both got what they’d wanted.

He could tell her she looked good but knew that would have little impact on her. In fact, it might hurt his cause, because she’d likely shut him out. He’d heard the stories about her having seen to the Claudio Lancione hit on her own. Some said that they’d even been having sex at the time. But he couldn’t think about that in order to do what he had to.