Dangerous...

“Come on,” Gia said. “Now that I’m dressed for the job, I might as well help you out.”

“Oh, no, Miss Gia.” Frankie looked stricken. “I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

“Are you disobeying an order, Fusco?”

“Me? Oh, no. No, I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Come on, then.”

Gia ordered Romy to heel at her side and she and Frankie walked the span of lawn behind the house toward the garage.

“How long you been working here?” Gia asked.

“Two months tomorrow, Miss Gia.”

“And your duties?”

He reached down to pat Romy, who growled at him threateningly. He snatched his hand back. “Well, washing the dogs. Running errands for the guys. Stuff like that.”

“Do you like it?”

“Like it? I love it. I’ve been trying to work for the family for years.”

Gia smiled at his exaggeration. He couldn’t be more than a day over eighteen.

“I was bussing tables at the Guarinos’ and running numbers when I met your father, God rest his soul.” He looked awkward about mentioning her dad. “My condolences, Miss Gia.”

“Thank you.”

“Anyway, I met your father and he brought me out here to see to some things. I stay in the stables with the other guys.”

Gia looked toward the converted stables in question that were barely visible through a thatch of trees and flowering bushes, and then turned back toward Frankie. She could see why her father had been taken with the teen. He didn’t appear to have an insincere bone in him. His obvious youth aside—she’d met more eighteen-year- olds who looked forty than she could count over the past month—he was open and enthusiastic and apparently relished his connection to the family.

Of course, she’d seen much of the same misplaced interest growing up. Especially from the kids who came up in the area of Brooklyn that the Venuto family had controlled since Prohibition. Where teens in other neighborhoods might join gangs, in the Venuto neighborhood, the family was the gang. And, it seemed, every kid wanted to be a member.

They rounded the corner of the garage to find one of Vito’s goons standing in shirtsleeves in the summer heat, his shoulder holster and firearm clearly visible. Romulus’s brother, Remus, sat quietly waiting his turn for a bath.

“Romy, sit,” Gia ordered.

The dog whined at her and then did as she asked.

“Thanks, Miss Gia,” Frankie said, appearing not to know what to do. He held out his hand to shake hers, and then stared at where it was covered in suds and drew it quickly back. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

“No bother,” Gia said, looking around. She’d have to ask Vito to have his men cover their weapons.

Just as she thought his name, she spotted Vito at the edge of the part of the driveway leading to the garage, speaking to a man she didn’t recognize. Of course, she had yet to name all of the personnel around the sprawling estate, but she was pretty sure she hadn’t seen this guy before.

She watched as the two men shook hands, and then the dark stranger rounded the front of a BMW sedan and climbed inside. Moments later, he disappeared down the long driveway toward the road.

Frankie looked as if he had things well in hand, so she began making her way back toward the office’s back entrance.

She turned slightly. “Frankie?”

He immediately snapped to attention, the soapy sponge he held covering his face in suds. He wiped them away with the back of his hand.

“How would you like a promotion to personal assistant?”

LUCAS LET HIMSELF into the small studio apartment he’d rented in Queens, careful to avoid being seen. Of course, that he’d left his car on Queens Boulevard, changed into a tracksuit, Mets cap and athletic shoes in a subway bathroom, and then caught the next train to the apartment had helped in his subterfuge.

He threw the five different locks on the door and flicked on the one light in the cramped space. There was only a sofa bed, a desk and a small kitchen and bathroom. The walls bore peeling wallpaper that revealed a different pattern wallpaper underneath. The floorboards beneath his shoes were scratched and gouged, multiple coats of paint having come up over the years.

He tossed his keys onto the desk and shrugged out of the track jacket, removing the palm-size tapes he’d put in the pockets and staring at them. They represented more than thirty hours of conversations he’d had over the past week. One with Gia, herself.

Sitting down in an old wooden chair, he considered the tapes, dumping the ones that held conversations with Vito and other family members into one shoe box, the last tape that included today’s conversation with Gia into another.

Like clockwork, the cell phone that he left in the apartment rang.

He picked up on the second ring.

“What have you got?” his FBI handler asked.

“Not much. Things have been quiet.”

Silence. Then, “How are you going in your effort to get closer to Gia Trainello?”

Lucas rubbed his forehead. His handler even asking the question made him feel like dirt.

Yes, the bureau knew the rumors that Gia had taken over in her brother’s stead. And he’d been ordered to get closer to her. His handler didn’t know his past with the onetime mafia princess. And if he had any say in it, he wouldn’t, either. What had happened between him and Gia seven years ago was between them. Period. It didn’t enter into his current job assignment. Which, simply, was to bring down the Venuto crime family, and possibly any other families he could along with them.

Still, he said, “I’ve established contact in order to discuss estate papers.”

“And?”

“And that’s it.”

Lucas leaned back in the chair, causing it to creak, a part of him daring his handler to press him for more information.

Damn it. He should have asked to be reassigned the moment Giovanni and Mario Trainello were hit. Forget the years’ worth of tapes and wiretaps and his hands-on investigation into the crime organization.

But he hadn’t asked. Because every time he’d thought about doing so, he remembered Angelo. Recalled his younger brother’s pale face against the satin that lined his casket. And that alone was enough to remind him that what he was doing now was the culmination of seven years of hard work. Any day now, he would have the revenge he’d craved for the better half of his adult life.

He would see to it that the family responsible for his brother’s death paid the ultimate price for its crimes.

Gia…

A small voice whispered her name in the back of his mind.

Of course, he’d try to protect Gia any way he could. He was determined to keep her out of it, both because of their past together…and because she didn’t deserve to be hurt by him again.