Last Man Standing

“A guard at Santa Palazzo. Romano Montel taught me all kinds of things.”

I’ll just bet he did, Lucky thought, instantly disliking the guard with a vengeance.

The bouncer that patrolled the hall tossed Lucky key number sixteen. “Palone called. He told me the news. Name’s Blacky, boss. You need anything, you just let me know.” The Shedd’s troubleshooter eyed Elena. “You hire a new dancer?”

“No.” Without further explanation, Lucky unlocked room number sixteen, shouldered the door open and spun Vito Tandi’s daughter inside.

Chapter 3

Apart from the sweet odor of Scotch that had trailed him out of the bar, Lucky Masado showed no outward signs that he was drunk. His speech was clear, and he’d walked in a fairly straight line down the hall.

Elena heard the door click shut, and before she turned around, she made a quick assessment of the no-frills room. It had definitely been designed to keep the customer’s minds on what they were paying for. There was a small table and two chairs, and a double bed. Nothing else.

She was well aware that she was in a by-the-hour room and that her lips still tingled from a surprise kiss that wasn’t really a kiss. Why she had taken the time to analyze what did or did not constitute the proper definition of a real kiss made no sense at all.

Yes, she had noticed Lucky Masado at Santa Palazzo; it was impossible to ignore a man whose reputation was as black as his hair. And yes, there was no disputing that he was handsome or that she’d found him interesting to watch. But then, so was a tropical storm, from a distance.

She slowly turned and found him leaning against the door with his arms crossed over his broad chest. He wore faded jeans and a light-colored shirt beneath a battered brown leather jacket. Pretty much the same clothes she’d seen him wearing when he’d visited Frank at Santa Palazzo two weeks ago, minus the jacket. He was tall, six-two, or maybe three.

He said, “You wanted to talk, Elena. Someplace private. Here we are.”

She backed up until she felt the corner of the bed at her back. “You knew before we met that I wasn’t your sister. How?”

“I flew to Santa Palazzo a little over a month ago on what you might call a witch hunt and ended up discovering you, along with Rhea and Niccolo.”

“By spying on your father?”

“Yes.”

“You invaded our privacy.”

“Yes.”

There was no apology in his husky voice. No regret in his brown eyes. He said, “You take morning walks along the beach. Sometimes as early as 5 a.m. You wear loose-fitting clothing the wind can play with. You take off your…shoes when you walk.”

Elena’s stomach knotted.

“When I discovered Rhea and Niccolo, I suspected the boy was my brother’s son, but I had to be sure. I went to the hospital for proof. While I was there, I checked you out, too. That’s the first I knew Grace was alive. That somehow my father had been able to get her out of Chicago years ago without anyone knowing it. There was a rumor she was pregnant when she disappeared.”

Elena listened carefully to each word. “And what did you do with the information?”

“Nothing. You weren’t going anywhere that I could see, so I concentrated on Rhea and Niccolo. Joey had been searching for Rhea for three years. He had no idea Frank was hiding her in Florida or that she’d had his son. When Frank arrived in Chicago days later, I waited for your name to come up. When it did, Frank threw me a curve by claiming you were our sister. I knew it wasn’t true, but I figured he had a reason for lying, so I kept quiet until I learned what it was. And you, Elena? How long have you known the sister story was a lie?”

“Not long.”

“Not long doesn’t answer my question. When I was at Santa Palazzo and Frank introduced us, you knew then, didn’t you? How long before that?”

“The night you and Joey came and took Nicci, Rhea was extremely upset. She had a right to be, but it was more than that. There were so many things I felt she wanted to say but couldn’t. After she left Santa Palazzo to follow Nicci here, I decided to investigate a few things for myself. Like you, I ended up at the hospital several days later checking records and discovered Frank wasn’t my real father.”

“But you didn’t go straight to him with what you’d learned? Why?”

Elena tossed her coat on the bed. “By then he was here in Chicago. Rhea had lived with us at Santa Palazzo for three years. She and I had grown close. I was concerned about her and Nicci. I wanted things to work out for them, so I decided to table what I knew until things settled down.”

“Frank was home almost a week before we arrived. You had five days to talk to him.”

“And I was going to the night he returned. We sat down to talk and then he started telling me about his double life. About his sons, my half brothers. I knew it was a lie, the brother part, but I just listened.” Elena shrugged. “I guess I was too confused at the time to question him.”

The look Lucky gave her clearly called her a liar. “The truth is, Elena, you didn’t trust him to tell you the truth. So you decided to make plans to find out the truth for yourself.”

“It wasn’t that easy. My mother is very dependent on me. I do things for her that no one else does. In order to leave Santa Palazzo to learn the truth, as you put it, I needed to teach Frank how to do those things. Since he’s now retired, with no plans to ever leave Santa Palazzo, I spent the next week—” Elena paused “—I suppose you could call it, weaning Mother away from me.”

“And he was willing to do these things for her?”

“I’ve never doubted Frank’s love for my mother. Of course he didn’t know I had an ulterior motive for suggesting that he get more involved in Mother’s therapy now that he’s home to stay. Tonight I gave him one more chance to tell me the truth. I told him I knew he wasn’t my father. I asked him to give me my father’s name. He refused, so here I am.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know who your father is.”

Elena arched her delicate black eyebrows. “If you know, then Frank knows.”

“Did I say I knew?”

“Come on, Lucky. Not you, too.”

“Lucky? At Santa Palazzo it was Tomas. Out there—” he motioned to the other side of the door “—it was, ‘Listen, you.’ What broke the ice? My charm in the hallway?”

There was no reason for him to bring up that stupid kiss, so why had he? And as far as his nickname went, she wasn’t sure why she’d used it. But did it really matter? What was in a name?

Everything, she decided. After all, that was one of the reasons she’d come to Chicago.

Elena shoved away from the bed and gave him her back. The way he continued to take her apart with his dark eyes since they’d entered the room was starting to make her feel self-conscious. She had bought her outfit at the airport out of necessity. She hadn’t thought about the weather until she’d gotten off the plane in her white summer skirt and sandals to twenty degrees and snow-flakes.

“You came to talk, Elena. So let’s talk.”

She turned back around and boldly studied him the way he’d been studying her for the past five minutes. He was taller and broader than his brother and father, but leaner.

Still, that wasn’t what she’d noticed first about him—his drinking or his classic Italian nose. Or the visible scars on his hands and neck. What she’d noticed as she’d stepped onto the veranda at Santa Palazzo and laid eyes on Lucky Masado for the very first time was the rebel length of his midnight-black hair and how much of his soul she’d glimpsed in the depths of his brown eyes.

Again she focused on those soulful eyes, then on the way his sleek nose led her gaze straight to his rugged mouth and unshaven jaw. A second later she was appreciating the open V of his collarless muslin shirt and how it showed off his rich Sicilian skin and a smattering of black chest hair.

When she began to examine his beat-up leather jacket and the number of holes in it, she decided that they couldn’t possibly be what they appeared to be or he would be dead, right?

Yes, he was his father’s son. But even Frank, with his eye patch and all his intimidating ways, looked like a pussycat next to his street-soldier son with a rumored scar that ran more than half the length of his body.

Suddenly Elena needed to say it. To demand he give her what she’d come for. “Who is he, Lucky? Who is my father? I want his name.”

“I can’t tell you that, Elena.”

Elena ignored the way her stomach did a slow flip. When he said her name, he dragged it out, reminding her of thick syrup fighting to stay in the bottle.