LITMIR.BIZ

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      “No. I’m saying Frank has more experience in deceiving people than Rhea.”

      “The bottom line is, she’s been hiding my son from me like some dirty secret. And if it was Frank’s idea, and she was forced into it, she’s had plenty of time to find a way to get a message to me. But from what you’ve said, it sounds like she’s been living content at Santa Palazzo.”

      Joey wasn’t going to accept any excuses. Whatever Rhea’s reason was, it wouldn’t be good enough. And the minute he laid eyes on her, this crazy feeling constricting his chest and tightening his jeans would burn itself out. He couldn’t possibly still care about her, after what she’d done.

      “She looks different.”

      Joey blinked out of his musing and saw Lucky studying one of the pictures. “She looks different because she’s not wearing a gauze bandage over her eye or a split lip.” He couldn’t disguise the anger and disgust that tainted his deep voice. He still hated the fact that he hadn’t been able to keep Stud from terrorizing her.

      His gaze returned to the picture of Rhea walking on the beach. Besides being bruise free, he’d noticed that she’d cut her hair into a straight, carefree style, and it had been bleached almost white from the Florida sun. Her skin no longer made her look as pale as a ghost, and she wasn’t painfully thin. There was a gentle curve to her hips and more definition to her breasts. The only thing he could guarantee looked the same were her beautiful long legs.

      Angry that he’d taken the time to dissect the picture, he said, “Not having bruises or gauze bandages doesn’t change the facts.”

      “Which are?”

      “That she’s a liar and a thief!” Joey swore softly, wishing he hadn’t raised his voice. He didn’t want his son to wake up to the sound of his father shouting like an angry fool. He didn’t want Niccolo ever to be afraid of him. Not in the way he’d been afraid of his own father when he was a boy.

      He and Lucky had tiptoed around their father, beginning at an early age, to avoid his lectures on loyalty to the famiglia, but they hadn’t been able to escape the hourly drills Frank had forced on them to make his sons weaponry experts. By age thirteen Joey could nail a target dead center with a six-inch knife from twenty yards away. Lucky, at age ten, could empty a round of ammo into a dummy’s head with a 25-caliber Beretta and a .38 Special.

      More softly, but just as angrily, he said, “She kept me from my son, Lucky.”

      “Yesterday you had a right to be angry, mio fratello. But today you have the boy. Focus on what you want tomorrow. What you want next month. Next year. What you want for Niccolo’s future.”

      “What I want for my son is for him to grow up happy, doing whatever the hell it is he wants to do with his life. I don’t want him to be like us. I don’t want him to feel trapped, or forced into chasing another man’s dream.”

      Lucky raised his glass of scotch. “Then, we’ll drink to happiness, and to changing the future for him.”

      Joey lifted his glass. “And we’ll drink to you, Lucky. For making a trip to Florida and buying that camera.”

      Lucky nodded, his grin softening his dark eyes and the scar on his chin. “To Niccolo. May he grow up to be as wise as his father, and—” he grinned “—as handsome as his uncle.”

      Chapter 2

      The sight of the milky blue horizon over Lake Michigan was glorious, but it had been as fleeting a feeling as the absurd emotional tug that Rhea had somehow come home…home to stay.

      Now, as she stood in the lobby of Masado Towers with a lump in her throat, clutching Nicci’s teddy bear, she knew the depth of what she was facing.

      The night she’d left Chicago, escorted to the airport by two of Frank’s bodyguards, Joey’s dream had been nothing more than a blueprint, steel girders and concrete columns. Today, Masado Towers was a work of art, an architectural phenomenon. A city within a city.

      Not only was the Towers a grand hotel, but there were condominiums, offices, department stores, boutiques, an art museum, a health club, a grocery store, restaurants, lounges, movie theaters and a bank.

      Rhea had never thought she’d underestimated Joey’s ability. But all of this confirmed that the man she thought she knew was as complex as the dynasty he had built and now commanded.

      If she had known before he had touched her what a mega-power he was, or what the future would hold, would she have done things differently? It was a question she couldn’t answer. That night three years ago, beaten down and desperate, alone and scared, she hadn’t expected to be rescued—least of all, rescued by Joey Masado.

      Countless times she’d gotten herself home from the hospital after one of Stud’s outbursts. She could have done it one more time. Then Joey had appeared and completely disarmed her with his take-charge tenderness.

      But that was then, and this was now. Last night he had breached a secure compound and stolen his son from under the noses of eight armed guards. And he had done it without a single confrontation. The tender man beneath the tough-guy veneer had a ruthless side. Maybe she had always known that. The rumors had surely warned her that the Masado men never turned the other cheek. Never… And she had seen evidence of that with Frank. He was a hard man, determined to protect his family, whatever the cost.

      Rhea checked her watch. It was early, barely eight. She hadn’t slept, nor could she until she saw her son and knew he was safe. She eyed the glass elevator—the woman at the front desk had said, “You’ll find Mr. Masado’s personal elevator in the passageway. Go down hall B, you won’t be able to miss it.”

      As if in a trance, Rhea stepped into the glass box, not thinking it peculiar that the door was standing open as if waiting for her. She pushed the only button visible, and when the door closed, she wet her lips, then nervously brushed her long bangs closer to the scar next to her eye.

      When the elevator stopped, she buried her free hand—the one that was shaking—in the pocket of her brown suede jacket and waited for the door to open. When it did, she was confronted by a man who reminded her of the guards at Santa Palazzo—big and tough, and capable of snapping a woman’s neck in a split second.

      “Ms. Williams?”

      “How did you know who I… Never mind.”

      The blond powerhouse surprised Rhea with a smile. “I’m Gates. Mr. Masado’s—”

      “Bodyguard,” she finished.

      “At the Towers we use the word assistant. This way, Ms. Williams.”

      Rhea followed the six-foot-five assistant. As they walked along, she saw him lower his head and speak softly into a small gold lapel pin on his suit jacket. She decided he was outfitted with a miniature microphone of some kind that allowed him to speak to his boss.

      Moments later, Gates stopped in front of a massive pair of doors. He didn’t bother to knock, just swung the door open and moved aside to allow her entry.

      Rhea stepped inside, her son’s teddy bear gripped tightly in her hand. She didn’t know what she had expected to find, but a room shrouded in darkness wasn’t it. In the next few seconds, as the door clicked behind her, she saw that a vast wall of closed vertical blinds behind a sweeping half-circle desk were responsible for the shadows. They hadn’t stolen all the light from the room, but it certainly had set the tone for what undoubtedly was Joey’s morning mood.

      The expensive leather chair behind the desk was empty. She was in the lion’s den, but where was the lion?

      She scanned the room and located a silhouette seated at a mile-long bar that looked like it should have been in a nightclub instead of in an office. There was a liquor bottle on the marble surface, and beside it, a half-empty crystal glass.

      It was too early to be drinking, but then, her ex-husband had drunk all hours of the

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