LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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