Ever notice that the whisper of temptation can
be heard farther than the loudest call to duty?
—Earl Wilson
ARIANA DE LUCA
About an hour before my shift ended, Vince, Gio, and another man had come into L’Oscurità. The tailored suits on Vince and Gio could pay for my New York City rent for the next two years, but their companion—a John Doe—looked like he couldn’t afford two months of utilities for my tiny apartment.
I had tried to study them from my perch beside Graham, but they’d gone inside Bastian’s office and hadn’t left since.
The bar was closed, most of the staff had already left, and still, not a peep from the office. Under the guise of helping a busboy with table cleaning duty so he could get home early to his pregnant wife, I positioned myself at the center of the bar, where I had a direct line of sight to the hallway that led to the office door.
“Dana,” Graham called from the entrance as the busboy slipped past him. He had a jacket in one hand and his car keys in the other. “I’m leaving. You wanted a ride?”
Dana, who sat at a bar stool, no doubt waiting for Bastian to show his face, looked between me and the general direction of Bastian’s office. Indecision marred her pretty features before she finally heaved a sigh, her desire to avoid walking in her high hostess heels winning.
“Ari?” Graham turned to me and raised a brow.
When I realized I’d been cleaning the same table for about ten minutes, I straightened up, my fingers clenching around the rag, and said the first lie that came to my mind. “I’m alright. I’m catching a movie with a few friends at the 24-hour theater a few blocks from here. Thanks, though. Drive safe.”
He nodded to me and opened the door for Dana, who gave one last lingering glance in the direction of the office, narrowed her suspicious eyes on me, and left with a soft huff. The door slammed shut behind them, leaving me alone with just the men behind the door.
As soon as Graham and Dana left, I tossed the rag with the other dirty rags, washed my hands, and made my way to the small section of the hallway that laid between Bastian’s office and the employee break room—close enough to Bastian’s office to hopefully hear, yet close enough to the break room that, should I get caught, I could say I was on my way to the break room to gather my things to leave.
I’d done something similar yesterday when Bastian had almost caught me eavesdropping on his phone call with someone.
Everett.
I needed to find out who Everett was. I made a mental note to pass his name along to the bureau.
My phone felt heavy in my hand as I pretended to text. Several security cameras lined the hallway, so I needed to look like I was doing something. My ears remained alert, and I heard a voice speak behind the closed office door.
“Y-you’ve got it all wrong.” From the hesitancy, I suspected this was the man I hadn’t recognized. The John Doe.
“Are you calling us liars?” This voice was firmer. It wasn’t Bastian’s. I’d heard a wire tape of Vince’s voice, and this didn’t sound like him. Gio’s voice, maybe?
“N-no. O-of course n-not.”
My breath hitched. Just listening to John Doe’s voice gave me anxiety. I didn’t have my service weapon. It remained hidden under my apartment sink in a fake detergent bottle with a false bottom. For this legend, the bureau had only approved me to carry it if I suspected I was in imminent danger—beyond the hostile working environment.
And for the first time since I started the legend, I wished I had it with me.
I didn’t think they would kill him. Not here, where they had so much to lose. But maybe they’d leave, and I would have to follow them without the safety of my Glock 22. The thought made my skin crawl, and I switched from fake texting to fake talking on the phone to keep my eyes alert.
“Quit being a little bitch.” This came from Bastian, his voice so deep, gruff, and distinct, I would recognize it anywhere. “You haven’t paid us. Either you lost the money or you skimmed it from us. Which is it, Bianchi?”
I made a mental note to pass along the name to Jenn during our next session, along with whatever I could grasp from this conversation.
Bianchi’s voice was a soft quiver. “I’ll get it t-to you. I promise.”
A smoother voice spoke this time. Firm. Self-contained. Deadly. Vince. “You have a daughter, don’t you?”
Bastian feigned a laugh before chiming in. “What was her name? Mara? Maria?”
“M-marta.” I strained to hear Bianchi’s barely audible voice.
I felt for the guy. I could barely handle one Romano, and he had three in front of him—taunting him. I paced as quietly as I could, pretending to speak into the phone with animated hand gestures. In reality, I wanted to be closer to their voices. I could barely hear them as it was.
Another laugh tore free from Bastian’s throat. This one so dark, it sent a chill down my body traveling through each limb. “Marta.” He tsked. “Right. That’s what it was.”
“Didn’t you fuck her, son?” Giovani Romano toyed with his words, deliberate in their delivery. “How was she?”
I winced at his crass words, empathy for Bianchi gripping my heart. I was trained not to feel empathy while undercover, and even though I knew Bianchi had to have known what he had gotten himself into with the Romano family, I couldn’t help but sympathize.
After all, my mom had gotten in way over her head with the De Luca family before she’d become pregnant with me and ran away. As far as I was concerned, Bianchi could have been my mom, and Marta could have been me.
“I’ve had better.” Bastian’s dry words spoke of boredom I wonder if he felt, and something about his indifferent tone relieved me.
I hated myself for it.
“Marta.” Vince’s calm demeanor was eerie, like warning tremors before a life-shattering earthquake. “I remember her. Sweet girl. Too bad.”
A long pause swept the air before Bianchi spoke again. “Too bad?”
Vince’s words had been vague. Nothing I could arrest him over. Still, the threat remained clear. I wouldn’t wish Bianchi’s position on anyone.
Vince ignored Bianchi. “I’d forgotten what she looked like. Oh, wait. Didn’t you see her the other day, Bastian?”
They were teasing Bianchi. It was cruel, but I would expect nothing less from the infamous Romano family. If my mom hadn’t run away from the De Luca family and hidden my existence, would I be Bastian or Bianchi in this scenario? Would I be the heartless monster or the tortured victim?
I refused to be either.
“Hmm… I don’t remember.” The door muted Bastian’s playful voice, but the delivery was no less effective. He was either a phenomenal actor or a sadistic fuck, who enjoyed causing pain.
I was betting on both.
They were monsters.
All of them.
Undercover at the bar, even for just a week or so, I had lost sight of that. I had humanized them, attributed them with the normalcy of the restaurant business, and saw Bastian for nothing more than an jackass who only had a heart when it came to his sister and family.
That was a mistake I vowed to never make again.
The three of them were having too much fun with this. With toying with this poor man. Short of Vince’s short drawl, I would have believed this excited them. That they were eager to taunt and intimidate Bianchi.
They hadn’t actually said or done anything illegal. Yet. Unless I wanted to blow my cover, which would destroy my career at the FBI, I couldn’t do anything about them. I was hopeless. Helpless. And damned if that didn’t make me feel worthless.
Gio cleared his throat. “Why don’t we look at the security footage?”
Oh, shit.
His words stopped me, and I struggled not to sneak a peek at the security cameras. My grip on my phone loosened, and I dropped it, trying and failing to catch it. It fell to the floor with a soft thud, and when I bent to pick it up, the door swung open.
My hands were still on the floor and my ass in the air when Bastian stepped out. His eyes locked on mine with eerie precision, and I succumbed to the fury in them.
They were lethal.
Vibrant.
Irate.
If death had a face, it would be Bastian’s.
And he was glaring right at me.
BASTIANO ROMANO
In the restaurant business, people say if you’ve earned a James Beard award, you’ve made it big. That it’s something to be proud of. Something to put on your trophy shelf, add to your LinkedIn profile, or whatever your typical doleful sap did.
But I had not one, not two, but three James Beard awards for top restauranteur. Three fucking James Beard awards, and I was taking care of some pitiful schmuck from the armpits of the Lower East Side.
This sure as hell didn’t feel like making it big.
Tommy Bianchi thought he could get away with skimming money from my family and knocking up my second cousin. We were pissed about the money, sure, but that wasn’t enough to warrant a visit from me, Uncle Vince, or Gio—let alone the three of us together.
Any other day, and it would be a lowly Romano soldier raining punches down on his head. But Tommy Bianchi had made the mistake of tossing the money he had skimmed from us at my cousin and telling her to find the nearest clinic when she’d told him, with tears in her fucking eyes, that she was pregnant.
Gio, of course, was affronted, never mind the fact that he had just recently tried to pawn that same cousin off on me. Uncle Vince, on the other hand, was absolutely livid, and that made him lethal.
You couldn’t tell it just by looking at him. But I knew him well enough to know that the hand he rested in the pant pocket of his tailored Tom Ford suit was clenched and the casualness of his tone concealed thickly veiled rage.
Uncle Vince leaned against the edge of my desk and crossed his legs at his ankles. “Marta.” He tilted his head to the side. “I remember her. Sweet girl. Too bad.”
I fought the urge to sigh. We were toying with Bianchi. It was supposed to be fun. It was supposed to satisfy the vengeance my cousin rightfully deserved. But I was bored. Bored of it all. This life. This job. This conversation.
Couldn’t they take care of him and be done with it?
Bianchi’s head faced down, but I could feel the tension in his body. It permeated the room until the air was so thick, it suffocated me almost as much as my duty to this family. A line of sweat trickled down Bianchi’s nose and dripped onto the wood, soiling the Macassar ebony milled onto the floor.
Another second passed.
Another drop of sweat on my hundred-thousand-dollar floor.
Another irritant.
Another reason to leave.
I could walk out the door right now. Gio and Uncle Vince didn’t need me for this. But I didn’t want another lecture about the importance of joining the family business from Gio, and I didn’t want to disappoint Uncle Vince.
Decisions, decisions.
“Too bad?” Bianchi’s voice was a squeak. Fitting for a pest. He played the arrogant playboy well until he came face to face with the real wolves.
Us.
His tail tucked between his legs suited him, I supposed. The same way white paint suited a clown.
“I’d forgotten what she looked like. Oh, wait.” Vince turned to me. “Didn’t you see her the other day, Bastian?”
I smothered a smirk. I made fun of Asher for being dramatic, but the truth was, he had learned that from Uncle Vince. He was mostly straight forward, but he was still a Romano. And everything with the Romanos was a production.
If Vince set up a meeting with me, it couldn’t just be at his or my place at a regular hour. It had to be pitch dark and in the middle of nowhere. The more fog the better.
“Hmm…” I paused, drawing out Bianchi’s suffering. “I don’t remember.” The corner of my lips tilted upward at the shudder of Bianchi’s shoulders.
Pathetic.
Gio cleared his throat and walked around to where I sat behind my desk. “Why don’t we look at the security footage?”
I pressed a button at the bottom corner of my desk, and the wood slid back before the screens glided up and out of my desk’s false top. An image of Ariana on the phone filled one of the screens.
Gio nodded his head toward the door, a gesture for me to see what was up with her. I stood, relieved to be out of here. Maybe I could salvage this night. Deal with Ariana, then head to Rogue to find an easy lay.
I strolled past my desk, ignoring the pathetic waste of oxygen on the floor. Turning the knob, I pushed the door open, and my eyes landed on Ariana’s ass. She was bent over at the waist, her round ass facing away from me, but I could still make out the generous curves.
Her head lifted, and her vivid blue-green eyes locked on mine. I didn’t bother hiding my irritation at having to spend my night dealing with Bianchi. Maybe it was because her position—bent over before me with her curved ass in the air—made her look so vulnerable. Or maybe it was because I was sick of holding back with everyone.
I wasn’t sure why, but for the first time in my adult life, I let my walls down.
I let her see my rage.
My incurable fury.