I’d never get tired of pressing my cheek against the warm leather of Zig’s cut or the rumble of his Harley’s engine between my legs. I squeezed him tighter around the waist, letting his scent fill me. Dread twisted through me that this might be the last time I’d get to ride with him like this.

I knew it would be. For now, we kept the secret of what we were to each other. But the minute Zig rode up my parents’ driveway, things could never be the same again. Zig told me my mother had canceled the contract with the Dark Saints. She would no longer be paying them to act as my bodyguard. A few weeks ago, that would have elated me. Now it felt like the bottom dropped out of my life.

We were half a mile from the private road that led to the mansion where I grew up. The property was gated off and protected by pecan trees and security cameras. The minute we made the turn, I would be walking out of Zig’s world and back into mine.

Tension went through Zig’s shoulders as he sensed the same thing. He slowed the bike and pulled to the side of the road. Cutting the engine, he slid off the bike, taking me with him in one swift movement that left me breathless.

“Gina,” he said, his voice choked. Whatever else he meant to say, he couldn’t get it out. Instead, he pressed his lips to mine. His kiss was frantic, desperate. I sank into it, sliding my hands around his neck and pulling him down to me even closer. Zig smoothed his hand over my hair, bringing it away from my face.

The hot Texas sun lit Zig’s eyes, turning them from darker gray to the palest blue.  “Promise me something,” he said, his voice raw with emotion.

“Of course.”

He rested his chin on the top of my head. I leaned in, drinking in the clean scent of his t-shirt and that ever-present leather. I knew Zig could warm me like this even on the coldest of nights. My chest felt hollow, wondering when we’d ever get the chance again.

“Watch your back,” he said. “I don’t trust your family.”

I pulled away, peering up at him. “Right now, I don’t trust them either. But they are my family. I’m a DiSalvo. I can take care of myself. I’ve been doing it my whole life.”

Zig’s eyes flashed and I knew he doubted me. I also knew what he thought. I’d been taken care of my whole life. It was true, but it didn’t mean there wasn’t steel inside of me. I was Gino DiSalvo’s daughter, after all.

“I mean it though, you call me if you need anything. Hell, call me when you don’t need anything. Call me tonight.”

“I will. Promise. You call me too. I think I’m just as worried about you as you are about me, Zig. Your life is a hell of a lot more dangerous than mine and don’t try to deny it. I saw Maddox and the others when they came back from Dallas. You all act like that’s business as usual. You carry a nine millimeter with you 24/7, Zig.”

His soft laughter skittered through me. Zig tucked a hair behind my ear as a warm breeze kicked up. “I can say the same to you then. It’s my family. I’ve been living in it most of my life. I’ve got eleven other guys just as tough as I am watching my back. I feel like I’m sending you in there all alone.”

“I’m not alone. And I’m not defenseless or naive or a child. I’m going to walk in there and see my father. I’m going to demand my mother stop lying to me about the family business. And as far as my brothers go, my mother can keep them in line.”

“I hope you’re right.” Zig pulled away from me. It was my turn to go up on my tiptoes and smooth a lock of hair from his eyes.

“Kiss me,” I said. “Make it last.”

He did. Zig’s fingers found the hem of my shirt and slid their way up leaving a trail of heat. My nipples rose to peaks on command. God, it felt like in just a few short weeks, this man had trained my body to respond to his. It took just one look, one touch and I melted for him. A groan escaped from my lips as Zig thrust his tongue into my mouth. Part of me wanted nothing more than to have him bend me over the seat of his Harley and take me one more time. It would be quick, dirty, sinful, and wonderful. I would draw strength from the feel of Zig’s seed burning hot inside of me as I walked back into my own world.

But there was no time for it. Even now, we heard a car approaching from further down the road. Zig straightened my shirt and drew in a sharp intake of air.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you out of sight. I meant what I said. Call me later this evening. I want to know that you’re okay.”

I cupped his cheek with my hand and smiled up at him. “Careful, Zig. You’re going to make me start thinking you really care about me.”

I was teasing. He knew I was. But his eyes darkened and he put his hand over mine and drew it to his lips. “Haven’t you figured it out yet, baby? I love you.”

His words seemed to crackle through me like lightning. So simple. And yet, they changed everything. I swallowed hard past a painful lump in my throat. I wanted to say it back. But Zig pulled away from me and drew me over to the bike. I stood there slack-jawed for an instant. Zig started his engine and motioned for me to climb on.

He loved me. I loved him too. God, I’d known it from the moment he took me by the side of the road those few weeks ago. I’d known it every moment since. He peeled away from the shoulder and headed up the steep hill toward my parents’ private drive.

We made it as far as the gate. I climbed off and punched in the security code. From here, four cameras pointed straight at us. I turned back to Zig, desperate to feel his hands all over me again. Desperate to tell him what was burning inside my heart. I could only meet his fiery gaze. It was enough for now. It had to be. He gave me a knowing nod and my heart started to beat again.

The gate wouldn’t open. I turned back and tried the code again. Instead of opening, the intercom box squawked.

“Wait there.” It was my brother Georgio. I stepped away from the gate. A few seconds later, Georgio’s black Mercedes pulled up. My blood heated with fury as I realized what was happening. Georgio had changed the code. He had no intention of letting Zig on the property.

I turned back to him. Zig’s eyes narrowed with the same rage I felt, but he made no move toward the gate.

“Call me later,” he said. He jerked his chin toward Georgio’s car and revved his engine. The gate slowly opened.

“Zig,” I called back, breathless. I knew the minute I stepped through that gate, things could never be the same between us. We could never be together without raising suspicions on both sides.

“Remember what I said,” he told me and I knew he meant everything. Watch my back. Call him. And remember that he loved me. I waved to him, accepting all of it. I stepped through the gate and watched it close, putting cold steel bars between us.

* * *

Georgio and I sat in stony silence as he drove me up to the house. My brother was only twenty-nine years old, but he’d aged in the last few months. In spite of his behavior just now, I could feel sorry for him. Georgio had the world dumped on his shoulders. First my father’s stroke had come as such a shock to all of us. Then Gino Jr. disappeared. That left Georgio trying to step into shoes he was never meant to fill. Though he’d never admit it, I knew he had to be terrified.

“Mom’s waiting for you upstairs,” he finally said as he put the car in park. As I stepped out, the bright sunlight warmed my face.

Georgio didn’t get out of the car. His nostrils flared and a tiny vein pulsed in his neck. God, he looked like Daddy. I’d never realized how much. Georgio had the same broad face and jet-black hair forming a widow’s peak above his deep-set brown eyes. He gripped the steering wheel and turned to look at me. I realized it was the first time he’d done that since I got in the car. Scorn came into his eyes as he looked me up and down.

“You just planning on standing there glaring at me?”

Georgio shook his head. He pursed his lips like he was trying to hold back a tirade. I knew he was. How the hell he could be angry with me for anything that happened during the last few weeks made no sense. I was way too tired to get into it with him.

“Whatever, Georgio,” I said, waving a dismissive hand at him. “How about I just stay out of your way while I’m home and you stay out of mine?”

“Yeah? Little sis, if you’d done that in the first place …”

“What?” My voice raised an octave and cracked. I had to sound half-hysterical to him. I hadn’t realized how much pent-up anger I’d held back. If I unleashed on Georgio now, I wasn’t sure I could stop. So I bit back the rest of my rant and turned toward the front door. Georgio paid me back by squealing his tires and zipping back down the driveway.

I took a bracing breath as I reached for the gilded knob on the front door. It swung open before I could touch it. Milo, one of my mother’s housekeepers, stood in the doorway, his face holding a blank expression.

Milo was new. He was a Christmas gift from my father. He was young, blond, and of the surfer variety of handsome. Daddy called him the Pool Boy even though Milo also cooked, cleaned, and ran errands for Mommy.

“She’s been waiting for you,” Milo said. When I stepped over the threshold and into the grand foyer, something seemed very wrong. The floor was made of black-and-white-checkered marble. It was cold under my feet and the giant chandelier was dim. Without it, the sunlight stabbing through the arched windows at the top of the mammoth spiral staircase in the center of the room cast spidery shadows in all directions. The effect was creepy and chilling as if the house was suddenly haunted.

“What’s going on?” I turned back to Milo as he slowly shut the door. When the lock engaged, it sent a ghostly echo through the room.

“You should have come back sooner.” Milo’s voice dropped an octave. It wasn’t an answer, it was an accusation.

“Where is everyone?” My parents had five children. Up until now, none of us had left home. Before he went missing, Gino Jr. lived in the west wing along with Georgio. The east wing housed my father’s business offices. My parents’ apartments took up the south wing and I shared the north wing with my brothers Joey and Gianni. For as long as I could remember, noise filled the hallways at all hours of the day in this great house. Mostly it came from my rowdy brothers as they barreled through the halls, rough-housing. But my father almost always had business associates coming in and out. Then there were my mother’s friends coming in for lunch or her tennis instructor, her yogi, her stylists. Today though, the place fell eerily silent, reminding me of a funeral home.

“She’s in her rooms with him.” Milo finally answered the question I’d asked. It was an odd, overly familiar way for him to speak about my parents. When I turned back to him to ask about it, Milo was already walking away from me, heading for the first-floor kitchen.

Cold dread filled my chest, fanning out in icy tendrils, making it hard to breathe. A million things had happened, but Milo was right. As much as I hated to admit it, so was Georgio. I’d stayed away too long.

I took the winding stairs two at a time, my footsteps making a loud echo. The maroon-carpeted hallway seemed to stretch and grow longer like some horror-filled dream. When I finally got to my parents’ suite of rooms, my heart pounded inside of me. I took one last breath before I knocked softly and stepped inside.

My knees turned to rubber at what I saw. Years ago, the master bedroom had been featured in a prominent interior design magazine. Mommy had sought out the finest designers money could buy. Now all of the furniture had been hauled away. The shades were drawn and no mirrors hung on any wall. Instead, a huge hospital bed formed the focal point of the room. Machines and monitors beeped as a respirator let out a rhythmic hiss.

A figure lay in the middle of the bed. He occupied the same space as my father used to, but that wasn’t him. What I saw instead was a corpse kept alive by the steady hum of the machinery. My mother sat beside him; her dark hair, normally perfectly coiffed, hung around her face in strings.

She looked up and forced a smile as I drew closer. My father was a formidable man, standing over six feet tall and weighing two hundred and twenty pounds. He’d been tanned, with an athletic build despite his weight issues. That man was gone. Now he was so thin the bones of his wrists looked like they could poke through his paper-thin, grayish skin at any moment. He’d never gone gray, but now, his hair was almost white. His cheeks were sunken in. Instead of a tan glow, his skin had purple splotches and sores everywhere I looked.

It felt like all the blood had left my head. I couldn’t breathe. The house didn’t smell like home. It had that antiseptic smell like hospitals do. Beneath that, the scent of death and waste lingered. Somehow, I got my legs to move. I walked to the edge of my father’s bed. His chest rose and fell but he wasn’t breathing. No. The coiled, plastic tubes running to his mouth did that for him.

“You should have come sooner.” My mother’s voice burned through me like acid. There was no love in it. She was bitter and cold. All traces of the warmth she usually reserved for me were gone. When I met her eyes, hers filled with tears and the same scorn I’d seen on my brother’s face.

What had I done to earn any of it? How in God’s name could she blame me for what was happening to Daddy? And yet, as her lips tightened and hard lines carved around her mouth, I sensed that was exactly what she was doing. I knew what I’d done. I’d stayed away. Even though she’d wanted me to, resentment hardened her eyes.

She was beautiful once, my mother. Tall, reed thin, with thick, black hair and high cheekbones. I’d inherited those from her. Over the years, my mother had tried to fight back the ravages of time. She tried every latest fad. Facelifts, Botox, fillers. It left her mouth and chin misshapen and gave her a mask-like quality. Now, with no makeup on to soften the places where her skin pulled back, she looked just as ghoulish as my father. This wasn’t home. This was some funhouse mirror.

Zig’s words rang in my ears, driving out some of the echoes of the house. Watch your back. I love you. I craved him now. I wanted to wrap myself in his strong arms and have him take me far away from here. He was life and health. Just the thought of him gave me strength. I straightened my back and faced my mother.

“You should have told me the truth.” It was a simple statement but it covered so many things. She’d been lying about my father’s condition for months. Even if I had come home, she never would have let me near him. Protect the family. Protect the lie.

“Are you happy now?” my mother snapped. “You did this to him, Gina.”

I reared back. “What are you talking about? A stroke did this to him. His life did this to him. His enemies did this to him. I know everything now, Mommy. You can stop lying. Someone tried to kill him. They tried to kill me too. It’s you and Daddy who should have told me the truth. You let me go about my life as if everything was normal and safe. If it hadn’t been for ... someone shot at me, Mommy. I almost died. Why haven’t you even asked me if I’m all right?”

My mother’s expression changed. At first, grief had etched the lines on her face. Now she put her shoulders back and faced me with a slight smirk. The dragon lady was back. She rose slowly, regally and came around the bed.

She was thin. So thin. At five eight, she usually weighed a healthy hundred and forty pounds. She couldn’t weigh more than a hundred and fifteen now. She wore a white pantsuit with a gold belt around her tiny waist. Her diamond tennis bracelets hung from her bony wrists.

“That was your father’s doing,” she said. “He wanted to protect you. He’s always wanted to protect you. You’re his little princess, Gina. He gave you everything. Spoiled you. And you took it all. Now you have the gall to sit there and judge him for how he provided it?”

“I don’t judge him,” I yelled. It seemed almost sacrilegious to raise my voice in this place, but I couldn’t help it. “I don’t even judge you. I just hate that you think I couldn’t handle the truth. God, all these years you don’t think I haven’t heard the rumors? Gino DiSalvo, mob boss. Girls were afraid of me in school. Boys looked at me in awe. I hated it. Now I know every bit of it was true. All of this, everything he gave me. It was all paid with blood money, wasn’t it?”

She slapped me hard enough that my ears rang, but I didn’t move a muscle. I was Gino DiSalvo’s daughter. His blood coursed through my veins. When she raised her hand to hit me a second time, I caught her wrist and held it firm.

My mother’s blue eyes widened and she took a step back. She jerked her wrist out of my hand and went back to her seat beside my father. “Then you’re a hypocrite,” she said. “I don’t see you giving anything back.”

“You don’t get it. I’m not judging either one of you. I’m only asking for the truth. I’m part of this family too. And we’re in trouble. You could have asked for my help. What makes you think I wouldn’t have been willing to stand with Daddy? You can hate me now if you want to, but I still love you. I still love Daddy. And I am not Junior or Georgio.”

She barked out a bitter laugh but her eyes changed. The contempt seemed to be gone. In its place, if I had to name it, my mother seemed impressed. “Well, look at you then, baby girl. Maybe you’re more like me than your father gave you credit for.”

“Mommy, who did this? Who tried to kill Daddy? Who tried to kill me?”

She closed her eyes slowly and reached for my father’s hand. She brought it to her cheek. “I wish I knew,” she said. I don’t think she was lying, but I had a sinking feeling that she was hiding from the truth.

“Is it the cousins?” I asked. “Zig ... the Saints have heard rumors they’re trying to move in. Would they go so far as trying to hurt their own blood?”

“The Saints?” That contempt came back in my mother’s eyes again. “Is that who you confide in now?”

“What? Mommy, listen to what I’m saying. I want to help you figure this out. You’ve been trying to handle everything by yourself. I’m saying you don’t have to.”

Her phone rang beside her, jarring her attention away from me. She dropped my father’s hand. Her face turned to stone as she picked up the phone and held it to her ear. Her gaze seemed to go in and out of focus. Whoever was on the other end did all the talking. My mother said “yes” three times then clicked off the call.

A beat passed. Then another. Finally she raised her eyes and looked at me. The contempt was back.

“You had me fooled,” she said, plastering on a wicked, fake smile. “It’s you who’s been doing the worst of the lying, Gina.”

“What?” Again, I felt like I’d crossed over into bizarro world.

“Zig Wallace?” she said. “You’ve been spreading your legs for that biker scum?”

Ice filled my veins. All the strength I thought I had drained from me. She knew. How the hell did she know? My first instinct was to lie. But then I’d just be the hypocrite she said I was. So I took a page straight from her playbook.

I took a bold step toward my mother and straightened my back. “That’s an ugly way to put it,” I said. “And who I choose to be with isn’t really your business. I’m an adult.”

She laughed. “You’re a baby, Gina. And you’re close to ruining everything. Thank God it’s not too late though. Not for the family anyway. But mark my words, you’re never going to see that thug again.”

My own tears threatened to fall, but I wouldn’t ... couldn’t give into weakness. Not now. I recognized my mother’s words for what they were. A test. She and my father had been controlling me my entire life. It had taken Zig and the events of the last few weeks to open my eyes to it. Not anymore. Never again.

“You’re not in a position to control me anymore, Mother.” I met her stare.

She blinked first then smiled. “Well, well, Gina. Maybe you’re right, I can’t control you. But I can control the Dark Saints.”

With that, she rose from my father’s bedside, her gaze still cold as ice. It made my heart freeze as she stepped around me and walked out the door.