Playa Puerto Real on Isla de Margarita, twenty miles off the coast of Venezuela
Gaetano Cuntrera had black hair on his back.
Along the shoulders, mostly, but also there were a few long, pubic-hair-like strands stretching out from each side of his spine, and, oh, goody, as his masseuse and physical therapist, Ronnie Cardenas got to touch his back every day.
The rest of him wasn’t too bad, she supposed. In his mid-thirties, Gaetano was of medium height and very lean, so she didn’t have to deal with much fat—or muscle, either, for that matter. He had a mid-grade face that, while it wouldn’t stop traffic, wasn’t emetic, either. Ronnie’s situation could have been worse.
For starters, she could’ve been stuck living in accommodations a far cry less beautiful than this villa. Positioned right on the beach, the estate consisted of three sprawling, red-roofed buildings constructed of dark wood stained white by sea spray, giving the façade a weepy, tie-dye look.
The garage was the smallest structure. Next largest was the servants’ quarters, which housed the general staff—maids, cook, chauffeur, junior guards, and an errand boy. The main house was multi-leveled and hiked up on a small man-made hill, which provided the upper stories with a view over the jungle-like foliage surrounding the estate, all the way to the Caribbean Sea. The inside was decorated in a cultural mishmash of blue-and-yellow patterned Portuguese tile, Italian ceramics, and, in some rooms, ornate Victorian-era furniture from England—anything that looked moneyed. Ronnie’s bedroom was in the main house, along with Cuntrera’s second-in-command, Carmelo, the head guard, Tommaso, and the enforcer, Antonio.
Down on ground level, within a stone retaining wall, there was a tropical garden and a pool. Off a short path from the main house, a set of stairs descended to a wooden deck, which was cantilevered out in the direction of the sea. Here the view was nearly life-changing. Ronnie tried to end her workday every evening on the deck, watching the sun go down.
Squeezing more scented oil onto her palms, she moved to work on Gaetano’s butt, which was also a reasonably hairy number. How in the world did his wife stand him?
“Attenta, Verónica,” Gaetano murmured. “Attenta.”
Ronnie rolled her eyes. He told her to “be careful” every day—sometimes in Spanish, other times in Italian—like from one session to the next, she’d somehow forgotten he had a scar on the side of his ass. He’d hired her as his physical therapist, for God’s sake, to treat him for problems in his hip related to that very scar—the result of an old bullet wound.
Life in the Mafia was never an easy one.
And, yes, shocking though it might seem, the Italian Mafia was in Venezuela.
The Cuntrera-Caruana families used to rule in Caracas years ago, primarily involved in money laundering through the hotels they owned and drug trafficking for Cosa Nostra, who was their capo di tutti capi in Sicily. Specifically, the Cuntrera brothers controlled the town of Caracas until the Venezuelan government had finally ousted them in 1992. They returned to Italy, where they were arrested and sentenced to fifteen years in prison.
Upon their release several years ago, one of the Cuntrera brothers, Gaspare, decided to reestablish the Mafia’s drug trade in Caracas. Too old to do it himself, he sent his youngest son, Gaetano, to supervise the business.
While no genius, Gaetano did do something very ingenious—he created a Spanish drug company, Farmacético Munidal, or Worldwide Pharmaceuticals, to act as a front. This legitimate business cleverly allowed Gaetano to import the chemicals he needed to make legal medications…which, of course, he then used to manufacture illegal drugs instead.
Funnily enough, in the real world of drug-making, a coup had landed in Gaetano’s lap about six months ago. A German scientist developed a cure for leukemia, and, wanting to share his miracle with the world, he embarked on a whirlwind tour to offer his formula to pharmaceutical companies all over the globe. Altruistically, he decided to approach companies in the neediest countries first.
His initial stop was at Farmacético Munidal.
Long on brain intelligence and short on street smarts, the German scientist arrived with the only copy of the formula on record.
Gaetano promptly laid the scientist down for the deep blue sleep in the Caribbean Sea, stole the formula, and put it on the auction block.
At present, the Russians—who, it was rumored, planned to hoard the cure for themselves—had submitted the highest bid.
So, as the evidence clearly suggested, Gaetano was a complete sleaze. Ronnie was extremely eager to do her real job: save the formula, head back to America, and turn the cure over to her agency’s client, Dawson Pharmaceuticals—the U.S. company that planned to bring the lifesaving drug to everyone, albeit at a tidy profit for themselves…but still. The world would have its cure, and she could leave Hairy Back’s employ.
She’d already been here way too long, anyway—three months instead of the mere weeks this op should have taken. Which probably made her look like the green agent on her first big mission she actually was.
Her big hope was that tonight she could finish the job. Most of Gaetano’s goons would be watching the crowd at the birthday bash for the boss’s wife instead of patrolling the house, making it a good time to sneak into Gaetano’s den and break into his safe. She just needed—
“Will I be able to dance at the party tonight?” Gaetano asked her in Italian.
She almost jumped out of her shoes. Good God, it was like he’d plucked thoughts of the party right out of her mind—which felt strange, because that was her special skill, not his. “You should be able to,” she answered in Spanish.
Italian and Spanish were both Romance languages, and so, close linguistic cousins. She could mostly understand Italian, but, unless she wanted to sound like a kindergartner, she didn’t speak it. Spanish was a first language for her, learned side by side with English. She spoke both perfectly—Spanish without a gringo accent and English without an immigrant accent—so she stuck to either of them when she spoke.
“We did good work today,” she added, although she still had work to do. No sense sneaking into Gaetano’s den if she didn’t have the third number to the safe’s combination lock.
Time to do an Extraction.
Progressing to Gaetano’s hamstring, she kneaded this muscle. She’d purposely added the role of masseuse to her physical therapist duties because it gave her more opportunities to touch Gaetano. And while touching him wasn’t a joy, it was necessary for Extractions.
While she kept her hands busy, she searched her senses for the correct question to ask. Go with sports. “Healing your hip is made more complicated by the sports you played as a youth.”
“Hmm?”
Ronnie fought the urge to grit her teeth. Please stay on task this time. Over three long months of dealing with Gaetano, she’d learned that the man was completely scatterbrained. She suspected he had a severe case of ADHD, which made her job a hundred times more difficult. “You played sports when you were younger, didn’t you?”
“Oh, yes. Football.” Which meant soccer.
Now they were getting somewhere. She just needed to ask—
“Capo Cuntrera.”
She did jump in her shoes now, barely stifling a gasp as she whipped her eyes up.
Just inside the recreation room door stood two men—Antonio, Gaetano’s new enforcer, and Carmelo, who was leering unabashedly at her breasts.
She dealt with a lot of lusty, intense stares from Gaetano’s goons, their ogling often accompanied by crude comments to one another—said loud enough for her to overhear—about what they’d like to do to her. Carmelo was always the worst. The man was a bona fide perv.
Short, stocky, and bull-necked, he’d somehow come up with the misguided notion that it was sexy to leave his shirt unbuttoned midway down to his navel, a fashion choice that exposed the plethora of gold chains nesting in the ape-hair on his chest. One of the chains held a medallion of St. Jude, patron saint of hope and impossible causes. Maybe Carmelo wore it in the hope that someday he’d actually get laid by a willing woman for free. That would be a true miracle.
“No smoking in here,” she told Carmelo.
Carmelo’s leer morphed into a defiant smirk. He put the cigarette to his mouth, inhaled to the full capacity of his lungs then jetted an astonishing amount of smoke at her.
Now she did grit her teeth, offering him a brittle smile. “We’ll be done in about twenty minutes. You can return then to—”
“I want to hear about Rafael Macero,” Gaetano cut in. “Antonio, you stay.”
“Yes, sir.”
Carmelo started taking backward steps toward the door, grinning at her. He had a wide gap between his two front teeth like he was one of the Clampetts…Carmelo Clampett. Ha! As he went, he cupped his dick through his pants and shook it at her.
She pressed a single hand to her oh-be-still-my-beating-heart and fluttered her eyelashes.
Carmelo cracked a wider leer and left.
She resumed massaging Gaetano as she shifted her attention to Antonio.
His eyes were hidden behind a pair of sunglasses, and the rest of him was expressionless. Dressed all in black, he was Carmelo’s exact opposite in appearance. Tall, in-as-much as he was about six-one, he was narrow in the hips and waist, but up from this slimness, his body veed out into an impressive set of laterals topped off by very broad shoulders. The biceps rounding out from beneath the short sleeves of his T-shirt were absolute perfection—substantial, but natural-looking. His eyes—when she’d seen them sans sunglasses—were the color of espresso pouring from a spout: a translucent brown. He had bold features that might have been block-like on another man, but on him, they enhanced his masculinity. His skin was the deep tan color of his Sicilian heritage.
Truth was, he was handsome. Not that it mattered. He was an asshole. She didn’t know this for a certainty—she’d avoided Antonio in the few weeks since he’d arrived at the villa. But he was Gaetano’s enforcer, which meant he regularly hopped a thirty-minute plane ride on Gaetano’s private Cessna to the mainland to encourage money borrowers to pay their debts.
It made Antonio an asshole by default.
“Did Macero pay?” Gaetano asked his enforcer.
“Yes,” Antonio replied.
“Any trouble?”
“He required persuasion.”
Moving on to massage Gaetano’s calf, Ronnie barely stopped herself from making the kind of disgusted mmm-mmm-mmm sound that would have done Scarlett O’Hara’s mammy proud.
“I should wear my pinstriped suit tonight,” Gaetano commented, veering off topic.
As per usual.
“Carmelo took every cent Macero owned,” Antonio said, remaining on task. “I don’t think he can eat now.”
She peered at Antonio from beneath her lashes. Huh. That was a very un-asshole-y thing to say.
“Macero shouldn’t have borrowed money,” Gaetano returned, all worldly and superior, “if he couldn’t afford to pay it back.”
Which didn’t make a whole lot of sense. If he could afford it, why borrow?
“The cook is preparing cannoli for dessert tonight,” Gaetano rhapsodized. “My favorite.”
Ronnie started to roll her eyes then caught herself and shot a quick glance at Antonio.
Deadpan.
Except…was that a little tic of muscle twitching at the upper corner of his mouth?
The twitch went away, and Antonio cleared his throat. “Sir, the vig is set an excessive rate. More than—”
“Go see to party preparations,” Gaetano ordered coolly. “Now, Antonio.”
“Yes, sir.”
Antonio turned and strode for the door.
She followed his progress for a bit—the asshole had incredibly tight buns—then edged around to Gaetano’s other side and worked on his non-scarred ass cheek. “Now, where were we…? Oh, yes, we were talking about sports. How old were—?”
“Sir.” Antonio walked back over. “I forgot. Carmelo wanted me to ask you—”
He stopped talking when she blazed an irritated look at him. Damn him! If he interrupted her questioning One. More. Time. She was going to boil his butt in her massage oil and, for God’s sake, why couldn’t she get her mind off his butt?
Above his sunglasses, Antonio’s eyebrows flickered upward at her.
“What?” Gaetano barked.
“Are we to allow the Rios brothers into the party tonight?” Antonio asked, and Ronnie sensed, rather than saw, that his gaze was pinned on her.
Gaetano made a gruff noise. “There is too much lust in Carlos Rios whenever he is near my Serafina.”
“I won’t let anyone disrespect your wife, sir.”
Gaetano grunted. “Very well. Let them in.”
“I’ll tell Carmelo.” Antonio turned and left.
This time Ronnie waited until the door shut before she spoke. “I must assess the stress you’ve put on your body in the past.” She rubbed Gaetano’s hamstring. “How old were you when you first started playing football?” She placed both palms on his leg muscle and sent him a pulse of energy while thinking about the safe combination—this would ensure his truthful answer related to the code. Please answer the question I just put to you. Gaetano’s scattered brain had veered away from the last dozen questions she’d asked.
“Ten,” he said.
Ten… A number! She would’ve let out a whoop if she’d been alone. Instead, she grinned hugely at the Italian’s hairy back.
At long last. She had the complete code.