Duty eats free will for breakfast.
—Daryl Gregory
ARIANA DE LUCA
The thing about being a woman was that, even in the twenty-first century, we were constantly being underestimated. And I could give you at least a dozen instances where that had been a good thing for me.
For instance, during our annual baseball game last year, the guys at work had decided it would be a good idea to divide me and my coworkers up into teams based on gender. Losers had to buy the winners two rounds of drinks at Simzy’s, the local Manhattan pub that sold a short glass of piss-tasting beer for a whopping fifteen dollars apiece—high stakes given our measly pay.
But having vaginas hadn’t stopped us from winning. In fact, we dominated in a game that, eight months later, was still being talked about around the office. And if I were being honest, none of that bothered me. It was a perk of being underestimated. Like a hustler owning her mark, we had made fools out of the FBI boys and would continue to do so.
Every.
Single.
Year.
I expected to be underestimated by others, but not my boss. Wilks knew my history. He had access to my case files, entrance scores, and college transcripts. If anything, he was the one person in the world who knew just how capable I was. And still, he never treated me like he would my partner Simmons—or any of the other men in my department.
When it came to receiving the best assignments, being underestimated was the worst thing that could happen to an FBI special agent, particularly an undercover one. I got the low-level drug dealers and the occasional white-collar criminal with the prowess of an accountant; Simmons got the top-tier criminals and even once nabbed an FBI most wanted. If this kept up, in ten years, I’d be pushing papers behind a desk, and Simmons would be running this unit.
This had to end somewhere.
I preferred it end now, with a cover that didn’t require me to sludge around all day in a bar with zero confirmation of intelligence access. Drawing in a heavy breath, I tried my hardest not to yell at Wilks.
“You look like you’ve swallowed a lemon.” Simmons took his time scanning me up and down.
“Do you have to be here?”
I couldn’t deal with Simmons right now. Not with the memory of Bastiano Romano’s lips pressed against mine burning my brain. It’d taken everything in me to push the thought away and focus on my assignment.
Simmons sat in one of the two chairs in our division head’s office, his ankle casually resting on the opposite knee and his back pressed against the black leather, the posture too relaxed for my liking. I, on the other hand, stood off to the side of the mahogany desk in the center of the room like an uninvited dinner guest with no placemat.
He was the picture of indifference, and why would he give a damn? He no longer had to go undercover. Worse—before that, he had been assigned the legend of a multimillionaire, wannabe Gordon Ramsey, whereas I had an interview with the Devil himself for a job I was far too overqualified for.
I ignored Simmons and stared Wilks straight in the eyes, not wavering for a second. “This is bullshit, Wilks.”
“Have you always been so confrontational, De Luca?” Wilks’ voice never strayed from his trademark of one part calm and two parts condescension.
I resisted the urge to cringe at the address. No one in this office but my FBI-mandated shrink and Wilks, who vetted me, knew my last name was more than just a last name. It was a connection to one of the five greatest crime syndicates this country had ever known. To everyone else, it was just an ugly coincidence.
But Wilks and I knew the truth.
The Romano family could never know I was the illegitimate princess of the De Luca family. I shared half of Angelo De Luca’s DNA. Not like the De Lucas knew I existed, but that was the point. I wanted to keep it that way, and going under with my real name and being called De Luca tempted fate. On the bright side, Wilks only called me by my last name when he was messing with me.
Unfortunately, he messed with me a lot. He thought we had a father-daughter relationship, when in reality, he always sat on the tippy top of my ever-expanding shit list for giving me the worst assignments despite the fact we both knew I could do better.
Simmons muttered, “Women,” under his breath.
I ignored him, because it was best not to egg him on after his recent divorce. “Give me anything else, Wilks.” I leaned forward, pressed both of my palms on Wilks’ table, and looked him in the eyes so he knew I was serious. “Anything. It’s not too late.”
And it wasn’t. Anyone else could take my place. I had no idea why Wilks acted like this legend couldn’t wait a second longer. Yeah, the Romanos engaged in pretty bad things, but it wasn’t like the FBI just suddenly learned of them. They’d been around for generations, along with the other four major Italian mafia syndicates in North America—my family’s included.
Behind me, Simmons chimed in unhelpfully, “There’s always Depravity.”
The Romano family owned and frequented a strip club named Depravity. It had popped up in Rogue’s place when Asher Black, the alleged former Romano family fixer, made the transition from hitman to straight-laced businessman, taking the strip club and transforming it into a high-end nightclub.
And as far as we knew, Depravity was clean. There might have been some meetings that went down there, but we couldn’t connect the club to any illegal activity, no matter how hard we had tried.
And we had.
Over and over again.
Hell, Depravity even paid their taxes correctly and on time. Going undercover at Depravity would have been a fool’s errand, exactly what Simmons was trying to imply I was. That, or he was still bitter over his cheating wife. Both were likely, given the current state of our relationship. He didn’t treat other women like this. Only the ones who beat him in every test at Quantico.
Most men saw me as a pretty distraction. Simmons saw me as competition, and I did nothing to assuage the idea. He didn’t like having a partner he knew nothing about, and sharing my past sounded as appealing as adult diapers.
We hadn’t gotten along since the day we’d met. That was six years ago, back when there hadn’t been a speck of dust on my Degory University undergrad degree and I had just graduated from Quantico as the youngest member in my class at the ripe age of twenty-two.
“Stop,” Wilks bluffed. He encouraged this kind of juvenile behavior from us because it gave him an opportunity to assert his authority. He flexed his fingers, his poker tell when he got excited about a good hand.
I didn’t back down. “Come on, Wilks. Anything else. Fly me to the South in the middle of the summer in a turtleneck, sweatpants, and a fur coat if you have to. Anything but this.”
Aunt Nadia had once said I could convince someone to take their own life. I couldn’t even convince my boss to take a chance on me.
“You’re being dramatic.”
Wilks was probably right, but I was sick of these jobs. I wanted the real assignments. The ones that didn’t require me to dress skimpy, flirt my pretty little face off, and bat my long lashes to get what the FBI needed.
On my last undercover assignment, I had come too close to sleeping with a small-time drug dealer, who only fell under FBI jurisdiction because he’d crossed state lines by buying his drugs along the border of Indiana and pushing them in Chicago, Illinois.
Right on the border of the Camerino and Romano syndicates.
If we hadn’t taken care of him, the Camerino or Romano families would have, and it wouldn’t have been pretty.
I swiped my hair away from my face, my movements jerky. “With good reason. A bartender at L’Oscurità?! You had me as a stripper—”
“—retired stripper—” Simmons interjected.
“—for my last gig. You promised that I’d get a better legend this time around.”
We called our covers legends. Sometimes, we called field agents in our division legends, too, but not many people had the clearance to know who is a legend and who is an analyst here. And when we became our legends, the FBI techies erased all traces of our affiliation to the FBI. The only people who could vouch that I was, indeed, an FBI agent worked on this floor with me.
“This is a better gig. You’ll bartend regularly at L’Oscurità and keep your eyes and ears out for any intel that might be useful. Nothing trying. Nothing too dangerous. Just your eyes and ears.”
“I can handle dangerous just as well as Simmons.”
“And I believe you, but the fact of the matter is we nee—”
“Any other assignment, Wilks.” I lowered my voice. “Please.”
He placed both hands on his hips. No hand flexing. Just that somber expression I hated from him. “Drop the legend, Ari.”
I reeled backward because he was right—even though I’d started my next legend, I was still trapped in my last legend. The confrontational Midwestern stripper, too stubborn for her own good. I’d thought I’d shed it. I really had.
Wilks turned to Simmons. “Clear the room.” When Simmons left, he continued, “Have you seen Dr. Clemson?”
I stuttered out a ragged breath. “No.”
“You’re young. It’s always the young ones who have trouble pulling out of their legends.”
“You’re being condescending.”
“I’m not. It’s happened to me and countless others who came before and after me. If you don’t become your legend, you’re not doing your job well. Everyone has trouble shedding their legends after abandoning a cover. That’s what your therapy sessions are for.”
I fixed my eyes on a spot beside his head, doing everything I could to not look guilty. “I have an appointment scheduled.”
It didn’t help that I never received the type of assignments that would give me real experience.
“Don’t lie. It doesn’t work on me.” Wilks relaxed in his seat and shuffled some files out of the way. “I’ll put Simmons on another case. You won’t have to deal with him. Dr. Clemson will be your handler on this case under the guise of therapy sessions.”
He paused a beat. “This is the last time you show your face in the office until the assignment is done. Hell, you shouldn’t even be here now.” He softened his voice, and I had to swallow the emotion bubbling in my throat. “Go see Dr. Clemson, and when you’re done, I’ll call you on one of your burners. Then we’ll talk.”
“About a better assignment?”
“About your problem.”
And fuck, that was the last thing I wanted to hear. Because he was so right. I did have a problem. My legends consumed me, and when an assignment ended, I couldn’t seem to differentiate between my legends and the real Ariana De Luca.
Deep down, I feared it was because I didn’t actually know who I was.