Luca represented a time in her life when all was good. When family was family and when one look into his eyes had been enough to make her smile for a week.
But that time was long past. No matter how much a part of her wanted to believe differently.
And if she needed any reminder of that fact, all she had to think about was what happened after he’d left. What she had gone through alone that had left a jagged scar across her soul that could never be forgotten.
She unfolded her legs from under her on the overstuffed couch in the library and walked to the French doors, staring out into the deep summer night. A shadow moved and she started, still not used to having armed men around in order to protect her. She hadn’t needed them in seven years.
She needed them now.
But rather than their presence making her feel safe, she felt as if she was imprisoned. The reminder that danger lurked everywhere unnerving.
What did Luca want? Oh, she’d known the instant he’d come back to New York a year ago and rejoined the family as one of the lead attorneys. It had been all her father had talked about at the time. Luca had been his golden boy years earlier, second only after Lorenzo, rating a spot even before headstrong Mario. Luca was a man who instilled trust in others and was more than capable of seeing any assignment through to the end.
The description had been her father’s. She hadn’t asked what he’d meant by “any assignment.” She hadn’t wanted to know.
What she did want to know was what Luca had done while he was gone.
And why he’d left the city after his younger brother had been killed during a random mugging.
Was it the tragedy of losing his brother? Was that why he’d left?
But his parents had remained in Brooklyn. Gia had even visited them. Once.
She’d never gone back again.
After everything that had happened since, every ounce of common sense told her that she shouldn’t care why Luca had left, what he had done while he was gone, and why he was back now.
But, God help her, she did care.
She absently rubbed her arm. While it was still August hot outside, the air-conditioned temperature inside was kept low. Just as her father had liked it. And she hadn’t had the heart yet to change even the thermostat.
The trivial detail brought a memory flooding back as if it could have happened yesterday instead of nearly twenty years ago.
It had been a cold, rainy March day. Most of the mourners had left the grave and her grandmother was in the waiting limousine with her brothers. She and her father were all who remained.
Holding her father’s hand, the new patent- leather shoes her grandmother had bought her sinking into the mud, Gia had watched as the shiny mahogany casket had been lowered into the ground. The top had been covered with yellow roses, her mother’s favorite. Gia had felt numbed by her emotions and the weather.
“She looks lonely,” she’d said.
Her father had blinked then, as if he’d been in a trance, and looked down at her, his hand squeezing hers. “She’s with family now.” He looked up at the rain-soaked skies. “In heaven.”
“But we’re family.”
Her father had stood for a long moment, staring down at her. Then he’d crouched so that they were close to eye level. “Yes, piccina, we are family. But the family in heaven needed your mommy more than we did.”
Gia had spotted the pain on his face even as he said the words and had wondered if he was comforting her or himself.
“I miss her.”
Gia wasn’t sure if it was the rain trailing down his handsome face or tears as he enveloped her in a hug, holding her tight, holding her close. “I do, too, sweetheart. I do, too.”
They stayed like that for a long moment.
And then Vito had cleared his throat from somewhere behind them, and an umbrella appeared above their heads, casting a gloomier shadow over them.
Her father had looked at his close friend, then back at Gia. “You have family, Giovanna. Lots of family. And you’ll always have them. Remember that. You’ll always have them.”
Gia had tried to find comfort in his words, but she’d only been seven and hadn’t really understood what he’d meant in light of losing the closest member of her family. Now she saw what he meant. Now, so many years later, the family had welcomed her back with open arms when she’d decided to return to the fold. Each and every one of them working in unison to help find the person behind her father’s death.
Luca included.
She rubbed her arm again, the memory of him sitting across the informal kitchen counter from her a short time earlier replacing the image of her father’s rain-stained face.
“Why are you so surprised I came back?” he’d asked her over a simple pasta dinner she’d prepared herself with the help of a jar of homemade pesto sauce the housekeeper/cook had stored in the refrigerator.
Gia had pretended she might not answer the question, even though she’d known she would. “You didn’t seem to want anything to do with the family when you left. It just seemed odd that you would come back.”
She’d seen something in his blue eyes then. Something that signaled that the still waters of his appearance ran deep within him.
She remembered the many family nicknames for him. The most popular being Pretty Boy Paretti because he had the blond-haired, blue- eyed good looks of the northern Italians rather than the dark intensity of the Sicilians.
It had been those same good looks that made her easy prey when he’d spent a lot of time around the house doing odd jobs for her father while he attended college and then law school. She’d fallen for him, hard.
And the same, she’d thought, had applied to him.
And then his brother was killed and the man she’d fallen in love with had become cold and distant. And then he’d disappeared altogether.
Another movement outside the windows caught her attention. Only the movement hadn’t come from outside, had it? Rather she’d caught the reflection of someone moving behind her in the glass.
Gia’s heart lodged in her throat as she helplessly watched a masked man wearing gloves reach above her and then stretch a thin wire cord around her neck.
She moved her right hand up in time to fit it between her neck and the wire before her assailant pulled. Still, she coughed from the sudden, intense pressure even as she kicked at his feet and legs. But she was no match for his height and strength. The strong smell of onions filled her nose as he leaned closer to her ear.
“A lady mob boss. You should be glad that you lasted as long as you did, Giovanna. Your father would have been proud.”
The voice was unfamiliar to her. Then again, many of the voices that now filled her father’s house fell into the same category. Where once she could have foretold someone’s arrival by his or her footfalls, now the sound of the house settling kept her up at night.
With good reason, she realized.
She watched her own reflection in the glass. Blood drained from her face and the cord felt dangerously close to severing her fingers as she tried to pull it away, serving only to pull it tighter to the unprotected part of her neck.
Gia kicked out, aiming for the doors, desperately trying to attract the attention of the guard outside. Her bare foot hit a lower pane of glass and the door rattled. She tried again, but found herself jerked out of reach by her assailant.
Death. It had been a way of life for her growing up. Forget that every now and again the house had been the gathering place when someone in the family caught a bullet with his name on it. There were