“Luca, did you hear me?” Giorgio sounded impatient and I turned around and moved to my seat lazily. I had to pretend I wasn’t unnerved. I sat back and closed my eyes as I sat. I didn’t like Giorgio’s tone, but I would let it go for now. Giorgio was obviously having a rough day.
“What is it now, Giorgio?”
“Valentina Marchese is expecting you to announce the engagement soon.”
“She’s expecting it, or her father, Lorenzo Marchese is expecting it?” I stared at Giorgio, my best friend and most trusted underboss. My hands fluttered open and closed as I cracked my knuckles and I shifted in my seat and rose to face him head-on.
“Lorenzo is expecting it, Luca. He’s held up his end of the deal. He’s stayed out of New York and helped us with the Russians. His daughter is twenty-one now, he wants her out of the house.”
“She’s a pretty girl.” I thought about Valentina, with her sad brown eyes and long black hair. I’d met her on several occasions and her beauty had impressed me. Unfortunately for both myself and her, she failed to turn me on in any way.
“She’s banging.” Giorgio grinned, drops of saliva falling from his mouth as he drooled over whatever image of Valentina he had in his mind. “Just think, you’ll be the first and only one to fuck her. You can do whatever you want to her and she’ll have to accept it.”
“You dare to talk about someone who could be my future wife that way?” I squared my shoulders and walked over to him. My tall stature towering over him as he shifted uncomfortably. “Is this the respect you’re going to show me and my wife?” I snarled, my lips thinned as I took in his nervous expression. His eyes darted back and forth across my face as he waited to see what I would do next.
“Relax, Giorgio.” I laughed and wiped my hands across his shoulder blades. “I will not kill you today. But if I even think you’re looking at or thinking about the woman I marry with even an ounce of desire, I will stab you in the eyes and make you wish you’d been born blind.”
“Yes, Luca.” He nodded and rolled his eyes. “I would never lust over your wife. I was just saying that Valentina has a fine ass.” He shrugged. “She will be yours to do with what you want.”
“Yes, she will.” I nodded. “If I choose to make her mine, of course.”
“But you promised Marchese, and he’s not going to be happy if you back out.”
“I haven’t given her a ring, it’s not official,” I growled and turned away from him. “He needs the Cattaneo family more than we need him.”
“Luca, you know it’s important.”
“I know. Leave now. Go and get some men to find out what the DEA has on us and bring me the information. I don’t want anything done until I have all the information on who the rat is.”
“Luca?”
“I said leave.”
Giorgio looked like he wanted to argue again, but he knew better than that.
“If this is about that girl... Anabel...” His voice trailed off as he sighed and opened my office door and left.
I walked back to my desk and picked up the simple stone paperweight that held down the files holding the figures from last month’s business deals. I gripped it tightly as I looked out of the window and watched two boys playing soccer across the street. I had a decision to make. I had promised to marry Valentina Marchese and she would make a suitable wife, she was a part of our world and she knew how to keep her mouth shut and her legs open, but things were complicated now.
“Anabel,” I said her name softly, whispering it to myself, barely daring to say it aloud. “Anabel,” I said it again, stronger this time. I squeezed the stone in my left hand as my right hand rubbed the familiar cool metal of the gun holstered to my belt, hidden under my jacket. Her familiar bewitching eyes flashed in my mind and I grimaced. She was going to complicate my life again. Only this time she was not going to be able to escape me.
I opened one of the files and flicked through the paperwork. Now that my cousin Matteo was no longer helping me with the business side of things, I had way too much to deal with. There were only so many hours in the day and being the top mob boss in New York City at such a young age had made me a target. I couldn’t afford to let things slide. The Latino gangs were inching in on the drug trade and making problems in our territory and I wondered if one of them was working with the feds to take over our turf. They didn’t understand the hierarchy of the underworld. And if I had to make an example of one or ten of them, I would.
“Luca.” Giorgio knocked on the door.
“What,” I snapped and looked at my watch. “You’ve been gone five minutes, what is it now?”
“There’s been a delivery. Can I come in?” His voice sounded nervous, as it should. I didn’t like people disturbing me when I was in the office. Even though we were best friends, he knew that I was ruthless. No one in our world could be spared for a transgression. Not even family and friends.
“Unless it’s a fucking horse’s head, you’re dead,” I growled as I walked back over to the door and flung it open. “What is it?”
“A letter came.” He held up a slim manila envelope in his hands. “It was addressed ‘to the head of the Cattaneo crime family’.”
“For fuck’s sake, what is it?”
“You should see this.” He opened the envelope and pulled out a stack of photos and handed them to me. There was a yellow Post-it note stuck to the first photo. I read the note three times and froze.
“We didn’t get her the first time, but this time she’s dead.” The writing was done with a bright red marker and there was a stack of five different photos. All of Anabel. All with an X on her face. And there was one other similarity in the photos that disturbed me more than the others. In each of the photos, carefully hidden in the background was an image of me, watching her from afar. She hadn’t known I was there, but someone else had known. The watcher was being watched and I didn’t like it. No one was supposed to know I was still following her.
“Who delivered the envelope?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head, his lips thinned. “Maria said she found it on the countertop in the kitchen.”
“So whoever left it was in the house?” I slammed my hand down on the table. “We have a problem, Giorgio. We have a real problem. We either have a rat or someone has successfully infiltrated the house.” I looked past his head, my mind racing. “Fuck.”
“What are we going to do, Luca?” he asked, waiting for my lead.
“We’re going to protect Anabel and then we’re going to find the fuckers that dared to threaten her. And I’m going to kill them in as many painful and excruciating ways as possible.”
“Luca, we don’t wanna get involved with this. We already got too many problems.”
“Listen to me, Giorgio.” I gripped the magazine of my gun. “I have something you need to do. I have an idea and you’re going to have to carry out what I tell you exactly as I say.”
Chapter 4
Anabel
“You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” blasted out from my phone as it rang. I grinned as I stared at the screen and saw that my best friend Charlotte was calling.