Revenge (18 page)

Enrico opened the door to the shower and
stepped inside. “Mmm,” he murmured, putting his arms around her
waist and pulling her close. His cock rubbed against her buttocks.
He was hard again.

“Already?” Her voice came out sharp. Couldn’t
he leave her alone for one minute?

He stopped rubbing against her. “What’s
wrong?”

“Everything.” She sighed. “We can’t possibly
be together.” How raw her voice sounded. How could she care so much
already?

“Kate, we will get through this.” As he
spoke, his lips moved against her neck. “We will. I promise
you.”

She turned around in his arms. “What about
Vince? What about Carlo? How the hell can this
possibly
work?”

He regarded her somberly, his face beaded
with water, his thick lashes heavy with it. “Let me worry about the
Andrettis.”

She pressed her hands flat against his broad
chest. He wasn’t seeing reality. “If you say so.”

He hugged her tighter. “Trust me. If I did
not think there was hope for us, I would not try for it.” His voice
went soft. “I do not want to get hurt either.”

Her heart contracted. How did he know that
was troubling her when she hadn’t even known it? He stared at her,
his eyes locked on hers, but he remained silent.

She took a deep breath. “Just remember I’m
not making any promises.” It was the best she could do.

“Good enough.” He lowered his mouth to hers.
His hips twitched, and she was again aware of his hard cock
pressing into her belly. She slid her arms around his neck. Maybe
they couldn’t have forever, but they might as well have right
now.

They were drying off from a second shower
when she noticed the tattoo on his right bicep again. She’d been so
caught up before, she hadn’t taken more than a glance. It was all
black, a small circle of roses with a design inside. She held his
arm still to peer at the tattoo, conscious of his eyes locked on
her face. The design turned out to be words done in a fancy
swirling script. “
Quattro in tre
,” she said aloud. “Four in
three. What does it mean?”

“I do not want to talk about it.”

“Why?”

His face darkened. “It has to do with the
accident.”

“When your mother and brothers were killed?”
He nodded. “I still don’t understand the reference.”

“May we not talk about this now?”

His face was turned half away from hers, but
his sorrow was still apparent. “All right,” she whispered. “I’m
sorry.” Only a bitch would continue to press. And besides, the more
she knew about him, the harder it would be to leave.

Vince met with Franco Trucco in the public
gardens of the Villa Carlotta. They spoke little until they turned
off on a side path that led to a viewpoint for the lake. It was a
good meeting place; they were far enough away from the crowds to
speak freely, and the gravel on the path would warn them if someone
approached.

Vince sized up Trucco. He was in his early
sixties like Carlo, but Trucco seemed sick, as if he had a fever;
his gray hair looked greasy and dark circles ringed his eyes. “What
can you give me on Lucchesi?” Vince asked.

“Is there a death Carlo would like to
distance himself from? I can testify I heard Enrico planning it.”
Trucco’s words tumbled out, excited, unsteady.

“Carlo already tried to use one of Lucchesi’s
guys to tie him to the Judge Dinelli hit. But Grantini disappeared.
We got to assume Lucchesi found him out. Grantini was the key.
Without his testimony, we got nothing.” He looked hard at Trucco.
“You think you’re smart enough not to end up like Grantini?”

Trucco swallowed. “I can prove tax evasion.
That’s why Dinelli was after Enrico and Carlo. And I could say I
heard Enrico plan Dinelli’s murder.”

“Prison time ain’t enough. Carlo wants him
dead.” Vince gazed across the lake, his hands crossed behind his
back. “We want to know where we can get to him, either
security-wise or family-wise.”

“I might be able to locate Rinaldo.”

Vince smiled. Now he was getting somewhere.
“That’s a start. Anything else?”

The accountant thought for a moment. “There
is something I have always been curious about.”

“What?”

Trucco shook his head. “I am not sure yet
what it is. But he has gone to great pains to keep it
concealed.”

Vince didn’t hide his interest. “Find out
what it is, and bring it to us.”

After his meeting with Trucco, Vince hadn’t
expected to be able to move on Lucchesi for a while, even though he
was dying to whack the guy.
But sometimes everything you needed
just hopped in your lap and made itself at home.
He walked away
from his second clandestine meeting of the day, a big grin on his
face. He never in a million years would’ve expected to hear from
someone else in Lucchesi’s organization, especially not a guy so
close to Lucchesi. A guy who knew everything necessary for a single
man to take Lucchesi out.

Vince didn’t doubt the truth of what he’d
heard, once the man explained his reasons, once he made clear what
kind of future he had in mind for himself. Yeah, it was a wrinkle
to his plans, but no biggie. There’d be more than enough to go
around after Lucchesi was on ice.

Now that he had what he needed, Vince was
going to be a hero after all. He couldn’t wait to see the look on
Carlo’s face when he pulled it off. Yeah, the old man would be
pissed for a while. But he’d be happy in the end. And they’d both
have their revenge.

Vince circled the perimeter of the Lucchesi
estate, keeping to the shadows even though it was the middle of the
night. The moon was three-quarters full, the sky clear. If he
wasn’t fucking careful, he’d be spotted.

No one had ever broken into Lucchesi’s home.
The damn place was like a fortress—security alarms, armed guards,
even dogs at night. Lucchesi had hired an expert to design a custom
alarm system and kept him on the payroll to keep the man’s mouth
shut. If it had been an off-the-rack system, it could have been
hacked. But no one had the specs for it. Which made breaking into
the house undetected almost impossible.

But not if you knew the alarm codes. Not if
you knew the guards’ schedules. Not if you knew about the gate
hidden in the hedges along the northern edge of the estate.

If you had all that, the job was a candy
snatch from a baby. Except he intended to do far worse. Before the
night was through, the bitch and that scum Lucchesi would be dead.
And if all went as planned, he would take over a good part of the
Lucchesi family’s holdings in the aftermath. Vince grinned. He was
going to enjoy this.

After a little fumbling, he found the gate in
the hedge. He’d just entered the code and slipped through, twigs
tearing at his clothes and hair, when he heard the low, rumbling
growl of a Rottweiler padding toward him on his left. He’d come
prepared. Reaching in his pocket, he withdrew the paper-wrapped
lump of ground meat he’d laced with sedatives and tossed it to the
dog. The Rottweiler stopped and sniffed the meat, eying him
cautiously before bolting the treat. Vince didn’t move, his heart
doing a fucking workout routine in his chest. He’d never admitted
it to anyone, especially not Carlo, but big dogs scared the fuck
out of him. He took a few breaths to calm himself as he watched the
dog, careful not to stare at it too directly in case he pissed the
fucker off.

After a few moments, the dog blinked heavily
and whined, shaking its head, drool running from its powerful
jowls. Vince tried to step past the dog, but it snapped at him, the
whine turning back into a growl, and his whole body went subzero.
Don’t fuck it up
,
asshole.
He looked around,
wondering where the other one was. There were supposed to be
two.

Peering into the darkness, he kept the big
slobbering fuck in his peripheral vision. It wiped its face against
the grass, then it finally flopped down with a heavy sigh.

Vince walked past the animal. He hadn’t
gotten far when he heard panting and paws rapidly striking the
earth. It took everything he had not to jackrabbit. He already had
the lump of meat in his hand. He chucked it at the noise, hoping to
distract the dog. It wasn’t long until he heard the clap of its
jaws, the quick work it was making of the meat.

Fucking goddamn dogs. All they did was shed.
And stink. And shit. He hoped the stupid fucks died from the
sedatives. It was what they deserved. They hadn’t even barked. And
they’d gobbled down food from a stranger. So fucking dumb.

The second dog went down as quickly as the
first, and Vince stepped around it, slinking through the shadows
along the hedge, making his way toward the house.

He paused about a hundred feet from the back
terrace and checked his watch. Two-fifteen. The guards would be
less alert by now. Lucchesi and the whore would be fast asleep.

He settled against a tree to wait. A guard
would pass by in a few minutes, then he could sneak up and punch
the code into the panel next to the French doors.

He’d been so stupid about Kate. He’d married
her too soon, had never bothered to look past her nice-girl face to
make sure he knew the woman under it. His next wife would be a
simple girl, probably a distant cousin of his. Someone beautiful
and sweet, someone who knew about the family business. Someone who
would only want to give him kids, who wouldn’t need a career, who
wouldn’t ask questions. Or look at other guys. Yeah, his next wife
would be
his
. And she wouldn’t make a fool of him.

A guard walked by on schedule, light gleaming
dully on the mini Uzi he carried. Vince waited until the guard
stepped around the corner, then he sprinted across the open stretch
of lawn up to the house. He flipped open the alarm panel, keyed in
the code to disarm it, then picked the lock on the doors. Fucking
child’s play. He was inside in a few moments. Lucchesi was a lazy
fucker. Vince shook his head, smiling. Everyone said Lucchesi was
smart. What the fuck did they know?

He eased the door shut behind him, then
crossed the foyer and started climbing the staircase on the left.
Lucchesi’s room was at the end of the north wing. He’d probably
find the whore there as well. His gut twisted.
Katie
.

Maybe she wasn’t a fucking slut. Maybe he’d
gotten it wrong. Maybe there was hope.

His heart revved again as he crept up the
stairs, quiet as a cat after a mouse.

Even if she wasn’t with him, Lucchesi was
going to suffer for taking his woman. And she’d learn her lesson
too.

This was going to be fun. For him,
anyway.

Enrico didn’t know what awakened him, but his
hand was already halfway to the Glock in his nightstand drawer when
he felt a sharp blow to his temple. He tried to shout a warning to
Kate but managed only a stuttering gasp before everything went
black.

When he came to, he was lying on his side.
Someone had bound him hand and foot. The lights were on, and
Vincenzo Andretti was straddling Kate’s naked body on the
floor.

Enrico’s heart was a machine gun on full
automatic. Andretti had a Beretta in his hand, and he was stroking
the weapon down her body. He’d tied her hands together over her
head. Kate whimpered low in her throat, her eyes glued to the gun,
as Andretti spoke to her. “I hoped it wasn’t true, but here you
are, naked. You
fucking
whore. You jumped from my bed to his
just like that.”

“You tried to kill me!”

“I was just gonna rough you up a bit, keep
you in line. But now that I seen this, I
am
gonna kill
you.”

Rage whipped through Enrico’s body; his head
buzzed, and his face grew hot. When he spoke, his voice sounded
guttural, foreign to his ears. “Get the fuck off her. Now.”

Andretti looked up at him, his lips twisted
into an evil grin. “Welcome to the party.”