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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.
