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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.”
