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CHAPTER1
Chiara
“How about I raise you something else? Something hot?Someonehot.”
My half-brother’s careless tone made my blood freeze.
The bar of the hottest underground poker den in New York was pulsing with life tonight. It was dark and dangerous, like its occupants.
“My sister. I’ll raise you my little stepsister.”
The words I had dreaded were set free, and the entire entourage of De Luca security tensed. What my brother didn’t know was how little loyalty he was generating amongst our ranks these days. Most De Lucas were getting sick of Giacomo’s shit. The man standing next to me, Franco, my longest-serving bodyguard, shot me a worried, grim look.
“Chiara –Vieni qui,” Giacomo snapped at me from a poker table in the middle of the smoky room.
Letting out a long-suffering sigh, I pushed myself to my feet. I should have known Giacomo had a job for me when he dressed me in a short, sparkling minidress and forced me to come tonight. My role in the De Luca outfit was stealing secrets, and I was damn good at it. At the tender age of twenty-two, I’d already earned our family multiple millions. A honey trap few could resist. I’d learned through my work that there was little value I could offer my family beyond my sugary words and sly manipulations. A perfectly pretty, innocent-looking liar. A rose with poisonous thorns.
“Be careful, Chiara. I don’t like this,” Franco muttered, staying behind me. My shadow.
“Since when does anyone like the crap Giacomo does?” I muttered to him, secure in the knowledge that Franco was amongst the majority of De Luca men who had lost faith in my stepbrother as capo.
“Haven’t you seen who he’s playing?”
Franco’s urgent whisper made me pause, but I brushed it aside. So, Giacomo had cooked up a new way to humiliate me. He took perverse pleasure in shaming me for the role he’d forced me into.
Years ago, I’d stopped caring what my role in the outfit made me. Everyone had to survive somehow, and this was my way. The only way I knew. The only night I’d wavered and let the guilt creep had been a few months ago. I’d tried my best to stuff it down into the box in my head with all the other stuff I was ashamed of. I pretended it wasn’t there every day.
I turned on a spiked heel and walked toward the table where my brother lounged. He seemed bored for a man who was losing De Luca money like it was water. Good to know that trading me off in a poker game didn’t trouble his conscience.
I strode gracefully across the thick carpet, eyes moving from my slimy brother to the man sitting opposite.
Apparently, my latest mark.
Then, for the first time in two months, I faltered.
The man sitting opposite my brother smirked. I knew that smirk. It had left a brand on my heart the last time I’d seen it.
Antonio Luciano wasn’t a man to fuck with. He was deadly, a natural-born killer, a mafia prince with merciless eyes.
He was also the man I’d tricked a little over a million dollars from a few months ago.
Security surrounded us, and I could sense Franco hovering. He’d lasted the longest as a bodyguard, as he was happily married and entirely uninterested in me. My brother guarded his innocent little sister like I was prime real estate. An asset he owned. I wondered if he’d finally decided that auctioning me off was worth whatever he wanted me to get from Antonio Luciano.
Giacomo had never aimed me at the same man twice. De Lucas don’t take an easy step in New York City. This wasn’t our domain. Just being here was a provocation. When it came to Italian families in New York, the Lucianos were royalty. My family’s domain was Chicago, and I couldn’t think of one good reason we were here except that my crackhead brother had finally decided to act on his death wish. Or maybe he simply wanted me dead—the only rival to his loyal men’s affection.
Antonio leaned back in his chair, flexing his strong, suit-covered thighs, and ran his eyes up and down me. He was pretending not to know who I was, but I wasn’t fooled for a moment. There was no way he’d forgotten me. I wasn’t that lucky. No, I was sure everything was unfolding exactly the way Antonio had planned. The man was sly, precise, and terrifying.
“Well, show me the goods,” Antonio said, raking his eyes across me, a hint of contempt in his icy stare.
Giacomo laughed and twirled a finger, telling me to spin around. I swallowed the fear clogging my throat and gritted my teeth, turning quickly on one heel. Antonio’s eyes were like a physical touch on my body.
I could still remember his hands on my waist. I’d relived it every night for two months. The one job I’d felt guilty about. The one I wished had been real. Now, I felt like a fool for dreaming over the man when he’d been looking to humiliate me. I’d wounded his pride, and in return, he was going to humiliate me right back. Useless frustration and disappointment warred in my chest even as I acknowledged it was deserved. I’d been bad, and it was payback time.
Antonio’s smirk told me he saw and recognized the feeling immediately. His smirk widened as if he was pleased with my frustration.
“We have a deal,” announced the second in line to the Luciano family dynasty.
His cruelly beautiful grin told me it wasn’t want that had driven him here tonight, ready to twist my drunk brother’s arm into having me. It was revenge, and there was no escape from it.
