Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

D’Angelo

A dead body lay in my bed.

That fact wasn’t particularly shocking, since I was the one who killed the man. Their identity, however, was a surprise.

I’d known Shane for only a few weeks after picking him up at one of my own clubs. He’d been a satisfactory lover, and most importantly, he’d been available whenever I wanted. My schedule kept me busy, so meeting up at odd hours for a quick fuck was commonplace.

After a long night dealing with a new drug shipment, I’d just wanted to blow off some stress through sex, and Shane had seemed as willing as usual.

Now, not even half an hour later, I sat in a chair by the bed, staring at his dead body, and heaved a sigh.

The door to the hotel room opened and soft footfalls approached.

“What happened?”

Rubbing the headache from my temples, I looked up at Eva. The woman was nearly six feet of lean killing intent. I’d be afraid of her if she wasn’t one of my bodyguards.

Even so, I was still a little afraid of her.

I nodded at the body on the bed. “He tried to kill me.”

We hadn’t even finished getting undressed when I caught the flash of a needle. He’d tried to inject me with something, most likely poison, while I’d been in a seemingly vulnerable position. I had reacted on instinct and snapped his neck before the needle ever made contact with my skin.

Eva took a brief glance at the rapidly cooling corpse, then focused most of her attention on the syringe he’d tried to stick in me.

“Assassin?”

I sighed again and closed my eyes, letting my head rest against the back of the chair. “Either this was his intent from the beginning, or someone found out he was my lover and turned him against me. Either way, same outcome.”

Pulling out a small plastic container from her pocket, Eva safely stored the syringe so it could be tested later. “This is the third time this month someone has tried to kill you.”

I grinned at her as I heard the door open again. “So, business as usual.”

A man stepped up next to Eva, and I turned my smile on him instead.

“So, does our little assassin have any friends?”

Gavriil, Eva’s partner and fellow bodyguard, scowled and shook his head. “The area seems clear. Your lover seemed to be working alone. Shall I prepare the usual removal?”

Eva and Gavriil had been my bodyguards for a long time. They were originally a gift from my distant Russian relatives when I took over as the head of the Bianchi family at only eighteen years old. After twenty years together, I rarely needed to give them orders anymore. They moved as fluidly around me as a pair of shadows.

Yet, as I looked over at the body in my bed, a new idea occurred to me.

“No. Shane was a good lover while we were together. It would be rude to simply throw away such a thoughtful gift. We should return it to its sender.”

In all the years I’d known them, I could count on one hand the number of times I saw Eva or Gavriil laugh. On the outside they were as stoic and unmovable as a brick wall. Yet, our close acquaintance meant that I could read them better than the average person. Humor danced silently in their eyes. Although they said nothing but a simple acknowledgement of my order, I knew they wholeheartedly agreed with my decision.

A half hour later found me sitting in the back of my private car, with Gavriil behind the wheel, and Eva riding shotgun. Shane’s body would be dealt with according to my orders, and a clean up crew had already been called to sanitize the hotel room. I wasn’t worried about anyone reporting me. I owned the hotel, and my staff knew how to keep their heads down and not ask questions. However, as the head of one of the most powerful families of the Italian Mafia, it never hurt to be cautious.

It was the middle of the day, and New York was as busy as usual. The sun was high in the sky, and the streets were full of people. Our car crawled at a snail’s pace. All the money and power in the world was still helpless against inner city traffic.

I tried not to show it, but I was in a bad mood. I’d gotten no sleep the night before due to overseeing the arrival of the new shipment, and I’d been hoping to at least work off some stress in bed. Instead, I was just as tired as before, with the added bonus of unsatisfied arousal simmering under my skin.

Why couldn’t Shane have waited until after we had sex one more time before he tried to kill me?

Exhausted and horny was a terrible combination.

Traffic finally thinned out when we left the borders of the city and we flew down the highway at a much faster speed. It was only then, as I watched the familiar landscape pass by, that I realized I had no idea where we were going.

“Baltimore,” Eva said when I asked.

“Baltimore?” I would never be so unsophisticated as to openly gape at her, but it was close. “Why are we going there? I have no business in Baltimore.”

“You have a meeting there tonight, and it’ll take over three hours to travel by car, so we need to leave now.”

“Tell them to reschedule. I haven’t slept in nearly forty hours. I’m not going to Baltimore tonight.”

She turned in the front seat just enough to look into the back of the car. Her blue eyes, even paler than my own, laughed at me.

“The head of the Mariano family requested this meeting.”

I sat up straighter in my seat. “Never mind. Keep driving.”

Alex Mariano?

What did the newly christened leader of the whole Italian Mafia want to talk about?

There’d been some drama when Alex first took over for his father, which I had helped with, but surely that was all over now. Last I heard, Alex had been settling in well as he took over his father’s affairs.

So, what was he doing in Baltimore?

The Mariano family had their finger in nearly every pie possible, but as far as I knew, nothing important was happening in Baltimore right now.

Fuck, I was tired.

Whatever Alex needed to talk about was likely not going to be resolved quickly.

It was days like this that I was glad I’d paid extra for a car with reclining back seats. Leaning my seat back as far as it would go, I pulled off my jacket and draped it over my face to block out the sunlight.

“Wake me when we get there.”