Shadow Rider (5 page)

“You go along. Another team will pick you up so you'll be safe. Mr. Ferraro will want to speak to these gentlemen in person.”

Emilio was soft-spoken, but Francesca wasn't fooled. The two men were in a lot more trouble than they would have been if the police were called. A dark town car pulled to the curb, and Enzo shoved one mugger inside before Emilio dragged the one up off the ground and shoved him in. Francesca found it significant that neither of the muggers was tied up, yet they didn't attempt to fight; instead, they looked very scared.

Francesca's gaze clung to Joanna's, but she spoke to Emilio. “You aren't going to kill them, are you?” She couldn't keep the quaver from her voice.

“Francesca,” Joanna hissed.

Francesca forced herself to look at Emilio. “Are you?” She tilted her chin. She didn't have a cell phone to call the police with, but Joanna did and she'd use it if she had to.

“I have no intentions of killing them,” Emilio said. “Mr. Ferraro will want to talk to them.”

She didn't ask which Mr. Ferraro because she was fairly certain she knew. Keeping the handkerchief pressed to the shallow wound in her throat, she let Joanna lead her away.

“He said there was another team on us,” Joanna whispered. “As in bodyguards. When Stefano said you were his to my uncle, I had no idea what he meant. He's serious. Bodyguards? More than one
team
of bodyguards? That and his brother coming into the store to talk to you? What is going on, Francesca?”

“I have no idea.”

“What did he say to you when he took you outside? Did he ask you out?”

“No. Of course not. He didn't show that kind of interest,” Francesca denied. She ignored the intense chemistry that had arced between them. She'd felt it, but she wasn't positive Stefano had. “He just seemed worried that I didn't have a coat or shoes. He told me to get myself something to eat.”

“He gave you all that money. You could buy some decent clothes with it. Clearly that's what he wanted you to do.” Joanna snapped her fingers. “We could get you a killer dress for the club and heels to match.”

“We nearly got robbed and you're thinking of spending the money? I'm going to ask your uncle to put it in his safe along with this coat. I nearly died when that mugger made me bleed and I thought I might get blood on Stefano's favorite overcoat.”

Joanna burst out laughing. “That's scary crazy and so are you, Francesca. Held at knifepoint and even cut, but you aren't worried about being robbed, just a coat.”

“Not
just
a coat,” Francesca denied, with a small grin,
finally finding humor in the situation. “Stefano Ferraro's
favorite
coat. And after that I was worried about them taking his money and trying to figure out how I'd pay that back. I was considering stripping for a living.”

Joanna's laughter went from forced to genuine. “Stripping?”

“I had four years of pole dancing for exercise in college. I believe you did as well. We were pretty good.”

“
You
were pretty good,” Joanna corrected. “You're great at dancing, too. You can move your body in a million different ways all at once. I forgot how envious I always got when you were on a dance floor.”

“Muscle control and core strength. If you hadn't cut half the classes for a date, you would have managed the advanced classes.”

Joanna shrugged. “I was studying anatomy. What can I say? I got pretty good at that.” She took Francesca's arm. “So what do you think? Should we go spend money at the mall? Get a killer dress and go out to the club this weekend?”

“No way. I'm
not
spending one more penny. In fact, if I make enough money to pay the rent before he comes looking for his coat, I'll pay him back for the shoes and he'll never know I used any of his money.”

Joanna's eyebrows nearly shot into her hairline. “You are so stubborn, Francesca. If I had an opportunity like you have, protection from the Ferraro family, and a thousand dollars to spend, believe me, I'd be counting myself lucky, not resenting it.”

Francesca sighed. “I guess I do sound resentful instead of thankful. It's just that . . .” She trailed off, looking around her. They were back in Ferraro territory. Whatever Stefano and his brothers were, the neighborhood felt different. Safe. She couldn't imagine the attack happening on their ground. She couldn't deny that she could feel that difference. She hadn't felt safe in a very long time. Without thinking too much about the why, she snuggled deeper into Stefano's warm coat. “He's
so wealthy. Not a little bit well-off, everything about him screams money. I don't like that type. They live so differently than mere mortals like us.”

Joanna flashed a grin. “You got that right. Jetting off around the world at a moment's notice. It's no wonder they forget what it's like to live from paycheck to paycheck.”

“They don't forget,” Francesca corrected. “They've just never had to do it.”

T
he moment the wheels touched down on the runway in Los Angeles, Stefano unbuckled his seat belt and looked across the narrow aisle at his two brothers. “Is everything set?”

Ricco nodded. “The Lacey twins are meeting us and bringing a couple of friends. We'll party with them at the local hot spot and be very visible.”

Stefano shook his head. “The Lacey twins? Again? Seriously, Ricco?”

“They're hot right now. The roles they get are prime and the paparazzi follow them everywhere. They're perfect. We'll be splashed all over every gossip rag there is. By tomorrow morning, the Internet will blow up with pictures and speculation.”

“You want me to believe you chose them because they'll give you a lot of exposure?” Stefano pinned him with a glare. “You like fucking them both.”

“Well.” Ricco grinned at him. “There's that. It also gives me a chance to practice the art of Shibari
.
I like to keep my skills sharp.”

“You like to fuck them after you tie them up, and that's going to come back to bite you in the ass,” Stefano declared, his voice mild, but there was nothing mild about the look he gave his brother. “It isn't like the gossip is going to go away when the pictures and articles are everywhere. You can't exactly deny it. You find your woman and how are you
going to convince her one woman will be enough for you when you're always with two?”

The smile faded from Ricco's face, leaving it bleak, a stone mask. “The chances of that happening are like one in a million. This woman coming into our territory is a fluke, Stefano. We all know that. More, you have a long road ahead of you. Nothing guarantees that she stays.”

Stefano went still inside. He knew Ricco was right, and he was also wrong. Fate was strange—one moment giving no hope and the next handing the world to a man. Not the world—a glimpse of what might be. He sighed. Who was he to lecture his brother? He'd done a few crazy things, but not publicly, not so if he ever found a woman to call his own, he would be ashamed. Binding a woman to him, forcing her to accept his life, was going to be a difficult enough task, but he
would
do it. Now that he knew there was a possibility of having her, he would make it a reality. There was no other choice for him—or for her.

“You have a point,” he conceded in a low voice. “It is your life, Ricco, and what you choose to do is for you to decide. Just know that if your woman does walk into your life, asking her to live with our name, within the rules of our family, is a big enough curse. What else do you have to offer her?”

Across from him, Vittorio stirred. “Are you certain this woman is one that you can bind to you?”

Vittorio. Always the peacemaker in the family. Stefano smiled at him. It wasn't an easy smile because Stefano, even with his own family members, rarely felt like smiling, but it was there all the same because Vittorio was such a good man. Stefano was always proud of him. They needed to hear how the miracle had happened. They knew, from watching other family members, that finding a shadow rider outside the family was a rare phenomenon and none of them had ever believed it would happen to them.

Stefano knew his brothers needed hope. Ricco especially. He was wild. Sometimes out-of-control wild. Not with the family business, of course. Then he was stone cold and
all about business, but he took risks. Too many. He was the best driver in the family, and they were all good, but Ricco often
needed
the adrenaline rush of fast speeds just to keep him sane.

In another family, Ricco would have been an artist. In their family, creativity was only about the ability to find ways to carry out their work. Ricco had turned to the erotic form of Shibari to satisfy both his need for creating art as well as his sexual needs. He was darker than his brothers, and more prone to violence and chance taking, yet his work was impeccable.

Stefano sighed. His brothers needed to know there was hope. “I felt an electrical charge in the air and found it disturbing. I thought it was a bad thing, a premonition of something coming that our family would have to deal with. The need to stay there was so strong, I couldn't leave. Even knowing we had to be on a flight for work didn't matter. Nothing else mattered enough to make me leave.”

Stefano didn't know why he admitted to his brothers how little control he had had when he should have gotten into his car and driven straight to the airport, but he knew he had to tell the truth. To be precise about the facts. It was important.

“I was standing by my car, out in the street by the driver'sside door. If I had ignored that compulsion to stay, I would have gotten in, driven away and I would never have seen her.” That needed to be said. His brothers had to stay alert. Be aware.

“There's a tradition in our family,” Vittorio said. “When the first arrives, the others will follow.”

“It didn't happen for our cousins in London,” Ricco said. “None of them married or had children. Nor did the ones in Sicily.”

Stefano kept going. He could give them this. A moment in his life he knew he would never forget. He would share what he considered a private, perfect, almost frightening moment. “I heard her voice first. She responded to something Joanna Masci said to her. That note in her voice turned
the key, unlocking something deep inside of me. I
felt
it like a terrible wrenching inside. Everything in me reached for her. For that note she left hanging in the air. I heard the music in me answer.”

He fell silent a moment, reliving that moment in time that had changed everything in his world. His heart had pounded in his chest. Hard. So hard it actually hurt. Physically hurt. He could go into a room full of enemies and his heart rate never once elevated, yet hearing that musical note in the air had acted like a key, unlocking a matching note in his body and throwing his iron composure.

“It wasn't snowing, but it was icy cold. The ground was wet and covered in puddles. Time seemed to slow down, but I was aware of everything, yet only her. I saw and recognized who and what she was by her shadow—by the tubes connecting her to everything. Every step she took, I could feel the channels opening everywhere until she took the one step that finally connected us.”

His fingers closed, one by one, into a tight fist, as if he could hold her to him. He'd had a primitive desire to throw her over his shoulder and carry her to a dungeon, one with a lock so she could never escape. He couldn't give them that moment, that connection when they joined. That was for him alone. That was private. The jolt was intense. Sexual. His body had reacted, his cock hard and urgently full. Everything protective and primal in him had risen to meet her. To claim what he knew absolutely was his.

“She was freezing. I could feel how cold she was. How hungry.”

His throat closed on him. His heart had stuttered in his chest. His woman. The woman who would end the gnawing loneliness. End the hunger for a family of his own. He was a force to be reckoned with. The world he lived in was dark and violent. Unrelenting and unforgiving. He protected the weak. He brought justice to those above justice. One word. One phone call. Life or death. He
protected
everyone. Yet his woman was freezing. Hungry. In the cold and wet of
Chicago. Alone. Unprotected. And she was scared.
In Ferraro territory.
When their shadows had reached for each other, he felt that as well. Her terrible fear.

He swore under his breath. Hating that moment. Feeling a failure. He would have to leave her there, out in the cold. Alone. Afraid. He'd felt helpless for the first time in his life. He'd started training, like those before him, at the age of two. He'd been trained to believe he was powerful. Strong. Intelligent. He moved where others couldn't, in a world of shadows. Silent. Deadly. Invincible.
His woman was cold and hungry.
What good was his training? What good was he?

“I did what I could, but she's in trouble.”

“Giovanni won't let anything happen to her,” Ricco soothed. “He'll watch over her until this is done. She's yours, Stefano, but she's ours as well. She belongs to all of us. You put teams on her. Nothing will happen to her. Let's just get this done and you can get back to her.”

Stefano looked at his brothers. “I stood there, holding her against the wall, wrapping her up in my coat, the only thing I had to protect her with, to tell the world she was mine and I would hunt down anyone who harmed or attempted to harm her. I looked down at her and knew she is everything I'm not. She deserves a better life than the one I can give her.”

That moment was etched in his mind forever. Burned there. She'd been frightened of him. He couldn't blame her, but still, he detested that look. At the same time, touching her skin, feeling the silk of her hair . . . Just that. It was all it took to wipe out every ugly thing in his life and give him something beautiful. He hadn't known beauty really existed until that moment. “She deserves better,” he reiterated aloud.

The air stilled. No one breathed. Ricco exchanged a long look with Vittorio.

“What are you saying?” Vittorio asked, his voice gentle. “Stefano, you can't walk away from her. You can't do that.”

“No. I can't.” Pure regret. No remorse, but definitely regret. “I'm not that good or that strong of a man to let her go. She's mine. I take what's mine. She doesn't know it.
Doesn't want it. Doesn't want me or anything to do with me.” A trace of amusement crept in. “She deserves better, but she'll be with me and no one else.”

“We're hunters,” Ricco said. “She doesn't stand a chance.”

“No, she doesn't,” Stefano agreed. “Let's get this done. You two be visible. The light's right outside. Ricco, go out first. I'll slide into the shadow of the doorway just behind you, and Vittorio can follow you out.” He glanced at his watch. “If I get the signal to go, I'll do the job. Make certain you get your pictures taken and you're on the security footage of as many cameras as possible.”

Ricco and Vittorio had boarded the plane in Chicago, playing their parts of bored playboys with too much money and time on their hands. They'd raced their cars through the streets to get to the airport to their private hangar, where their jet was already fueled and ready. A couple of paparazzi had followed them, snapping pictures, just as the brothers had intended.

Stefano arrived by helicopter and strode over to them, intercepting them before they could board the plane. They'd appeared to argue long enough to have several pictures of them taken, the big brother giving his younger brothers a lecture. He'd stalked away, shaking his head, back toward the helicopter. Except he hadn't been the one to go back to the helicopter. For one split second, Ricco and Vittorio had blocked views of Stefano and he'd entered the shadow and his brother Taviano had emerged, dressed exactly as Stefano was dressed. He shoved his dark glasses over his eyes and stalked back to the helicopter while Stefano used the shadows to board the plane.

Always, always, they had alibis. There was never a connection between them and the target. Nothing personal. Still, they lived in that world. Violence. Blood. Death. It was their world. Ricco and Vittorio were seen in public coming and going to the airport. They would be in the clubs all night, openly partying with a couple of movie stars and their friends. As far as anyone knew, no one else had flown with them and they were in Los Angeles to have fun.

Stefano had to shut out all thoughts of Francesca Capello and get the job done. Ricco stood, then Vittorio. Stefano last. Ricco put his hand out. Vittorio put his on top, and Stefano covered both hands with his. They never said anything. There was nothing to say. They just touched. Letting one another know without words they were a unit. A family. They had one another's backs. They loved.

Ricco went first, the door opening, throwing the shadows into stark relief. Stefano felt the pull of each of the shadow tubes. Openings he could slide through. The pull was strong on his body, dragging at him like powerful magnets, the sensation uncomfortable, but familiar. Stefano was one of the more powerful riders. Even small shadows drew him, pulling his body apart until he was streaming through light and dark to his destination.

He carried little equipment with him. Light. That was more essential than any weapon.
He
was the weapon. His body. His mind. Sometimes he thought his very soul. Weapons weren't as necessary as a light source. If there were no shadows, he could make his own.

He stepped into the opening of the largest shadow. He would move from one to the next, never seen, going to his destination. He knew he'd need most of the night for traveling, but he had the coordinates and he could find his way unerringly, even in cities he'd never been to.

It was always cool in the shadows. He moved fast, sliding, a rider of the shadows, slipping through the city unseen. In contrast, Ricco and Vittorio entered the latest hot spot, a club catering to the very wealthy. The music was loud and pounding. The lights dazzling. They wore their three-piece suits. The Ferraro family always, always, dressed for any occasion. They were famous for the look. The gray suits with the darker pinstripe, or the darker suit with the lighter pinstripe. Either a dark gray shirt or a lighter one with a tie just the opposite of the shirt.

On Ricco's arms were the Lacey twins. They snuggled close to him, their blond hair falling over his arms, their
slender bodies pressed close to his sides. They stayed that way all night, the three of them blatantly dancing together, Ricco sandwiched between the two women. They moved against him seductively, suggestively. As the night wore on and the beat pounded, the liquor flowed and his hands were all over both of them.

All three of them knew the paparazzi had managed to sneak in. The twins liked the publicity and being seen with a wealthy Ferraro. They didn't mind if they were secretly photographed, not even later when the three retired to the twins' home and swam naked together in the covered pool or even later still, in the hot tub on the open deck, where a zoom lens could find them.