3

CASIMIR arranged to enter Salvadore’s just as Arturo approached with a dark-haired woman pacing just behind him. Casimir continued walking as they neared him, but it was all he could do to keep his mouth closed tight when it wanted to drop open in pure shock. He would never have known the woman walking with Arturo was Lissa Piner. She was . . . plain. Pretty enough, but plain.

Lissa was so vibrant and alive. A living flame. There was no way to deny the passion in her. She drew the eye of men and women around her. It was impossible not to see her beauty and be drawn to it. She looked sexy, sensual, a woman made for long nights and pure sin. She moved with the flowing grace of a dancer. The dark-haired woman following Arturo into the cappuccino bar didn’t come close to Lissa’s beauty.

Just inside the door Casimir stopped to read the menu posted on the far wall. He kept an eye on the two of them. Arturo broke off and went to sit at one of the tables along the far wall where he could look into the mirror behind the counter and see everyone in the cappuccino bar as well as have the advantage of facing the door and wide windows overlooking the street.

The woman was the same height as Lissa, but not as curvy. In fact, she looked straight up and down. There was no sign of Lissa’s generous breasts. Her hair was shoulder-length, a glossy black. Her eyebrows and lashes were dark as well as her eyes. There was a beauty mark on the right side of her lips. Still, there was no mistaking her mouth. Casimir had far too many fantasies about that mouth to fail to recognize her. Under that thin, stick of a disguise was his woman.

She went straight to a table in the far corner. Fortunately, it was in his path. Casimir pulled his book from his backpack and peered at the pages, reading as he walked up the aisle toward the area where the single tables were located, right where Arturo had chosen to sit. He bumped into a woman, bounced off her and banged into Lissa’s table, apologizing in fluent Italian the entire time. He had to grab the table’s edge to steady himself, deftly slipping the tiny bug beneath the table as he did so.

He didn’t meet Lissa’s eyes, in fact, barely glanced at her, but nearly prostrated himself in front of the other woman. He hunched over, shuffling his worn shoes. He wore horn-rimmed glasses over his light brown eyes. His jawline was quite different, filled out, and he was slightly bucktoothed. His mousy brown hair, streaked with gray, was thinning. His voice was nasally. Even the shape and color of his fingernails were different. He didn’t have a single identifying mark on his face or hands.

His clothes were loose, covering the paunch around his belly. The trousers fit his buttocks tighter, but that was because he had a very rounded butt. The woman he followed continually smiled and reassured him until he wiped beads of sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief and dropped into a chair as if he was exhausted from apologizing.

Casimir deliberately chose the table on the other side of Arturo, a good distance from Lissa. He opened his book with a huge relieved sigh, loud enough for everyone in the bar to hear, pulled out his earphones and slipped them on after ordering a cappuccino and pastrami pizza, the bar’s signature dish.

Lissa’s chair faced away from him, but she sat sideways, better to observe the room. She placed gloves carefully on the tabletop, precisely on the small clutch she’d brought with her. A signal that meant all clear. He’d used such signals himself many times. Had she just left the clutch without the gloves, he surmised she would have been warning whomever she was meeting to stay away.

Casimir took a cautious look around the bar without appearing to do so. He had great practice looking completely absorbed in his choice of reading material. His glasses were slightly tinted, partially hiding his eyes as his gaze moved around the room. Two tables down he spotted her contact and his gut seized. He knew the man. A total weasel for the Russian mob. What was Lissa doing meeting such a man? He couldn’t be trusted. He was known for double-dealing, selling information, but informing the mob who wanted it and where the meet would take place. He cursed under his breath in four languages—eloquently.

The weasel, a man by the name of Ivan Belsky, sitting a few tables down from Casimir, rose and made his way to Lissa’s table and sank into the chair opposite her. He wore a shapeless coat and a hat, and his beady eyes were restless, constantly moving. Sweat beaded on his forehead. That told Casimir he hadn’t come alone and this meeting was a setup.

“Before we go any further,” Belsky stated, “I need to know who you’re buying this information for.”

“That’s none of your business.” Even Lissa’s voice was different. Two notes lower. Slightly husky. Still, it was authoritative and clipped.

“I can’t just hand over information like this to anyone,” he hissed. “I could be killed.”

“You knew that when you agreed to make the deal,” Lissa pointed out.

The two stared at each another for a long time. Lissa didn’t look away or back down. Her features were set and her hand crept toward her gloves and clutch, as if she would pick up both and walk away.

“I don’t have time to play around. If you don’t have what I need, just say so. I was told you were someone who could be counted on.”

Belsky’s breath hissed out. “I got you the information you wanted. It was much more difficult than I thought it would be. The price has doubled.” He leaned across the table. “Miss Patrice Lungren.” He sat back, satisfied that just knowing her name, identifying her, would frighten her.

Lissa hesitated, her hand fluttering for a moment, as if being called by name had thrown her. She straightened her shoulders and allowed her hand to fall gracefully to the table. “Your difficulties are not my problem. We agreed on a price, Belsky.”

Casimir didn’t react, but he felt his heart jerk hard in his chest. He wasn’t a man to feel fear. He could go into any situation with ice in his veins because he had nothing to lose. Now, there was Lissa Piner with her flaming red hair and her soft, appealing laughter. He wasn’t going to lose her to a weasel like Ivan Belsky. He knew the man. A rat for the Russian mob operating out of Moscow. He wasn’t in the least bit trustworthy or reliable. Not. At. All. He would sell Lissa down the river in a heartbeat. Whatever she offered him, he had gotten more playing both sides.

What was she doing even talking to a man like Belsky? He nearly groaned when she casually took an envelope from her clutch and laid it on the table. The white packet, clearly thick with cash, lay beneath her palm. Belsky stared at it. Realization that she wasn’t going to budge had him sighing. He reached for the envelope, but she didn’t move her hand, just continued to stare at him.

Casimir’s gut tightened. He stood up, snapping his book closed as Belsky removed a thin package wrapped in a brown paper bag and tied with a string. A neat touch, Casimir acknowledged. The man slid it across the table to Lissa. She put her hand on it before releasing the packet of cash to the weasel. Casimir shuffled right on past them without looking at either of them.

The trick to a disguise wasn’t always the features so much as the details. The walk, the hunch, the particulars of a character one took on. He never forgot those details, especially not when someone’s life depended on it—and he was certain Lissa’s life did. Inwardly he cursed in Russian, his native language, and he was inventive about it as he kept to the slow, lumbering pace of his role. He didn’t look at Lissa, or Belsky. He knew what was waiting for her outside. He had to get there first.

He’d known the moment he investigated Lissa and found out her uncle was Luigi Abbracciabene, a name connected to what had once been a small mob family living in the town of Ferrara. It had been easy enough to find the newspaper articles on the massacre of the family and all of the soldiers and workers on the estate. The Abbracciabene family had run afoul of the Porcelli family, a very large, connected family, violent and given to bloody wars. They’d instigated the massacre. He’d found Giacinta’s name and it was reported she had died as well. He knew she hadn’t.

Luigi lived a good distance from his brother, and had no part in the family business, at least that had been what every paper said. The Porcelli family hadn’t bothered with him. It was reported he was quite ill. Casimir suspected he’d been much more than a mere bystander. Every family had an enforcer. An assassin. A man just like him. One that lived in the shadows and slipped out only when needed. Luigi had been that man for his family. He’d rescued his niece, hidden her from the world and raised her. Trained her. Set her on a path of vengeance, or justice—however one looked at it.

Casimir turned over every possibility of where the second assassin would be. They would want to catch Lissa away from people but before she made it to her car. Belsky would crowd close behind her, stay within striking distance. He had to believe she could handle Belsky. He had to trust that she would never meet him without the knowledge that he might betray her. When Belsky had called her Patrice Lungren, she’d faltered—clearly an act. She knew. She had to know.

He forced his mind away from Lissa and Belsky. Ivan Belsky was treacherous, but he could be handled. He was a weasel, always looking for easy money. He had made an art out of “selling” information and then killing the recipient. He had a partner he worked with, and unfortunately that man was by far the more dangerous. Borya Polzin specialized in murder. He enjoyed killing. Man, woman or child, it didn’t matter. What did matter was he had come out of the same school Casimir had.

They’d had very little contact. Casimir had excelled and had been pushed in every area of learning possible, from languages to the art of seduction. He had reason to excel. If he didn’t, one of his brothers would pay the price. Borya had little to offer other than a psychopath’s hunger to hurt others. Borya had certainly outshone his classmates in that regard. He failed to learn any languages other than English and his native Russian. He could barely read. His masters hadn’t killed him as they had so many others who failed far less classes than he had. He liked to hurt others and he learned how to torture, how to keep his victim alive as long as possible and how to kill in hundreds of ways, most very inelegant.

Some years earlier, he had killed his only sibling, his sister, the one his handlers held over his head to keep him in line. He’d slipped his leash and gone where there was money for his particular line of work—the Russian mob.

Casimir paused just to the right of the door, fumbling for car keys, dropping his book and bending to pick it up. The brief interval allowed him to scan the street and buildings across from the cappuccino bar. His car was parked just down from the front of the building, but he couldn’t see the vehicle Lissa had arrived in.

As Casimir straightened, book in hand, Arturo sauntered out. The bodyguard didn’t look in the least worried. He was nearing his sixties, was in good shape, working out all the time, and he’d been employed by Luigi.

Arturo had been employed by Luigi Abbracciabene nearly all of his life. He’d gone to work for Luigi at the age of seventeen. He’d been without a home and hungry for one. Luigi had been smart enough to see his potential and had taken him in. There was no one more loyal to the Abbracciabene family than Arturo. Casimir realized the moment Arturo came outside that Lissa had sent him ahead to get him out of the way of any potential violence. Lissa Piner was just as loyal to Arturo as he was to her—and she was determined to protect him.

Swearing under his breath, knowing he had only a few moments to pinpoint Borya’s location, Casimir tried to pull up all he could recall of the man. Borya would want to commit murder up close. The assassin couldn’t get satisfaction from killing at a distance. He would have to see the light go out of his victim’s eyes in order to get his release. The actual kill was very personal to him. He would be labeled a serial killer in any other country, but Sorbacov had made him a personal pet and protected him. Kostya Sorbacov was his own brand of killer, and it amused him to keep Borya as his personal hit man. In running the schools, Sorbacov had come across several of the type of men Borya was, and he kept all of them. He had to have been very upset when Borya slipped away.

Casimir glanced toward his left. The corner was stark and open. No cover. To his right there was another store. Tables and chairs were set up in front of both the cappuccino bar and the small bakery next door. Too much furniture in the way for a clean kill. So where would Borya make his try for Lissa?

Behind him, he felt her presence. Lissa. His heart jerked hard in his chest as he took in her scent. Not the fragrance that had surrounded him at her uncle’s estate, but a new, just as potent one. This one was jasmine and lavender, but very subtle, barely there. Her undercover signature scent then—when she played the part of Patrice Lungren. Behind Patrice was Belsky.

Lissa stepped up beside Casimir, her features expressionless. She gave him a vague smile, as if she wasn’t really seeing him, but he was very aware of her piercing intelligence as her gaze swept over him, in seconds rejecting the idea that he could be the second killer.

Belsky came up behind her fast, crowding her so that she was forced to step forward, out into the open, onto the cobblestone sidewalk, beneath the canopy. Beneath the canopy. Casimir dropped the book as he withdrew the knife he carried from its sheath just inside his ill-fitting coat. As he did, he took two steps and leapt into the air right beneath the sagging canopy. He aimed for the heart of the prone figure waiting so patiently to murder.

Simultaneously, Lissa turned to face Belsky, a smile on her face, as if she might say something to him. He was already in motion, the blade of his knife concealed against his wrist as he stepped toward her, his hand going up to slice across her throat. Lissa used the momentum of her forward motion to slam a block down on his arm, deflecting the blade from her ribs as she stepped to the side of Belsky. She stabbed the needle she had in her fist into his neck, depressing the plunger as she did so, and retracted the needle, all in one motion. She continued walking past him, back toward the door of the bar where she’d artfully dropped her clutch.

Crouching low, she picked up the clutch as well as the book Casimir had dropped. Spinning, she saw a knife blade tear through the canopy. A few drops of blood hit the sidewalk. The man who had been reading the book continued moving toward the street, away from the bar. Shuffling. Bent. His body awkward. Not looking back. She looked around, but no one else was close. Her gaze went back to the man that had been sitting in the bar earlier. Who else could have delivered that killing blow to the assassin lying in wait, stretched out on the canopy above their heads?

Belsky staggered away from her, nearly fell off the sidewalk and then walked right out into the narrow street. A car honked. Slammed on brakes. He reached up to touch his neck. Looked at her. Another car coming at a much greater speed slammed into the rear of the stopped vehicle, spun and slid right into the man. The body went up and over the hood to land on the windshield.

Several women witnessing the accident screamed. Loudly. Shrilly. The canopy drooped. Big drops of blood plopped onto the sidewalk almost right in front of Lissa. The sag in the canopy grew along with the slit made by the knife. The man who had leapt up to kill the second assassin was long gone. He’d disappeared as Belsky staggered into the street.

The rip went wider overhead, and the body dropped nearly at her feet. She screamed and fell back onto her butt, like any self-respecting woman would. Being a Good Samaritan, she crawled the couple of steps to him, one hand feeling for a pulse. She wasn’t taking any chances with fingerprints, although, as usual when she went out, she wore liquid prints. Not her own. Never her own.

She had only seconds to try to identify him. The dead man wasn’t wearing gloves and his fingertips were absolutely smooth. He had a knife in his fist and it was stuck there tight. He’d died within seconds of the attack on him, and that certain knowledge set her heart pounding. Whoever had killed him had done so blindly. He’d leapt up and hit his target in the heart with his knife. That wasn’t luck. That was skill. The knife had gone in smoothly, and then turned as it came out for maximum damage. There had been no sound. The killer had landed silently and disappeared within moments.

“He’s d-dead,” she stuttered, horrified, looking up at the first man who knelt beside her. “I’m sure he’s dead.” She nearly collapsed in his arms, forcing the man to drag her away from the body while others helped. He put her in a chair at one of the outside tables and then rushed back to the body.

A crowd gathered. She slipped out into the street, joining the crush there. She crouched low beside Belsky’s body, one hand feeling for his pulse while the other slipped inside his jacket and deftly removed the envelope of cash. “He’s dead,” she said, and stood up, looking dismayed. The crowd pressed closer, and she slipped back into it.

She spotted Arturo in their car several yards down. She gave one last casual glance around and made her way to the car, carrying her clutch and the book. She couldn’t say she wasn’t grateful to her savior for dispatching a man who had planned on killing her—and there was no doubt in her mind that he was lying in wait for her—but she didn’t want, nor could she afford to have a guardian.

Halfway to the house, she swept off her very expensive and beautiful wig, shaking out her own hair. It was always a production to get her wig on because she had so much hair, but she didn’t want to cut it. Her mother wore her hair long, and it was one of the few things that always made Lissa feel as if she still had a part of her.

“I’m changing,” she announced.

“Get to it,” Arturo said, completely unaffected by the fact that she was peeling off her shoes, socks and jeans to pull on a long skirt. The top and band she bound her breasts with came next, and she yanked a thin, silky top over her head to match the skirt. The tiny pearl buttons were already done up. Her heels matched the color of the top, a pale blue to match the thin stripes in the skirt. She added gold bangles to her wrist, pulled out the earrings that were simple studs and replaced them with gold hoops.

Her work clothes and shoes were thrust into a bag along with the earrings, clutch, syringe and envelope of money. She set the bag on the seat beside her and quickly began to brush out her hair. She’d changed in under four minutes. A record. The adrenaline was rushing through her veins. Her heart pounded. Her mouth was dry. She’d come to expect the symptoms after working, but this was different. This was about what she was going to do when she reached her uncle’s estate.

Absently she picked up the book. Old Poisons, New Problems. She frowned and tapped her finger on the cover. She’d read the book. Luigi had a copy of it in the library along with other reference books on poisons. She smoothed her finger along the spine and turned the book over and over. The more she stared down at the copy, the more she was certain it was from their library.

“Gavriil Prakenskii. I know you sent a babysitter.” She whispered the words softly and pressed the button to bring the window down.

“I didn’t hear you,” Arturo said. “My ears aren’t what they used to be.”

“I was muttering to myself.”

“You only do that if you’re upset. You got the information. Belsky may be a double-crossing rat but he always brings the goods. It’s a point of honor with him. Whatever you have there is what you asked for.” There was curiosity in his voice.

Ignoring his unspoken question, she closed her eyes and stuck her head out the window, allowing the wind to blow through her hair and over her face. Cooling her. She was bound to fire. Inside, deep, where it mattered, at her very core, there was nothing cool and collected about her. She burned hot and passionate. Sometimes she felt as dead as her parents, lost to the world, existing, not living. The farther away from the farm and her sisters, the more that feeling persisted.

She had to be focused. Completely alert and absorbed, concentrating only on the job at hand. She’d stayed alive because she pushed her natural nature down. The need to bring justice to those who had so brutally murdered her family and those serving them had been overwhelming. The need to let them know she, Giacinta Abbracciabene, was the one bringing that justice down on their heads was equally as overwhelming. The intelligent, logical part of her had kept her calm and allowed her to formulate a long-term plan.

Now, Gavriil Prakenskii was threatening that plan. It made no sense to her. He knew her intention. He knew she planned to kill both father and son Sorbacov. Her sisters deserved happiness, and the Prakenskiis had served their country with honor. They also deserved to live out their lives in peace. She was doing this for them. Why would he make it more difficult? Because she was certain—certain—that the man calling himself Tomasso Dal Porto was in reality a Prakenskii.

She felt he was in her very bones. It was his eyes. She had been on the farm with her sisters of the heart, as they often called themselves, for a little over five years. In that time, Rikki, a sea urchin diver, had pulled a man from the sea. He had been a Prakenskii. Lev Prakenskii. She had married that man. They all learned to accept and love him, but he was a protective, overbearing man.

Then Judith had fallen. Judith, who had all kinds of sense until a man showed up to protect her from her past. Her man just happened to be a Prakenskii as well and she married him. Stefan Prakenskii owned an art gallery and was just as protective and overbearing as Lev.

Next it was Airiana. She’d been kidnapped—by a Prakenskii. Together they had shut down a ship of human traffickers and rescued four children. She was married to Maxim now and they were adopting the children. Max was worse than the other two when it came to being protective.

Little Lexi, their youngest and most vulnerable, had succumbed to the charms of Gavriil Prakenskii. He was the most arrogant and dangerous of all the brothers she’d met. Lissa liked him and especially liked him for her youngest sister, but adding him into the mix was just downright scary. There was way too much testosterone on the farm.

The brothers believed in safety first and they’d turned the farm into a heavily guarded sanctuary, but Lissa wasn’t safe there. She had too many secrets, and her work wasn’t finished. She couldn’t afford to have anyone watching her every move. Gavriil had guessed at what her plans were and he’d even provided information she wouldn’t have been able to get on her own, but she didn’t want help. She didn’t need it, and she refused to allow a Prakenskii male anywhere near her.

She wasn’t stupid or blind. She saw the pattern. Each of her sisters was bound to an element. Rikki was bound to water. Judith to spirit. Airiana was bound to air. Lexi was bound to the earth. Lissa blew out her breath and yanked the brush through her hair. She was bound to fire. That meant that every minute of every day, she had to suppress her passionate nature. Her need for action.

Lissa didn’t dare show the Prakenskii brothers her skills when she was practicing martial arts or using weapons with them. She had to allow them to best her at every turn. It wasn’t always easy. When discussions arose, she had to be subdued and keep silent when she wanted to argue fiercely for her point. She desperately wanted to be herself. Desperately.

Coming back to Italy, being in her uncle’s home, she still couldn’t be who she was deep inside. They had planned together, long ago, when she was a child, how to bring justice to the Porcelli family. Lissa had been a hothead, but Luigi had forced her to slow down to learn the things she needed to learn in order to keep from being killed. That had taken years. In that time, she learned the wisdom of patience.

The Porcelli family had no idea they were under attack. The accidents came infrequently. Two, sometimes three in a year. There was no pattern that anyone could detect, and Lissa always made certain the accidents were random. She didn’t care about tipping off the Porcelli family that the Abbracciabene family was coming after them. She didn’t care anything about the second generation either. Only those responsible for the deaths of her people and her family. Luigi was her only living blood relative, and she didn’t want him compromised in any way. He appeared to live quietly, surrounded by those he trusted, an older man who enjoyed gardening.

She hadn’t known a real family again until she lived on the farm with her chosen sisters. Of the six women who had banded together to start a new life, only Lissa and Blythe remained unmarried. Unclaimed. Well . . . Blythe was up in the air. She had her own secrets. But Prakenskiis were overrunning their farm and the small village of Sea Haven. Even the famous Jolie Drake was married to a Prakenskii, which put five of the seven brothers in her small town. She could count. That left two. One for her. One for Blythe. It wasn’t happening. Not to her.

“We’re nearly home, Lissa,” Arturo announced. His eyes met hers in the rearview mirror. “Are you settled, or do you need me to miss the driveway?”

She loved Arturo. She did. She loved few people in the world. She didn’t dare get close to them. Her sisters. Their husbands—and she was still trying to hold herself apart from them. Her uncle and Arturo. Those were the few people she had in her world. In truth, Gavriil telling his brother about her hurt. She had trusted him to keep his word to her, not to let anyone know that she planned to go after the Sorbacovs. He’d given his word, and it hurt more than she’d ever expected that he’d broken his promise to her.

“I’m good. Thank you for going with me, Arturo. I don’t know if I tell you enough, but I appreciate the way you’ve always looked after Tio Luigi. I don’t ever worry because you’re with him.”

His teeth flashed at her, his smile dazzling. She hadn’t trusted, even as a child. She’d learned the hard way not to, but over the years, Arturo had become another uncle to her. Her hand shook as she put the brush back in her purse. Lifting her chin, she caught up the book and slipped from the car. Arturo drove the vehicle into the garage, leaving her at the side entrance.

She knew her uncle would be waiting for her, worried as always, but Arturo would tell him what happened. It was too late to beat Tomasso to his room, if the man with the book had in fact been Tomasso—a Prakenskii—so there was no need to try to catch him in the act of reverting back to the bodyguard role. In any case, if he actually was a Prakenskii, she knew she wouldn’t surprise him in the act of assuming another role. He would be too good for that. The Prakenskiis’ craft had been honed in a hard school. They wouldn’t make mistakes. Which left her the book.

Why had he dropped the book and then not recovered it? Especially if the book was from Luigi’s library? She used the back stairs and hurried into the room she had grown very familiar with as a child. She’d often taken refuge here when she was lonely. She’d been lonely a lot. Luigi wasn’t a man who knew how to comfort a grieving child. He was a man of action. He’d devoted his life to his brother and the family business. It had been small but lucrative. Now, he found himself with an emotional child who went from storms of weeping to fiery rants on vengeance.

Luigi had learned, over the years, how to express his love for her in more concrete ways, but she’d spent so many of the earlier days right there in the library, crying her eyes out. She tried to be brave in front of him because she wanted him to teach her what he knew. Then she’d discovered his books. She’d learned everything from Luigi, from self-defense and dirty tricks to weapons and poisons. She was a walking encyclopedia on poisons.

She knew right where the reference books were kept, and she hurried across the room to the shelves. The book should have been right there. She’d read it, put it back and granted, it was a number of years ago, but still, no one else was going to have taken it off the shelf. She scanned for the title. There was a small space between The Elements of Poison—A History of Murder and Basic Illustrated Poisonous and Psychoactive Plants, a book she’d read repeatedly as a child. This book, dropped by the man who had probably saved her life, belonged in Luigi’s library.

She took a deep breath, let it out and replaced the book between the other two titles. She was going to confront Mr. Prakenskii and have him leave immediately. She couldn’t afford to have him looking over her shoulder. She had work to do. Luigi had found the man she had wanted more than any other, and she intended to take care of Cosmos Agosto, the dog handler who had betrayed her entire family, and then she was going to see to the problem facing her sisters. No Prakenskii was going macho on her and stopping her.

Lissa hurried up the back stairs leading to the second floor, to the wing where Arturo, Tomasso and three other bodyguards resided. She knew which room was Tomasso’s and she stood in front of the door, there in the darkened hallway. No sound emerged from the other side. No light slipped under the door.

She turned the doorknob very slowly. It was locked. That didn’t surprise her in the least. It wasn’t that difficult to pick the lock and she did so quickly. She pushed the door open cautiously, slipped inside and closed the door silently.

She stood just to the right of the door, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. It was much darker in the room due to the fact that heavy drapes had been pulled across the windows. She heard her heart pounding. As a rule, she could overcome fear rather easily. It was a matter of discipline and resolve. But this was a different kind of fear. Completely different.

Lissa’s life had been destroyed by the attack on her family. Her parents had been brutally murdered. She’d nearly been murdered as well, and she’d been a very young child. That day was forever stamped in her mind, burned deep into her memories, but she kept that door carefully closed. The moment it was opened, the nightmares started. Standing there in the dark, she felt those murders and the memory of them all too close because the very air around her was fraught with danger.

She stayed still, inhaling to calm her pounding heart. The air was spiced with a dark, masculine scent. Dangerous to her. She recognized that immediately as she pulled her breath deep into her lungs—pulled him deep into her lungs. Prakenskii. No one else had those eyes. It didn’t matter what color they were or if he wore glasses or not. It was the eyes. Hawk-like. Piercing. Seeing everything. Seeing into one’s soul.

Then there was the blistering chemistry between them she couldn’t deny. She didn’t have chemistry with men. She didn’t allow it. She wasn’t finished with her work and it was too important to screw that up for a man.

He made no sound. No movement. But he was there, somewhere in the dark room. Close to her. Very close. Somehow he’d seen or heard or was alerted to the doorknob twisting, or her picking the lock. It was impossible, she hadn’t made a sound, but she knew he wasn’t in the bed. He was there, very, very close to her. She held her breath, listening for the sound of his breathing, but there was nothing at all to give him away. She had trapped herself in the room with a powerful predator.

Lissa acknowledged and tried to learn from every mistake she made. She didn’t just keep going on a path if it wasn’t the right one because of ego. Right now, she knew she was in over her head. Whoever this man was—Prakenskii or not—he was much better at cat and mouse than she was. She was used to being the cat. In this room, she definitely was the mouse. Very slowly she inched back toward the door, her hand moving toward the doorknob.

“Don’t.”

The single command was low. Soft. Close to her right ear. So close she felt his warm breath stir her hair, disturbing a few stray strands. The hair moved over her face, causing an electrical shock to chase across her entire body, bringing every nerve ending alive. Her breasts felt tight, swollen, aching. Her nipples tightened into two hard peaks. She shivered—a full-body shiver. He hadn’t touched her. She drew in another breath, suddenly terrified that this man—this stranger—had more power over her than anything else in her life ever had.

He couldn’t stop her from opening the door, yet she hesitated, her hand hovering over the doorknob indecisively when she was always decisive. Her hand trembled and then she dropped her palm onto the knob. It felt solid. Reassuring. His scent tilted her world and made her feel disoriented. Alarmed. Hunted.

His hand covered hers. Gently. So gently. Still. She couldn’t move. His body caged her in, inched forward just enough that she retreated before she even realized she’d given ground. Her arm was trapped behind her, and, consequently, one of her weapons was tied up, fingers still curled around the doorknob. His palm no longer surrounded the back of her hand. Instead, it was loose. A worry. A very lethal weapon.

“I want to leave this room. If you force me to scream, the other bodyguards will come running. Just step away.” She managed to get the order out without her voice shaking. The threat level was extremely high. Her body didn’t feel at all like her own. He stood facing her, his front solid. Muscular. Presenting her with numerous targets, yet she couldn’t take advantage. It was too easy, and she knew it was a trap. He was baiting her.

His hand came up—the one she’d known was going to be trouble—and cupped the side of her face, his thumb sweeping along her cheekbone. “But you won’t scream. If you brought them all here, you would force me to defend myself. I would, and I like most of the boys working for Luigi. With the exception of Enzo, who is a snake waiting to strike. In any case, I would kill them all and then your uncle would come . . .” He trailed off and swept his thumb over her lips. “You know you don’t want that.”