Shadow Rider (A Shadow Riders Novel Book 1)
Shadow Rider: Chapter 3

The 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 replace 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 replaceing 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 replace 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 replace 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 replace them.

Ricco always practiced his art of erotic tying away from the camera. Still, the twins talked about how sexy and sensual it was to their friends, who then repeated everything to the paparazzi. Still, no photographer had ever actually gotten a picture of Ricco using the art of Shibari on a woman.

Vittorio was much more discreet. He danced with the Lacey twins’ friend, another up-and-coming actress. She was quieter than the twins, but no less willing to be seen. If anything, she was even hungrier for publicity. There were no innocents in their business, and the brothers made certain of that. They didn’t romance women. They had their fun, made certain the women they fucked had fun as well, but they didn’t date. They didn’t make promises. They never, never, took advantage of a woman who didn’t know the score or the game.

There were rules. Lots of rules. They lived them to the letter, never deviating. The brothers were highly sexual and they had no compunction about replaceing women who were more than willing to see to those needs in return for the same, but there were never emotional entanglements. Any woman who looked as if she might be getting ideas, or real feelings toward them, was dropped instantly.

Stefano had more than his share of women. He’d been careful though, mindful of the fact that what was put on the Internet or in magazines never went away. Any indiscretion could be brought back at any moment. He didn’t mind the press printing the truth–that the brothers went through women, that the women were wealthy celebrities or heiresses and that they all partied hard. The brothers and their sister provided alibis for one another. Always. It didn’t matter what city, or which state–no job could ever be traced back to them, and though they didn’t know it, the paparazzi aided them with those alibis.

Stefano found himself in a residential area, outside the home of his target. The neighborhood was a good one. The home was large, perhaps a good six thousand square feet. Well kept. The yard maintained. Edgar Sullivan resided there. In his community he was known as a hardworking man. An upstanding man. A pillar in his church. He had a wife and two daughters. Few people ever noticed that the women in his home had little to say. Rarely smiled. Jumped in fear if spoken to and looked to him before they answered the simplest questions.

Edgar ruled his family with an iron fist. He did the same with the prostitutes he frequently hired. He was warned repeatedly that the beatings and damage he was doing wouldn’t be tolerated, but so far, the pimp had been unable to protect his women. At first the money Edgar had paid for the damages to the women had been enough to keep the pimp quiet, but after a while Edgar’s urges couldn’t be controlled at all, nor did he bother to try. The pimp had taken his money and Edgar expected him to continue to do so. Two women had been hospitalized. They knew better than to talk, but the pimp had had enough. There was no way for him to get to Sullivan, not without the law replaceing out. So he’d appealed to the Ferraro family for aid.

Anyone could make the appeal for a meeting. All meetings were conducted in person. Stefano’s parents took those meetings. They chatted casually with a potential client. That was always necessary. Every person had a natural rhythm. Patterns of breathing. Of speaking. Heartbeats. Inflections in their voices. That casual conversation allowed the “greeters” to establish those patterns. F

rom there they could almost always detect lies.

Essentially, “greeters” in the Ferraro family were people born as human lie detectors. That was their psychic gift. They listened to the petition for aid, but that was all. No promises. Just listening. If an undercover cop tried to infiltrate their organization, he couldn’t fault the greeter for simply listening. Greeters never responded with any kind of commitment. They mostly remained silent through the entire interview. Once they got the casual conversation out of the way and established the pattern of truth, the greeters simply asked their potential clients to explain why they’d come. Former Shadow Riders often took jobs as greeters when they retired because all were born with the ability to detect lies.

Stefano wouldn’t be standing outside of Edgar Sullivan’s home now if the greeters hadn’t passed on their client to the investigators. Stefano’s family had two teams of investigators. His aunt and uncle formed one team, and his cousins, both men, formed the second team. It was the first team’s job to replace out every possible fact about the client. It was the second team’s job to replace out every fact about the crime. Both teams worked carefully and quietly. They wouldn’t have the job unless, like the greeters, they were human lie detectors, and their voices could also influence others to talk, to open up and tell them anything they wanted to know. To be an investigator, they had to be a family member and also have both specific psychic gifts.

Stefano studied the shadows surrounding the Sullivan home. Lights were on in three rooms on the second floor. Stefano called up a blueprint of the house from his mind. He’d studied the house plans from the data the investigators had turned in. He read every scrap of information provided on both the client and the target.

Greeters, investigators and the shadow rider had to all agree before the job was taken. To do that, the shadow rider needed to know every fact about both parties, where they lived and who lived with them. Their routines, their friends. Everything. A shadow rider had to be able to slide through the portals, have a photographic memory and enough energy to disrupt electrical devices should there be need.

Stefano slid his burner phone out of his pocket. This was one of the very few times he would be vulnerable. He had to be out of the shadow’s portal to make the call. That meant, if he didn’t blend perfectly with the shadow, anyone could spot him. Like his brothers, he wore the signature three-piece suit–gray, pinstriped, the stripes giving the light-and-dark effect needed. At any given time, they were ready to enter a portal if necessary. The suit was synonymous with the Ferraro name, but it served a vital purpose.

He punched in the numbers and didn’t give a greeting when the line was opened. “Do we have a go? Am in ready position.” It was necessary to triple-check everything. The investigators continued to work even after they were certain. No one wanted a mistake. They also didn’t do the work, if money was involved, until the client complied and paid.

The money would be deposited first into one of their offshore accounts. Once the money was there, it would be layered through several banking institutions the Ferraro family owned or had interest in, through several countries until the source was impossible to trace. The money came back to them through legitimate businesses the family owned. The family had managed their way for the last couple of centuries, the businesses growing along with their bank accounts.

Even now, with Stefano in place and his brothers partying it up, the transaction could be called off. He waited, uncaring of the outcome. It was a job, nothing more. He was good at what he did, but he could walk away easily if it came to that. The money had to be deposited before the job would be done. The investigators had to be completely satisfied that justice had to be served. No life could be taken lightly.

“It is a go.”

There it was. He immediately slid back into the shadows. The phone would be broken and placed in a trash can at the other side of town, somewhere near the airport. He wore thin gray gloves, of course, never risking a print.

He studied the network of shadows and the tubes they provided. The pull was strong enough that his chest felt as if it were flying apart, his insides coming out. It was an uncomfortable sensation and one that he’d never gotten used to, no matter how many times he’d done this over the years.

Instinctively he chose the longer, narrower shadow, the one that led up onto the back porch and under the door. Inside, a faint light was on over the stove. He could use the shadows cast along the floor to replace his next ride. The wrenching in his body was hard as the ride took him fast, nearly throwing him out of the portal and onto the kitchen floor. He stopped his forward momentum and took a moment to breathe and get his bearings. The narrow tunnels were always a difficult traveling experience because they acted like a slide, the body moving at such tremendous speeds. The strips of light and dark were fused closer together, providing a kind of rail that felt like greased lightning. He preferred the larger, darker shadows, and a slower, but more sustainable ride.

He stood very still just inside the tube, listening to the rhythm of the household. Every house sounded and felt different. Outside, chimes blew a soft melody into the night. A few insects made their presence known. Inside the house, it was eerily silent. The two daughters were teenagers and yet there was no television, no music. Just silence. He kept listening. Eventually, someone would make a noise. It was late, but he knew from the lights in the three rooms, that at least those rooms were occupied with someone awake.

A board creaked overhead. That would be in the smallest room upstairs. That one had a soft glowing light, as if a lamp rather than an overhead fixture illuminated the space. The footsteps were very light. The girls then. Not their bedroom, but the little room they used as a library.

He studied the shadows spreading out from the pale light source over the stove. Most were too short for what he needed, but two tubes went off in different directions. Stefano chose the one that reached toward the darkened hallway. It ended just by the stairs in the family room. Another portal took him up the stairs and beneath the door of the library, where Edgar’s daughters were.

He expected them to be quietly reading. They weren’t. One lay on a short couch, her face distorted with swelling. The other girl leaned over her, pushing back her hair with gentle fingers and applying ice. Neither made a sound. Silent tears tracked down both faces, but not a single sob escaped. He stood just inside the portal, waiting to get the ice back in his veins. Deliberately he flexed his fingers, keeping from rolling them into a tight fist. He’d seen countless such things, most much worse. He wouldn’t be standing in the house if there weren’t a good reason. He could only put down his unexpected reaction to the fact that his woman’s shadow had touched his and made him more susceptible to emotion. He couldn’t have that–not while he worked.

He found the place in him that was dead–a place inside that could look at two young girls and feel nothing at all. He needed that, needed balance. He didn’t try to comfort them, or soothe away those hurts. He wasn’t there to do that. He was there to make certain it didn’t ever happen again. Warm feelings weren’t wanted or needed. Only ice. Only dead space that couldn’t ever be filled because that was what allowed him to retreat to the other side of the door and replace the slide to the room where he was certain Edgar Sullivan sat behind his desk, feeling powerful now that he’d beat up his thirteen-year-old daughter.

The slide took him under the office door. It was a plush room. The furniture was good leather. Sullivan sat drinking whiskey out of a cut-crystal glass. It wasn’t good whiskey, Stefano noted, but then Sullivan probably didn’t care about the actual taste. His hand, wrapped around the glass, dripped blood from scraped knuckles. He looked over papers and muttered to himself, clearly not happy with whatever report he was reading.

The shadow tubes radiated through the room in a starburst pattern. The light overhead, as well as the lamp on the desk, threw shadows all over the floors, and more climbed up the walls. Two went directly behind Sullivan. Stefano chose the larger of the two and rode it through the room, past the desk, between the chair and the wall until he stood behind the man. He stepped out of the portal and caught Edgar’s head in his hands.

“Justice is served,” he whispered softly and wrenched hard. He heard the crack, but still he waited, making certain.

He dropped the body back into the chair and slid back into the portal. In a matter of minutes he was riding the shadows back outside the house. Only then did he emerge from the slide in order to make a call.

“It’s done.” He ended the call and was once again inside the portal, riding toward the airport.

His brothers would be apprised of the status of the job. Stefano would sleep on the plane and they would continue with their outrageous behavior, following through until they could safely get back to the plane and all three could return home.

Franco Mancini waited for him. The door to the plane was open, Franco inside, lying on one of the beds. He sat up the moment Stefano entered, his eyes moving over his cousin to ensure he was unharmed.

“Quiet tonight,” he informed Stefano. “I haven’t heard from your brothers.”

“Don’t expect to. Vittorio might show up around four or five, but Ricco is with the Lacey twins again. He’ll be wallowing in his rope art and sex.” Stefano didn’t bother to keep the worry out of his voice. Ricco walked the edge of control lately and nothing his brother had said to him seemed to rein him in.

Franco was silent a moment as Stefano removed his shoes and sank down into a plush seat. Franco poured him a drink and handed it to him. “Ricco is careful. Always. I know he seems reckless, Stefano, but he’s never failed to do his job. He’s quick and clean and never has a high afterward.”

Stefano sighed, pressing the glass of Scotch to his forehead. It was true. Ricco, when sent on a job, performed like the well-developed weapon he was. He didn’t hesitate, and he certainly didn’t fuck around. He got the job done. It wasn’t about Ricco’s work. It was about the way he played. That bordered on out of control.

Stefano couldn’t help but worry. He knew what it was like to live in a world of unrelenting violence with no way out. They’d been born shadow riders. They’d been trained fo

r one thing from the time they were toddlers. There was nothing else for them, and there wouldn’t be until they were too old to ride the shadows and perform their duties. They would be regulated to other jobs within the family. There was no way out for any of them.

“Stefano,” Franco said, his tone clearly reluctant.

Stefano looked up quickly, his gaze moving over his cousin’s face, recognizing that something was wrong and he wasn’t going to like it. “Tell me.”

“Emilio reported in.” Franco deliberately poured himself a cup of coffee.

Stefano’s heart nearly stopped. For a moment he could barely breathe. “You’re stalling for time,” Stefano accused. “Fucking just tell me.” He could hear his heart pound. His mouth had gone dry. “Did something happen to Francesca?”

Franco winced. Stefano’s tone cut like a whip. He nodded. “Emilio and Enzo took care of it, but she left our territory to go shopping with Joanna. They ran into a couple of punk-ass robbers and one held a knife to her throat. Emilio said he drew blood.”

There was silence. The air vibrated with fury. Heated. Intense. “Are you fucking kidding me?” Stefano spat. “I had two teams on her. Two. Giovanni was supposed to be keeping an eye on her as well, and someone cuts her with a knife? What the hell? I thought I spelled out for them just who she is. What she is. Who she belongs to.”

“They know, Stefano,” Franco said, his voice low. “They protected her. She isn’t really hurt.”

“You just told me some fucking robber held my woman up at knifepoint and drew her blood.” Stefano could taste his own fury. He had never been so enraged in his life. “Emilio had better have that fucker locked up and waiting for me.”

“He does,” Franco assured.

“Did Emilio take Francesca to a hospital?”

“It was a shallow cut.”

“He doesn’t know where that knife has been or even if the blade is clean, which it probably isn’t. She could get an infection. How the hell did it happen on his watch?”

“Stefano, you told Emilio to hang back, not to get caught,” Franco reminded. “The moment they realized she was in trouble, they shut that shit down.”

“But not before she got cut. Where? Where did he cut her?”

Franco took a sip of the hot coffee, wishing he were anywhere but inside the aircraft. Danger shimmered in the air. It was stifling hot. Stefano could explode into violence in a heartbeat and when he did, it was always deadly.

“Her throat. But it was shallow, Stefano, barely there.”

Stefano erupted into cursing. Franco poured more Scotch into his cousin’s glass. Every member of the Ferraro family had their job to do. Always they lived for the good of the family. The shadow riders were absolutely necessary to the family’s livelihood. They were rare, and when a couple could produce them, they were encouraged to have several children. Stefano never treated any family member as less than he was, but he was always in charge. Always.

The shadow riders kept the family’s enemies from attacking them. No one outside the family knew just how Stefano and his brothers carried out their lethal work and because there were other branches of the family in other cities that also had a reputation for cleaning up messes, no one ever dared openly come after them.

In the underworld, where crime was a daily occurrence and enemies thrived on violence, no one ever dared to touch any member of the Ferraro family. Not gangs, not crime lords, not their bitterest enemy, the one they had a long-standing feud with dating back to the early 1900s in Sicily.

The Saldis had been the deadliest family in Sicily, and they soon realized that people went to the Ferraro family for aid against them. They had demanded the Ferraros join forces with them, and when their invitation was refused, they sent their soldiers to wipe out every man, woman and child in the family. Only a few escaped and went underground. Those who had managed to escape had been mainly shadow riders, and they vowed such a thing would never happen to any family member again.

Stefano was a throwback to those first men and women fighting so hard to keep their family alive. Maybe all the shadow riders were like him, with a will of iron and the guts to fight against impossible odds. That made them both dangerous and extraordinary.

“Stefano, she’s all right,” Franco reiterated. “We’ll get you back as soon as possible and you’ll be able to see for yourself.”

Stefano couldn’t break the rules and call Emilio directly. He was supposed to be in Chicago, not Los Angeles. Even for his own peace of mind over Francesca, he wouldn’t take a chance. The rules had kept them all alive and away from law enforcement. Those guidelines were in place for a reason.

Most people believed they were mafia, members of organized crime. Many, many times, they had been investigated, but of course nothing could ever be found. No matter how many times the businesses were looked at, the Ferraro books were in order. They had never had an indictment against them.

Three times, undercover cops had managed to infiltrate deep enough to gain an audience with the greeters. All three times, the greeters had known they were being lied to and played their part beautifully, acting as if they had no idea what was being asked of them, suddenly realizing and immediately acting shocked, horrified and outraged. Each time the undercover cop had been sent on his way.

“There’s no point in trying to call Ricco and Vittorio back early,” Stefano said, a resigned sigh slipping out. “Francesca had better be all right, Franco, or Emilio and Enzo will be answering to me.”

Franco sent him a faint grin. “Emilio and Enzo already know they’re going to be answering to you. They aren’t looking forward to it, but they expect it.”

“I’m not that bad,” Stefano lied. His eyes met his cousin’s and he found himself smiling ruefully. “Okay, maybe I am.”

He was silent a moment. “Did Emilio say what she was shopping for?” He was inexplicably pleased that she was using his money. He hadn’t thought she would. He’d worried she would hand it all to Dina and the homeless woman would kill herself with alcohol poisoning.

“I believe it was shoes,” Franco said.

Stefano nodded. Francesca needed a good pair of shoes–several of them, but he couldn’t exactly buy her a new wardrobe right away. He’d had a hard enough time forcing his coat and the money on her. He had to be patient. In the same way he prepared for a job, he had to formulate a plan of attack. He was in for the greatest fight of his life, and he had to win. There was no other option.

“I’m thankful to Dina. She had a coat last week, and you know how she is, Franco: she loses one every month. Grazie Dio. I love that Francesca gave Dina her coat.” He took another sip of Scotch. He especially loved knowing that Francesca was wrapped in his coat.