ONE

Act normal.

Mia raced through the Casino Italia, around brides-to-be, newlyweds, old men with bulging wallets, and young women in short skirts. She ran past slot machines, craps tables, and one of the highest stakes poker rooms in downtown Las Vegas. She pushed through the hordes of men crowded into the party pit to watch a sexy blackjack dealer dancing around a pole. And still she couldn’t find the exit.

Which was fine if you were operating a casino and you wanted to keep your customers trapped in a never-ending party.

Not so fine if you’d just hacked their security system and stabbed a guard on the way out.

Not fine at all.

She paused by a Big Six wheel to catch her breath. A blond woman in a pink tutu ranted at a casino worker because the waitress hadn’t returned with her drink. Mia wanted to tell her to take her chips to any other table. The house advantage at the Big Six was the highest of all the games in the casino. But she’d already caused enough problems today. It was supposed to be a simple penetration job—get into the control room, insert the USB, and go back to the office to hack the system—not an opportunity to avenge all women for every slimy sexist bastard who pinched a woman’s ass.

And no, Mia didn’t “deserve it” because she was dressed in a tiny black skirt, fishnet stockings, and a corset so tight her breasts threatened to explode over the top. She was just doing her job—although her real job just happened to be hacking into the casino’s computer system and not serving drinks to the guys in the control room.

In a perfect world, she would have laughed off the pinch, walked out of the casino, and typed up a report for the owner who had hired her to test the security of his new casino. Unfortunately, very little about Mia’s world was perfect, and it all suddenly came to a head when the guard in the control room decided to express his gratitude the sexist way.

So now he had a cute little tear in his security pants, courtesy of the knife she always carried in a sheath strapped to her thigh. Self-defense was a necessity for a girl growing up in a Mafia family, and habit had drawn the blade before her brain could pull the brakes. Big deal. It would give him character, a few stories to share over beer with the guys after work. Who knew he’d be so pissed? Or that a man his size could run so fast?

“Gotcha.” A clammy hand clamped down on Mia’s shoulder, yanking her back so hard she stumbled in the three-inch heels she wasn’t accustomed to wearing. Her hand shot down to her thigh, but the guard was ready for her this time. He grabbed her wrist and twisted her arm up behind her back. “I’m taking you to see the boss. He’s got zero tolerance for thieves.

“I wasn’t stealing.”

“You were doing something that wasn’t right.” With his free hand, he flicked on his radio and loudly announced that he had caught the “perp.”

People turned their heads and stared. Mia’s cheeks heated and she focused on the shiny, tiled floor, the looping, nondescript music, and the flashing lights of the slot machines. So much for not attracting attention. She’d never get another cyber-security contract if anyone heard she’d been caught in her own penetration test. The success of her business as a hacker and security consultant depended on keeping a low profile, and being frog-marched by a security guard through a high-end casino in somewhat provocative attire was as high-profile as low-profile could get.

Her captor walked her past two security guards, and through a set of sliding glass doors, into Casino Italia’s high-stakes gaming salon. Men in tuxedos sipped on snifters of bourbon beneath crystal chandeliers, and women in evening dresses lounged on rich, red-leather furniture, or punched buttons on the five-hundred-dollar-minimum slot machines. Mia wished she had that kind of money to throw away, but she’d traded her Mafia princess life for the poverty of independence and the chance to carve her own little niche in the world, however small.

They stopped in front of a stained-glass door guarded by two massive bouncers in sleek, black suits. After a few quiet words were exchanged, one of the bouncers opened the door and gestured them into the ultra-exclusive private gaming suite. Exquisitely decorated in rich purple, gold, and chocolate, the design was contemporary in a classic way, with expensive lamps, walls of books with neutral-hued spines, dark wood furniture, and velvet sofas. The sounds of the casino melted away as the door closed behind them.

“Over there.” He directed her past the unoccupied roulette and blackjack tables to a large poker table where five men in dark suits contemplated their cards. With a rough jerk, he pulled her to a stop behind a man with thick, dark hair, and broad shoulders, tapering to the narrow waist of his impeccably tailored suit.

He moved Mia slightly to the left and she caught a flash of a gold Vacheron Constantin watch, the perfectly turned cuff of a shirt, the sparkle of a diamond cufflink, and just a few inches of thick, tanned forearm that made her heart skip a beat.

Still holding Mia’s arm behind her back, the guard cleared his throat. “I caught this woman in the control room, Mr. T. She was trying to stick something in the main computer.”

With the slightest lift of his finger, Mr. T silenced the guard and Mia’s heart kicked up a notch. She had grown up around powerful men, but that simple gesture carried with it an utter certainty that he would be obeyed.

The guard mumbled an apology and pulled Mia back a step. “He doesn’t like to be disturbed at the tables.”

Mia checked out the man’s cards over his shoulder and quickly calculated the odds. If she’d been the one sitting at the table with a stack of chips worth two hundred thousand dollars and a twenty thousand dollar bet on the table, she would have folded, cashed out and run. Much like she wanted to do now.

Mr. T threw down three cards, and Mia bit back a gasp. He might look conservative in his impeccably tailored suit, but he was gambler. Not many people would take that kind of risk, especially with so many players at the table.

He turned at the sound, and her breath caught. God, was he gorgeous. Movie-star handsome, he was sleek and rugged at the same time. His ice blue eyes were a startling contrast to the dark hair that curled at his temples and the brows that furrowed at her distraction. Power, fierce and unyielding, radiated from him—and not because of his obvious wealth. It was something she sensed beneath the civilized veneer—something dark and dangerous, wild and ruthless; something that stole her breath, and left only a need so strong she couldn’t move.

His lazy gaze slid over her face, to her throat, her breasts barely contained beneath the corset, her waist, her hips and down her legs to her heels. He didn’t make any effort to hide his slow perusal of her body, of looking where he wanted with brazen unapologetic intent. Rather than finding it offensive, she found his scrutiny curiously electrifying, her body turning warm and liquid as she sank into the feeling of being caressed by his gaze.

“Enough.” She was in this mess because she couldn’t stand being objectified. So why was she putting up with it now?

Her words trailed off when his gaze sharpened on her. Christ. What the hell had she just walked into?

“Leave her with me, Louis.”

He turned back to the table, considered his cards. He had a deep, movie-narrator voice, the kind that instantly pulled you into another world—a world of infinite possibilities, a world where devastatingly handsome casino owners let cyber-security specialists go.

Louis immediately released her and backed away with a mumbled, “Yes, sir.”

Mia figured he must have worked here for some time to obey so quickly, or did everyone respond to Mr. T’s commanding presence with instant submission?

Curious, she asked. “How do you know I won’t run away?”

Mr. T looked back over his shoulder, and his lips curved. “I won’t let you.”

I won’t let you. Something niggled at the back of her mind. She’d heard those words before, spoken with the same intonation, the same hint of an accent. And his face … so familiar. As she struggled to place him, he lifted his drink, sipped the rich, amber liquid slowly, his corded throat tightening as he swallowed. Mia’s pulse quickened, her mind filling with thoughts of what he could do to her with that beautiful mouth, how he would taste if she licked the Adam’s apple at the base of his throat.

He lowered the glass and licked his lips, a predator ready to pounce. “Come.” He rested his hand on the leather bumper and she joined him at the table, standing beside his chair.

“Bet.” He flashed his cards so she could see he’d pulled two aces and a ten from the risky draw, giving him a full house.

Taking a chance that she’d been right in her assessment of him, she leaned over and pushed all his chips forward. Her breast brushed against his shoulder, and his body tensed, but it was nothing compared to the current of electricity that surged through her veins at the small touch.

“Two hundred thousand,” the dealer announced.

Mia almost wept. Two hundred thousand dollars could get her a new apartment that didn’t have a giant fungus growing on the ceiling from the leaky pipes upstairs that the slum landlord refused to fix. Two hundred thousand dollars could take her and her little sister, Kat, away from Vegas and set them up with a new, anonymous life where they weren’t constantly being watched by their Mafia crime family. Two hundred thousand dollars could buy her a bigger office and pay for additional employees who could take on the growing amount of work her cyber-security company was generating. Two hundred thousand dollars would set her free.

“She’s a gambler,” he murmured when the man beside him called the bet.

“Maybe, I’m just lucky.”

“Lucky people don’t get caught trying to hack into my computer system.” In one swift movement he stood, yanked the man seated beside him off his chair and smashed his face into the table. “Thieves don’t belong in my casino.” Blood splattered over the green felt and the man staggered back, holding his broken nose. It had taken only seconds. Silence filled the room. Adrenaline surged through Mia’s body, freezing her in place as her mind tried to reconcile such brutal violence in such a sophisticated, elegant place. She had been right that Mr. T’s civilized exterior did not reflect the inner man. He was the most dangerous of predators. Beautiful on the outside. Deadly within.

Mr. T hadn’t even broken a sweat, but Mia could see the veins in his neck pulsing, his anger kept tightly in check. “Gentlemen.” He gave the briefest of nods to the men at the table. “My casino manager, Vito, will be with you shortly to address the inconvenience.” He turned to Mia, his narrowed, cool gaze holding her in place. “Come.”

His voice didn’t broach any argument, nor did the firm hand he placed on her lower back, or the slight pressure he exerted to direct her where he wanted her to go. He was even taller than she had thought, well over six feet, broad and muscular. She inhaled sharply at his touch, breathed in the fresh, spicy scent of his cologne. Given the violence he had just unleashed in the private salon, she had expected something wild and musky, reflecting the primitive, feral side of his nature.

“Where are we going?”

“My office.”

She hesitated; looked back at the man on the plush carpet, his white shirt covered in blood. “Alone?”

“Yes, bella. Alone.”

*   *   *

She was liquid sex.

Dark hair. Dark eyes. Curves all over the place. Creamy skin. Breasts almost bursting out of her corset. That little skirt barely covering her ass. Those high cheekbones and rosy cheeks. Those fucking long legs in those fucking stockings, the heels …

Nico hadn’t paid much attention to the uniform his casino manager had picked for the waitresses, but on her it was so fucking sexy his dick got hard the moment she walked into the salon.

Usually he didn’t get involved with the casino cheats, thieves, or the scammers who thought they could evade the hundreds of cameras and top-of-the-line security system he had installed when he renovated the old Lucky Duck casino on Freemont Street, but then soldiers from rival crime families were usually not stupid enough to walk into his casino much less try to cheat at a high-stakes table where Nico was seated, and sexy women didn’t try to hack into his computer system.

He wanted to know everything about her. What she was doing in the casino control room? Why she didn’t she flinch when he lost his temper at the poker table? And why she was so goddam familiar?

Nico steeled himself to do what had to be done as he walked the beautiful woman through his casino, a cacophony of alluring stimulation—bells ringing, siren-like lights flashing, slot wheels whirring, digital sounds beeping, the occasional simulated sound of change clanging—all meant to captivate and enthrall, giving the impression that everyone was a winner.

Although Casino Italia wasn’t on the Strip, it had the same upscale décor to attract the high rollers who wanted a downtown experience without giving up the luxuries they would get at the high-end hotels. Everything was slick, burnished, and gleaming, from the red walls that were meant to evoke a safe, comfortable feeling, to the patterned carpets designed to mesmerize, welcome, and please the eye, and from the low mellow lighting to the soft, easing soundtracks to help gamblers get into a trance to encourage them to spend money. Nico had never run a casino before buying the Lucky Duck, and the psychology behind the redesign had intrigued him.

The woman didn’t speak as he guided her through the maze of slot machines, poker and blackjack tables, past the crowds, around the craps tables and the roulette wheels. He slid his key card into a wood-paneled elevator and moments later they were on the tenth floor.

Nico ushered the woman into his office. Cold, austere, functional, and decorated in the casino colors of red, black, and gray, it had a small meeting table and chairs on one side, and a steel bookcase on the other. A place to do business, nothing more.

After closing the door behind her, he settled in the leather chair behind his chrome-and-glass desk.

“Sit.” He gestured to the chair in front of her.

“I prefer to stand.”

Nico expressed his displeasure with a scowl. As the Toscani family’s highest-ranking capo—captain with a powerful and extensive crew working beneath him—he was unused to be being disobeyed. He answered only to the Toscani family administration: the boss, underboss, and consigliere, and even then he did only enough to maintain the illusion he was towing the party line. His uncle, Santo, now Don Toscani, had become boss after Nico’s father’s death. By rights, Nico, as the first son of the first son, was heir to head the family, but when he had come of age and made his claim, Santo had refused to step down.

“Sit,” he said curtly. “Or I’ll make you sit.”

“By breaking my nose?”

He fought back a bark of amusement. She was all sass, despite her predicament, and when she didn’t move, he was forced to drink in the full beauty of her lush body all over again. She was no ordinary thief if she knew how to find to the control room, what to do when she got there, and how to keep the interest of a man who would ordinarily just have handed her over to the police.

Legitimate businesses like Casino Italia had to be handled in a legitimate way, unlike the businesses in Nico’s underground portfolio that spanned everything from loansharking to real-estate fraud, and from counterfeiting to tax evasion. He greased palms and oiled the wheels of business in Las Vegas and across California to Los Angeles. There was nowhere his influence couldn’t reach—even in the territories carved out by the two rival Mafia families who were vying with the Toscanis for control of the city.

“Your nose is too lovely to break.” He had to stop looking at her. He was engaged to marry a young Sicilian woman in the next few weeks—an agreement made between her father and Nico’s father when Nico was six years old to cement a formidable alliance. He had never met Rosa Scozzari, but she was from a Cosa Nostra family many generations back. The alliance would legitimize Nico’s status as heir to head the family, and give him the power to overthrow his uncle despite the fact that Nico was a bastard—the son of his father’s mistress. A beautiful Italian woman was as much a symbol of status as a large house and a fancy car. Rosa would bear his sons, run his house, and organize social events. Sex and emotional attachment he would get from the mistresses every boss was expected to take as a further show of power.

“Is that meant to be a compliment?” She arched a perfect eyebrow and dropped one hand to the sweet swell of her hip. Bold and beautiful. Cristo. This woman was made to test a man’s restraint to the limit.

“Do you want compliments?” He was more than willing to give them, starting with her magnificent breasts, her long, toned legs, the waist neatly cinched in the tight corset, and the short skirt that barely covered her ass. He made a mental note to give Vito a raise.

“I want to give you this, and get out of here.” She pulled a letter from the bra cups of her corset and offered it to him and he strangled back a groan. His cock, already semi-erect from verbally sparring with the beautiful little minx, became fully hard as he imagined his mouth going where that letter had been.

“What is it?”

“A letter from my company confirming my identity and explaining what I’m doing here.” She placed it on the desk in front of him when he made no move to take it.

Curiosity got the better of him, and he skimmed the short paragraphs. Mia Cordano, owner of HGH Enterprises Inc., had come to Casino Italia at the request of his casino manager, Vito Bottaro, for a pre-arranged security test. Vito’s signature was scrawled at the bottom of the letter, but it was the woman’s name that kept his attention.

Mia Cordano.

Nico spun his silver pen around his thumb as he studied her fidgeting in front of his desk, seeing her dark beauty in another light. An enemy light. “Cordano.” The word was bitter on his tongue. For ten years his family had been involved in a faida—blood feud—with the Cordanos that had started the night Don Cordano killed Nico’s father in cold blood along with a young Toscani associate he had accused of defiling his daughter.

“Yes.” She tilted her head to the side and her brow creased. “Do we know each other? You look familiar.”

“Who’s your father?” he asked, ignoring her question.

Her frown deepened. “Battista Cordano.”

Don Cordano’s daughter. The woman who had started a war. He remembered her now, although without the name he would never have recognized her ten years later and all grown up. She had been there the night his father had been murdered.

Memories gripped him, and he crushed the paper in his hand.

He had been so proud the night his father asked him to join him in a sit-down at Luigi’s Restaurant with Don Cordano, the boss of one of the three leading crime families in Las Vegas. Don Cordano wanted permission to whack Danny Mantelli, an associate in the crew of one of his father’s capos. Made men could only be whacked with the permission of a boss, and Danny had secretly been dating Don Cordano’s teenage daughter—something strictly forbidden in the Mafia world. The women of made men—daughters, mistresses, and wives—were considered untouchable. Women were property and often the objects of passion. More than anything, passion could destroy the careful balance that existed between the Mafia families. As it had done that very night.

“You were at Luigi’s.” Bile rose in his throat, and for a moment he couldn’t speak. Nothing in his life, not even the death of his mother when he was eight years old, had prepared him for the moment his beloved Papà had been murdered, his blood spilling through Nico’s fingers as he desperately tried to save him. He had declared the faida that night. A man of honor could do no less, and a son had to avenge his father.

Her face paled as recognition dawned. “You’re the boy who held me. Nico Toscani.”

He spun the pen faster as he remembered holding Mia in his arms, trying to protect her from her father’s anger. Don Cordano had been enraged that Mia dared interrupt the sit-down to beg for Danny’s life, and he struck her so hard she fell to the ground

Raised in single parent households—first by his mother and then, for a short time, by his nonna after his mother died—Nico had a tremendous respect for women, and the brutality of Don Cordano’s attack on young Mia had shocked and appalled him. Without thinking, he had stepped in to defend her. She wrapped her arms around him, held on tight. And in that one moment, in the midst of the horror, eighteen-year-old Nico came alive. He felt a sense of purpose and worth that he’d never felt as a bastard son—he was a protector and this sixteen-year-old Mafia princess who felt so right in his arms, was his to protect. When her father turned his gun on Danny, Nico covered her ears and pressed her face to his chest to spare her the horror of witnessing her boyfriend’s death. And then she’d been ripped away and life as he knew it had ended with the crack of a gun.

He had no desire to rehash that night, or to hear what she had to say, whether it was regrets or apologies, thanks or accusations. He had lost not only his father, but also the fleeting glimpse of a life that could have been more than just following in his father’s footsteps—a life with purpose and fulfillment. A life with love.

Mia was a brutal reminder of the emptiness he’d felt since that night, the black hole that had opened in his chest and couldn’t be filled no matter how many women he took to his bed or how much success he achieved. He lived now solely to avenge his father and take his place as boss of the family.

Dropping the pen, he tossed the crumpled letter on his desk and vented his frustration. “Cristo santo! I told Vito to hire the best cyber-security firm in the city and he hired you?”

Mia folded her arms across her chest. “What do you mean by that?”

Nico made a dismissive gesture with his hand, trying not to focus on any one part of her beautiful body. “First of all, you’re a Cordano. Second, you’re a woman.”

She gave an indignant sniff. “So what? Women can be hackers. A woman wrote the first ever C Sharp virus. Women speak at DefCon, one of the world’s most prestigious gatherings of hackers. If you’re not familiar with us, it’s because most female hackers are interested in technology for what it does and not so we can break it or watch people suffer. We’re not interested in cyber-vandalism. There’s nothing clever about dismantling a system, and everything good about helping companies secure themselves against cyber attacks, which is what Vito hired me to do.”

“Hacking is for men. This stuff…” He waved vaguely at her outfit. “Security work is for men. It’s a dangerous business. It involves skill, deception, focus, and intelligence.”

Her eyes blazed, and she crossed the floor to lean over his desk. “Intelligence? I was at the top of my class at UCLA. If you had even bothered to read the resume I sent your casino manager, you would have seen I’ve had contracts from multi-national corporations, state and local governments. I was even invited to submit a tender to the FBI. I got those contracts myself. I run a very successful business with the help of two on-site employees and a floating team of five online hackers.”

She paused for breath, and Nico tried to tear his gaze away from her magnificent breasts now only inches away from his face, but she wouldn’t let him.

“This…” She cupped her breasts over the corset and gave them a shake, sending all Nico’s blood down to his groin. “Ridiculous outfit is me doing my job and the only reason I was caught was because your security guard has the same antiquated, sexist, misogynistic attitude as you and decided to pinch my ass. I jabbed my knife into his thigh to defend myself as any woman being sexually harassed is entitled to do.”

For the first time in his twenty-eight years, Nico had nothing to say. Captivated, entranced, and fiercely aroused by the infuriated, beautiful woman leaning over his desk, her face dark with indignant fury, he almost forgot she was the enemy—the daughter of the man he hated most in the world.

“If I hadn’t been distracted,” she continued, straightening up to Nico’s abject disappointment, “I would have been in and out of your control room and hacking into your system as we speak.”

“Exactly.” Unable to contain the fierce arousal coursing through his veins, Nico pushed back his chair, and rounded his desk forcing her to take a few steps back. He perched on the edge of the desk in front of her, arms folded, legs spread wide, back in control of the room, of himself. “You were distracted. A man wouldn’t have been distracted.”

Her lips pressed tight together, she brazenly stepped between his parted legs. Electricity crackled between them, caused the air in the room to swelter. Unused to being challenged in any way, and never by a woman, Nico couldn’t decide if she was coming on to him or about to rip out his throat.

She gave him a smile that was at once sultry and sweet. “So you’re saying”—she dropped her hand until it dangled just below his crotch—“that if I were to grab you right now, you wouldn’t get distracted?”

Adrenaline pulsed through his body in response to her challenge, and he fought the urge to slide back on his desk. Not because she scared him—he was confident he could knock her hand away before she got close—but because he was so fucking turned on, he didn’t know what would happen if she touched him.

Goddam fucking delicious.

He curled his hand around her neck, beneath the silken waterfall of her hair, and pulled her close, so close he could feel her breath on his cheek. “Do it,” he demanded.

She met his challenging gaze, and he could almost taste her need, as thick and fierce as his own. Finally, her hand fell to the side and she wrenched out of his grasp. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Well, you’re not worth it.”

Dio mio. If he didn’t get rid of her, he’d have her over his desk in a heartbeat, stockings and panties torn away, skirt flipped up to bare that beautiful ass, hair wrapped around his hand, her back arched, and his name a scream of pleasure on her lips. “Goodbye, Ms. Cordano.”

He expected apologies, embarrassment, some sign that acknowledged he had won that confrontation. Instead, he got a sniff.

“I’ll send you my bill.”

She turned and walked out of the room, back straight, head high, beautiful ass swaying gently as she walked.

He couldn’t tear his gaze away.

Magnificent.

Irritating and utterly disrespectful.

Totally off-limits.

The enemy.