Tender Entrapment (Dark Short Reads #5)

Chapter 1

There is a mole in your family.

Luigi Frazetta stared at the warning on his notepad for a long time. When he raised his head to look at the cop who had written it, his brow was furrowed, and his eyes nearly narrowed to slits.

Cassius Brown had never lied to him. He had never given him wrong information, either. If he said there was a mole in the family, then he had good reason to think so.

Luigi took the pen from him and scribbled a question on the notepad: How do you know?

After writing, he stared at the page momentarily, as if uncertain whether to add another question. At length, he passed the pad and the pen to Cassius.

Cassius started to write immediately once he got it: Weinberg told us. He expects to have the tip off he needs to order a raid sometime this week.

Weinberg was the chief of detectives at the precinct. Ever since he got promoted to that position, he’d had a hard-on for the Frazetta family.

Luigi grabbed the pad and wrote his next question: Who is it?

This time when Cassius received the jotter back, he took a moment’s pause before writing his answer: Don’t know yet.

Luigi’s lips hardened into a tight line. His next sentence on the pad was not a question. It was a command: find out.

Cassius nodded and pushed open the car door. Luigi watched him go. There was another car with tinted windows and two of Luigi’s men in it waiting close by to ferry Cassius across town, back to the bar where they had picked him up.

The moment Cassius climbed into the other car, Luigi turned to his driver, Dante, who was sitting up front. “Home, Dante,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” Dante started the car and steered it out of the warehouse. Today, the traffic on the streets of the Industrial Business Zone was light. It was a Sunday, so Dante could afford to step lightly on the gas and urge the car to go faster.

High-rise office buildings and the steel pipes and tanks of factories reaching for the skies whipped past on both sides of the car, but Luigi couldn’t see them. He was too preoccupied with the information he’d just received.

Men turn all the time, his late father, Antonio Frazetta, had always told him. Now, it seemed that somebody within his ranks had turned, and he had no clue who it was.

At the moment, he didn’t know how to root out the Judas. Just the mere thought of it gave him a headache. He closed his eyes and reclined in his seat as Dante raced the car through the streets of New York toward his home in the suburbs.

By the time he swung the car up the driveway 15 minutes later, Luigi had a vague idea of what to do about the turncoat.

A small smile played on his lips. Dante nosed the car up the long stretch of asphalt that cut across lush green grounds and snaked around a sparkling white fountain gushing water to make a stop before the front door.

Luigi’s home was a palatial mansion, three stories high, with tall, narrow windows, deep overhanging eaves, and intricately wrought brackets and cornices of Italian architecture.

It was Luigi’s pride, the most important reward for all his hard work over the years. Now, there was a possibility he could lose it simply because someone in his employ had decided to get chummy with the cops.

The thought made him angry as he marched into the house. In the foyer, he turned right toward the stairwell that led into his private quarters.

His quarters included two massive en suite bedrooms, a study, and a den that all took up two floors on the right wing of his house.

It afforded him the privacy he needed for the important meetings with his consigliere and caporegimes, away from the prying eyes and ears of houseguests or domestic servants.

He balled up his hands into fists as he walked up the stairs, imagining how he’d pummel the betrayer when he finally caught him. At the landing on the second floor, he stopped short and frowned.

Something felt different here. He listened hard, wondering what it was.

A wide corridor stretched the length of the floor from the stairwell, past his study on the left and the den on the right, and out to a balcony. There was a woman there now, tall, curvy, and completely out of place.

Since the death of Mary, his wife, the only woman who ever came to this side of the house uninvited was Lucia, his housekeeper. She was a corpulent and fussy woman well past her middle age and nothing like the revelation that stood there now.

For a moment, Luigi was rooted to the spot, staring, wondering, first, how the hell such a perfect figure could exist and then who the hell the woman was.

She was dressed in an emerald gown that hugged her body closely, emphasizing the copious swell of her ass and the tiny waist above it. Her hair hung down to her shoulders, a lustrous, golden blonde that invited you to run your fingers through it, just to be certain it was real.

Luigi didn’t take the invitation. However, he approached the woman, padding softly down the corridor until he came to its end. It was only then that he spoke.

“Who the hell are you?”

The woman jerked and spun around. Her eyes went wide when she saw him. They were a deep blue and big enough to drown any man in their dreamy depths. But right now, they didn’t seem to hold any offer of immersion in them. All Luigi could discern in them was fear.

He cocked his head and put a hand in his hip pocket.

Still, the woman didn’t talk. Her lips parted for a moment and then came back together.

They were red and full and distracted Luigi too easily.

It was difficult not to stare at them. And when he dragged his gaze away, they went down to the generously proportioned bosom beneath before they traveled up to her face again.

Now, the fear was gone. In its place was defiance. The blue eyes were blazing.

“I asked you a question,” Luigi said, softly.

“Camille,” the woman replied. “I’m Camille. And who are you?”

She couldn’t have been 30, perhaps only in her mid-twenties. It made Luigi wonder where she found the nerve to ask him questions. “Camille, who?”

“Williams. I asked you a question.”

Now, Luigi smiled. He liked the stubborn tilt of her chin and the near insolence in her eyes. They reminded him of Mary the first time he met her. She had the regal carriage of a queen and a sheer will that belied her petite stature.

It had been Luigi’s pleasure to conquer her and remold her into the kind of woman he wanted. It’d been his sorrow to let her go after a car crash claimed her life.

“Are you not going to answer?” the woman, Camille, asked.

The firmness in her voice was a commendable attempt at projecting confidence. However, Luigi could easily detect the slight tremor beneath it. It told him he was in complete control. “What are you doing here, Camille?”

There was a pause during which Camille considered his question. He was certain she didn’t want to answer; she wanted to wring a reply from him first to assert dominance. Yet, what sort of sway could a gazelle hope to hold when faced by a tiger?

“Taking a look around,” she replied finally.

“Taking a look around?” Luigi raised an eyebrow. “You just walked in off the street to take a look around my house?”

The question deflated her, and realization spread across her face. “I, uh… came in with Brooke, my sister,” she explained. “We came to see Paulo. He invited us.”

“Brooke…” Paulo’s newest conquest. Luigi nodded slowly in understanding. His son’s love for women and his eagerness to please them once they reciprocated his attention was well known. “And where’s Paulo?” Luigi asked.

“With Brooke,” Camille replied. “They were watching a movie when I left them. I wanted a tour of the house, but I didn’t want to bother them.”

“A tour of the house,” Luigi repeated. Now, he offered her a smile. “You were that bored?”

“Not really.” Camille returned the smile. “You have a beautiful home. I’ve always wanted to see more of it, everything beyond Paulo’s rooms.”

“Would you like me to take you around?” Luigi asked.

Camille bit her lip and shook her head twice. “I’ve seen enough, I think. Thank you.”

Luigi was confused, unable to fathom why she rejected his offer. He could have sworn she was beginning to warm up to him.

“It was nice meeting you, Mr. Frazetta.” The heady scent of her perfume filled his nostrils as she went around him into the hallway.

“Can’t say I’ve properly met you, yet,” he replied.

The statement drew a short laugh from her, but she didn’t stop.

An insane urge to stare as she walked away gripped Luigi. He shook it off with great difficulty and went onto the balcony instead. From up there, his estate was displayed to him in all its glory. Yet it was not enough to distract him from the temptation strutting around in his house.

He listened to her receding footsteps, waiting for her to leave.

And when she finally did, he took a deep breath.

That didn’t bring him any relief, however, for as soon as Camille Williams was off that floor and out of his mind, thoughts of the looming betrayal in his family slipped into his mind again.

The plan that had only come to him on the ride home began to take shape.