Page 17 of Dangerous Rhythm

“Ginger ale.”

His brow rose at her answer. “Seriously?”

“On duty.”

“We’re on a seven-hour flight.”

“Just ginger ale, please,” she repeated.

Curtis studied the woman in front of him. Her straight posture wasn’t from a stick up her ass like his mother; it was from years of discipline. He recognized the alertness even when she was in relax mode. It was honed in her. Even so, her air of control didn’t take away from the delicate features of her face. Curtis had been with many beautiful women who enhanced their features to their best advantage. Lina didn’t need any enhancement. With her makeup-free smooth skin, naturally pink lips with just enough pout, and her button nose, she was definitely pretty. Her direct, almond-shaped brown eyes shone with confidence and competence, and that made her beautiful. But it was her ability to break a man double her size that made her formidable.

With a half-smile, Curtis said, “You are something else, Lina Cheung.”

eight

New York City

Adelicious aroma of tomato, wine, and onion mingled in the air of a light and spacious kitchen. A big pot of meat ragu simmered on the six-burner professional stovetop, while a handsome woman in her mid-sixties, dressed in all black, stood by the large marble island. Long rolling pin in her hands, a sheet of pasta dough was splayed in front of her.

“You want to roll it this way.” She let the sheet wrap around the pin, and she continued to roll with a skill she’d learned at the knee of her mother. “It has to be thin enough, but not so thin it’ll break. It’s light like a ribbon—likepappardelle.”

Satisfied with the thickness, the woman folded the sheet over several times after dusting it with semolina flour. “Then you cut the ribbons…” She grabbed a huge kitchen knife and started cutting strips of pasta. “…like so.”

“Why are you making pasta at a time like this,Mamma?” a younger woman in her late twenties, also in black and standing nearby, asked. “We have catering for the gathering tonight.”

“Why?” the older woman questioned. Her voice stayed level, but it dripped with disappointment and sadness. “Cara, if we don’t keep our traditions alive, who will? My mother taught me to make pasta, and her mother taught her. I started teaching you when you were just a littlebambino, but then life got in the way.”

The older woman’s face darkened. “Or more aptly put, deaths did.”

The younger woman cringed at her mother’s morbid words.

“And now, with your brother dead, if I don’t keep busy, I’ll go crazy,” the mother added, a tear rolling down her cheek.

“Mamma…” The daughter reached for her mother’s arm.

“Check the sauce,Cara.” The mother wiped the tear away.

A short, bulky man in a dark suit appeared at the kitchen door. “DonnaSerafina, Tomas is here.”

Without looking away from cutting her pasta, she replied, “Does he have what I want?”

“It’s only him and Donny,” the man replied.

Serafina’s lips thinned, looking displeased. “Send him in.” But before the large man left, she added, “Button up your jacket. You look like a slob.”

“Yes,Donna.” The man struggled with his snug jacket. The huge gun he carried under his left arm made it impossible for him to button it, but nobody argued withDonnaSerafina.

Tomas entered the kitchen not long after, looking nervous.

“Where’s my package?” Serafina asked as she continued cuttingpappardelleand fluffing the ribbons up.

“Someone got to him first, Donna. We tried to intercept them, but they—”

“You lost him?” Serafina’s voice sharpened.

“We followed him out of the city. We thought we’d get him when he stopped, but he made us.”

“You’re saying somepezzo di merdaoutsmarted you?”

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