Page 1 of Hot-Blooded Killer

PROLOGUE

LORENZO BENEVENTI

When my father teamed up with Los Kappas, led by Mauricio Velazquez, aka El Toro, the leader of a Colombian drug cartel, it was Pops’ death sentence. And it led to the death of my brothers Leonardo and Frederico, too. They were with him when El Toro’s bomb launched Pops’ vehicle into the air in a flaming rocket in front of Pops’ Vegas club.

They were taken out by a hit ordered by El Toro when the cops picked up a shipment of cocaine they were moving from Colombia to the U.S. El Toro figured my father had turned traitor and responded the only way he knew how.

My brother Massamiliano, Max to those closest to him, and I were in Italy visiting relatives when Pops was assassinated. It’s the only way we lived.

Max plotted revenge by kidnapping El Toro’s daughter, Valentina Velazquez. But he accidentally picked up the wrong girl. Same name, different person. He didn’t figure out his mistake until he was married to her, though, and by then, it was too late. He was in love.

But that doesn’t change the fact that El Toro is still after our family.

We’ve survived so far, though. Max and his brand-new wife Valentina managed to take out one of the Colombian hitmen sent by El Toro to kill us.

Our own guys, Dominic and Vince, helped me dispose of El Toro’s man’s body out in the desert.

As I make it back home from that errand, I head toward my rooms to wash away the dust, blood, and sweat covering my body.

Sometimes I hate being in the Mafia.

Don’t get me wrong. Most of the time it’s great.

But it killed most of my family.

And all I can think about these days is revenge.

As I stand in the shower, letting the hot water sluice away any evidence of illegal activities, I can’t stop thinking about how lucky Max is to have found Valentina. She may not be the woman he meant to kidnap, but she is definitely the one he needs.

I finish showering and move to the front room of my suite. It was originally designed to be a sitting room of sorts—all the suites in the house have similar designs—but I have turned it into my personal office space.

Switching on my laptop, I drop into the chair behind my computer desk. Then I reach out and begin turning on all my other equipment.

My recent trip to Italy, no matter how necessary to strengthen the family’s connections after our father’s death, had been a mistake.

I missed too much while I was gone.

And it put all of us at risk.

I won’t allow that to happen again.

El Toro’s man wouldn’t have gotten the drop on me if I hadn’t been so damn tired. And I wouldn’t have been exhausted if I hadn’t stayed up most of the night searching for new connections to the Los Kappas cartel.

I haven’t yet told Max what I found because I want to make sure I’m right.

I will not make the mistake of trusting my information too easily.

Not like Max did.

Sure, it’s worked out well for him—but there’s no guarantee anything like that would go so well for the Beneventi family a second time.

So I begin scanning all the connections I think I’ve made, double- and triple-checking them.

Finally, convinced I’m right, I click on a single social media account, and then on a single photo, bringing up on my screen and staring at it for a long, silent moment.

Gia Rossi.

Beautiful. Poised. Elegant.

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