Double Lucky Read online

  “It was a bad joke. Sorry.”

  “Billy might be only twenty-eight, but he’s an old soul,” Venus felt obliged to explain. “The age difference doesn’t bother either of us. The only people who seem to care are the goddamn tabloids—and oh yeah, the nighttime talk-show hosts who make a living ragging on us ’cause their dumb writers can’t come up with anything more original.”

  “Okay, I get it.”

  “I love Billy, and I know he loves me.”

  “As long as you’re sure. I wouldn’t want to see you get hurt.”

  “Why?” Venus said suspiciously. “What’ve you heard?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “You’d tell me if you heard anything.”

  “Stop obsessing.”

  “I can’t help it. Billy gives me chills. I feel as if I’m sixteen!”

  Lucky’s cell rang. She reached for it and exchanged a few sentences with Lennie, finishing off with, “I miss you—love you. See you later.”

  “Exactly how long is it since you two have seen each other?” Venus asked, raising an eyebrow. “Fifteen minutes?”

  “Not my fault if he’s crazy in love,” Lucky said, hardly able to wipe the smile off her face because it was true, they were still crazy in love.

  “Goddammit!” Venus exclaimed. “You and Lennie make me sick you’re so damn happy.”

  “I gotta tell you, when it works, it really works,” Lucky said. “And believe me, I am not complaining.”

  “Nor should you,” Venus sighed. “Everyone knows that Lennie’s the greatest.”

  Lucky nodded and smiled. “And nobody knows it better than me.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Francesca Bonnatti was a wise and canny woman. She’d observed much in her life, both good and bad. Now, at eighty-four, she was not at all ready to give up her vendetta against the Santangelo family. Sicilian by birth, Francesca had come to America with her parents, a hardworking immigrant couple, when she was eleven. Sent straight to school, Francesca soon found she was the odd one out—the Italian girl with the fancy name who could barely speak English. She applied herself, diligently learning the language, and by the time she was thirteen, she’d succeeded in absorbing herself into the American way of life.

  At fifteen she left school and started training as a bookkeeper.

  “A bookkeeper is a good job for a girl to have,” her father assured her. “With that skill you will always find work.”

  Fifteen, smart, and quite a beauty—it wasn’t long before boys came flocking around.

  When she was sixteen she met Enzio Bonnatti, a man eleven years older than her. At the time she was working for a grizzled old accountant who looked after some of Enzio’s accounts.

  Enzio Bonnatti was tall and dangerous-looking. He was also of Italian origin, which she knew would please her father. The eleven-year age difference would not.

  Enzio started visiting the cramped office where she worked on a regular basis. He always had a pretty girl hanging on to his arm. He got a big kick out of teasing Francesca, showing off as he swaggered around the office.

  One day he brought his friend Gino Santangelo with him. Gino was shorter than Enzio, but he was full of charisma, with his thick, black curly hair and intense dark eyes.

  Francesca began flirting with Gino to make Enzio jealous. The more she flirted, the more Enzio appeared with different girls. It was a game they both played. Teenage girl and older man. When was he going to ask her out?

  Eventually he did, and she started seeing him secretly, not daring to tell her parents.

  Enzio was very demanding; a kiss on the cheek did not do it for him. Every time he tried to go further, Francesca demurred, telling him she was a virgin and had no intention of changing that status until she was a married woman.

  On her seventeenth birthday she told her parents she’d met a boy who wanted to take her out. She wondered what they would do if they discovered that she was really seeing the notorious Enzio Bonnatti, a man who had quite a reputation in the neighborhood. It would not sit well with her hardworking parents, so to appease them she bribed one of the boys she worked with to pretend to be her date. The boy picked her up at her house, then delivered her to Enzio’s apartment. When she arrived, Enzio said, “You gotta look older ’cause we’re goin’ to a nightclub. I got you a dress, go put it on.”

  “What kind of dress?” she asked.

  “You could call it a fancy dress,” he joked. “It fell off the back of a truck.”

  Enzio wasn’t shy about what he did, he never tried to hide it from her, and even though she knew his activities were not exactly legal, she couldn’t help enjoying the sense of excitement he brought into her mundane life.

  The dress was red and tight. It clung to her teenage curves, emphasizing her breasts and butt, making her appear older than her years. It obviously had a positive effect on Enzio, for later that night he proposed.

  She told him she’d think about it. Although she liked Enzio, she’d grown to like his friend, Gino, even more. But Gino never gave her the time of day, which infuriated her. She couldn’t understand it. Most men paid her plenty of attention.

  One day she asked Gino why he chose to ignore her.

  “You’re my best friend’s girlfriend,” he answered. “That’s why.”

  “I’m not his girlfriend,” she objected. “Enzio’s always running around with other women.”

  “You’re the one he’s gonna marry,” Gino replied. “You can be sure of that.”

  “My father won’t allow me to marry him.”

  “Wanna bet?” Gino said. “You’ll see.”

  It frustrated her that Gino never responded to her beauty. She tried on many occasions to get him to change his mind but he was steadfast. His friendship with Enzio came first. Loyalty meant everything to Gino Santangelo.

  Without her knowledge, Enzio went to her father and obtained his permission for them to get married. She suspected he either bribed or threatened her father to agree.

  They were married two days before her eighteenth birthday. Gino was Enzio’s best man.

  Now, all these years later, she still thought about Gino and what might have been.

  Gino Santangelo was the one she should’ve married. He was the one who got away.

  Now all she could think about was that Gino Santangelo was alive and Enzio was dead—murdered by Gino’s bitch daughter.

  Retribution was a necessity for the Bonnatti family name, and Anthony had to resolve the situation. The Bonnatti honor was at stake.

  For quite a while now Francesca had been muttering about the six-billion-dollar hotel complex in Vegas Lucky Santangelo was building. “You cannot let this happen,” she’d informed her grandson over and over. “Gino and Lucky Santangelo tried to take everything from us. Now we take our revenge.”

  Anthony had many connections in Vegas. If he kept the Keys from opening, it would shut his grandmother up once and for all. After all, if it wasn’t for Francesca, he would’ve had nothing. And since she never stopped insisting that it was time the Santangelo family paid for their sins against the Bonnatti family, it would satisfy her. Anthony had a plan. A deadly plan. Costly and explosive. If it worked out, then Grandma would be one very happy woman indeed.

  It was the least he could do.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Max Santangelo Golden had a secret. A big one. She’d met this boy—well, man really—on the Internet, and every night for the past six weeks they’d exchanged all kinds of information online. His name was Grant and he was twenty-two. From his e-mails he sounded smart and interesting. He lived in San Diego, drove a Jeep, and didn’t have a girlfriend. Best of all, he’d posted his picture and he was a hottie—kind of like a younger Brad Pitt. The point was he did not fall into the category of sex-obsessed, lame teenage boy, and that was a major plus, because she was so over stupid boys. She wanted a real man, and Grant sounded like he might be the
one.

  So Max had lied, told him she was eighteen, that she worked for a fashion designer and had recently broken up with her boyfriend—which sounded way cooler than saying she was sixteen and still in high school. Actually, she had just broken up with her boyfriend, so that wasn’t exactly a lie. She’d broken up with Donny because she’d caught him making out with some bleached-blond skank at Houston’s in Century City of all places. He’d said he had to go somewhere with his parents and she’d said she was staying home. But later she’d changed her mind, called up her posse, Harry and Cookie, and the three of them had gone to Houston’s for the mind-blowing ribs. And there he was, Donny Leventon—seventeen and a hunk—slobbering all over said skank, who could’ve been his mother she was so old. At least thirty. It was so utterly gross!

  Cookie had spotted him first. “Whoa! Major disaster about to happen!” she’d gasped, nudging Max. “We gotta split like now!”

  Whereupon Max had taken in the scene and, being her mother’s daughter, acted accordingly. Without a moment’s hesitation she’d marched over to Donny’s table, picked up a glass filled with Coca-Cola and ice, and tossed the contents into his lying scumbag face. Before he could react, she was out of there, Cookie and Harry right behind her.

  After what she termed “the Houston Incident,” she’d refused to ever speak to him again. The real truth was that Donny had broken her heart—just a tiny bit. He was her first real love, and he’d let her down.

  Rejection was not something Max had ever had to deal with before, and it was hard, but eventually, when Donny came begging for her to take him back, she’d given him all the rejection she could muster. Let him see how he liked it.

  Anyway, the point was Internet Dude had asked her if she wanted to get together, and impulsively she’d said yes.

  Two days later he’d announced that he’d hired a cabin up in Big Bear for the following weekend, and she’d promised to meet him there.

  This was her move to make Donny sorry he’d ever cheated on her. Not that they’d been having sex, but they had been pretty intimate without going all the way. Now she would go all the way with Internet Dude, and then she would make sure Donny found out. That was the ass-wipe’s big punishment.

  Donny should’ve waited, she thought sadly. I would’ve given it up—eventually.

  Her plans were all in place, but unfortunately her crappy mom was putting up roadblocks, which pissed her off, because why shouldn’t she do exactly as she pleased? Her mom always had—everyone knew about Lucky Santangelo and her notorious past—so why was she expected to be such a little lamb?

  She had no intention of not going to Big Bear and missing out on an exciting experience, but how to pull it off without getting grounded for weeks on end, that was the problem.

  She wasn’t exactly losing sleep over it, because if there was one thing she excelled at, it was solving problems. And with the help of her two best friends—Cookie, a pretty black girl, and Harry, an in-the-closet gay teenager—she’d somehow work it out.

  Cookie and Harry were the best, always up to support an adventure, and meeting some hot guy in Big Bear was a major adventure. Not that they were going to get to meet him, but they’d back her up all the way. That’s what true friends were for.

  Later that afternoon, Cookie and Harry came over to lie out by the pool and mull over the situation.

  “I wanna meet your Internet perv,” Cookie insisted, swigging from a can of Red Bull. She was a curvaceous girl in a young Janet Jackson kind of way. Chocolate-brown dreadlocks framed her heart-shaped face, and her lips were full and pink. Her father was Gerald M., the forty-nine-year-old smooth-soul-singing icon. Cookie had chosen to live with him in Beverly Hills because her mom was a prescription-drug whore who’d moved over the hill to the Valley with a twenty-five-year-old sometime musician, and Cookie couldn’t stand either of them. Her mom and boyfriend cohabited in stoned bliss, while Cookie enjoyed the good life with her famous father.

  “Yeah, an’ I wouldn’t mind giving him a blow job,” Harry leered, huddling under a huge sun umbrella, hiding from the sun. Harry was skinny and alarmingly pale, with dyed black hair worn spiked, as if he’d recently stuck his finger in a power socket. His mogul-type dad worked late hours at the TV network he ran, while his mom, a born-again, spent most evenings at her church or meeting with her pastor, a man Harry was convinced she was sleeping with.

  “Bet you both wish you were coming with me,” Max said, tossing back her long mane of dark curls. “But hey, I’m the one that’s gonna be screwing him, that privilege is all mine, so try not to turn into jealous wrecks.”

  “If your mom lets you go,” Cookie pointed out, adjusting the top of her bikini.

  “I’m workin’ on it,” Max said confidently, knowing that she was taking off to Big Bear whether Lucky agreed or not.

  “I so hope this dude’s like not a perv,” Cookie offered, wriggling around on her sun lounger, her brief pink bikini showing off every curve.

  “And I hope he is,” Harry said excitably, his skinny body fully covered in a faded black T-shirt and baggy black pants worn half-mast. “’Cause then you can give us all the sicko details when you get back.”

  “If she gets back,” Cookie interrupted, rolling her eyes for emphasis. “’Cause he could cut her up into itty-bitty pieces an’ bury her under the mountain.”

  “Thanks for the thought,” Max said, biting down on her lower lip. “But hey, I know how to kick ass, so any cutting goin’ on will be coming from me. Get it?”

  “Bad shit happens,” Cookie said, nodding wisely. “I read where this woman met this dude on the Internet and he like strangled her, ’cause that’s what she told him she was into. How psycho is that?”

  “Grant’s cool,” Max said airily. “I can tell.”

  “How?” Cookie demanded.

  “I got good instincts.”

  “You’d better answer your cell at all times ’cause we’ll be on red alert,” Harry said sternly.

  “Should I pick up my cell even when we’re doin’ it?” Max teased.

  “What?” Harry said, his face reddening.

  “Don’t go getting all prudish on me,” Max said, giggling as she reached for a tube of suntan cream. “I gotta do it sometime, and Grant’s the perfect victim.”

  “He is?” Cookie asked. “How’s that?”

  “Well,” Max said, “he’s like an out-of-towner who can’t go around blabbing about me. Oh yeah, an’ he’s older, so he’ll be like an expert at it.”

  “You go for it, girl,” Cookie said, making a victory sign. “Only try not to get slashed along the way.”

  “Oh, so now he’s a slasher,” Max drawled, reaching for a bobby pin and piling her hair on top of her head. “Anyone ever mention that your imagination sucks?”

  “Could be he’s straight out of a Wes Craven horrorfest,” Harry said, making a spooky face. “Girl alone with strange dude equals she’ll like definitely get her throat slit.”

  “It’s so encouraging to have friends like you two losers,” Max said, jumping up and making a running dive into the pool.

  She didn’t care what anyone said—she was going to Big Bear. No doubt about it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  For some time Irma Bonar had been thinking about taking a lover. At thirty-two, she’d finally decided to do something about her empty life stuck outside Mexico City in an enormous villa surrounded by servants and bodyguards. This was the place her husband, Anthony, had decided she should live, while he traveled anywhere he wanted doing God knew what.

  Anthony Bonar was a difficult man. Difficult, arrogant, and most of all controlling.

  The fact that he no longer wished to have sex with her did not please Irma at all. Over the years she’d gotten used to her husband’s ferocious style of lovemaking, and now she could not understand why their once-active sex life had ground to a sudden halt.

  Whenever she mentioned it to him, Anthony always managed to come up with a variety of reasons. R
eason number one: he had a lesion on his penis and he wasn’t sure what it was.

  Irma had carefully inspected his limp manhood and found nothing.

  “It’s there,” Anthony had insisted, “an’ if you don’t wanna catch nothin’, you’d better listen t’me for once.”

  This frightened her off for a while, until one night he’d shoved his supposedly damaged cock into her mouth for a late-night blow job because he’d had a fight with one of his mistresses and the puttana had sent him home horny.

  After that incident the lesion excuse didn’t work anymore, so he’d announced that his doctor had warned him that his testosterone level was dangerously low, and that he had to lay off sex for a while.

  Gradually Irma had grown to understand that her dear husband did not wish to have sex with her, and galling as she found it, she was forced to settle for the occasional jump in the dark when he felt like it, usually late at night or early in the morning when she was half asleep. Anthony always made sure to pull out before coming. He had no desire to make more babies—two was definitely enough.

  Irma did exactly as Anthony expected of her. She concentrated on their children, making sure Carolina and Eduardo received the best of everything. She also absorbed herself in decorating their various homes, although once each place was finished, Anthony sent her back to Mexico, where he insisted she live. Anthony professed to love their home. If he loves it so much, Irma often thought, why doesn’t he live here permanently? He came and went whenever it suited him, while she was stuck there with no friends and no one to talk to.

  Anthony did not encourage her to make friends, although he certainly entertained an adoring entourage when he deigned to spend time at home. There were several couples he invited over when he was there. One of the women was American, but Anthony had warned Irma not to have any contact with the woman when he wasn’t around.

  “Why not?” she’d wanted to know.

  “’Cause I don’t want nobody findin’ out nothin’ ’bout my business,” he’d said. “You’d better keep to yourself, Irma. That’s an order.”