Free Shadow Rider by Christine Feehan Page A

fucking kidding me?” Stefano spat. “I had two teams on her.
Two.
Giovanni was supposed to be keeping an eye on her as well, and someone
cuts
her with a knife? What the hell? I thought I spelled out for them just who she is. What she is. Who she belongs to.”
    â€œThey know, Stefano,” Franco said, his voice low. “They protected her. She isn’t really hurt.”
    â€œYou just told me some fucking robber held my woman up at knifepoint and drew her blood.” Stefano could taste hisown fury. He had never been so enraged in his life. “Emilio had better have that fucker locked up and waiting for me.”
    â€œHe does,” Franco assured.
    â€œDid Emilio take Francesca to a hospital?”
    â€œIt was a shallow cut.”
    â€œHe doesn’t know where that knife has been or even if the blade is clean, which it probably isn’t. She could get an infection. How the hell did it happen on his watch?”
    â€œStefano, you told Emilio to hang back, not to get caught,” Franco reminded. “The moment they realized she was in trouble, they shut that shit down.”
    â€œBut not before she got cut. Where? Where did he cut her?”
    Franco took a sip of the hot coffee, wishing he were anywhere but inside the aircraft. Danger shimmered in the air. It was stifling hot. Stefano could explode into violence in a heartbeat and when he did, it was always deadly.
    â€œHer throat. But it was shallow, Stefano, barely there.”
    Stefano erupted into cursing. Franco poured more Scotch into his cousin’s glass. Every member of the Ferraro family had their job to do. Always they lived for the good of the family. The shadow riders were absolutely necessary to the family’s livelihood. They were rare, and when a couple could produce them, they were encouraged to have several children. Stefano never treated any family member as less than he was, but he was always in charge.
Always.
    The shadow riders kept the family’s enemies from attacking them. No one outside the family knew just how Stefano and his brothers carried out their lethal work and because there were other branches of the family in other cities that also had a reputation for cleaning up messes, no one ever dared openly come after them.
    In the underworld, where crime was a daily occurrence and enemies thrived on violence, no one ever dared to touch any member of the Ferraro family. Not gangs, not crime lords, not their bitterest enemy, the one they had a long-standing feud with dating back to the early 1900s in Sicily.
    The Saldis had been the deadliest family in Sicily, andthey soon realized that people went to the Ferraro family for aid against them. They had demanded the Ferraros join forces with them, and when their invitation was refused, they sent their soldiers to wipe out every man, woman and child in the family. Only a few escaped and went underground. Those who had managed to escape had been mainly shadow riders, and they vowed such a thing would never happen to any family member again.
    Stefano was a throwback to those first men and women fighting so hard to keep their family alive. Maybe all the shadow riders were like him, with a will of iron and the guts to fight against impossible odds. That made them both dangerous and extraordinary.
    â€œStefano, she’s all right,” Franco reiterated. “We’ll get you back as soon as possible and you’ll be able to see for yourself.”
    Stefano couldn’t break the rules and call Emilio directly. He was supposed to be in Chicago, not Los Angeles. Even for his own peace of mind over Francesca, he wouldn’t take a chance. The rules had kept them all alive and away from law enforcement. Those guidelines were in place for a reason.
    Most people believed they were mafia, members of organized crime. Many, many times, they had been investigated, but of course nothing could ever be found. No matter how many times the businesses were