Gia Rossi rolled onto her back and adjusted her bikini top, releasing a sigh as the sun’s heat drenched her muscles. It was unbearably hot for an Illinois summer. The air lay like a thick, sopping blanket over the suburbs, broken only by an occasional paltry breeze.

She didn’t mind. The trickling sound of the pool filters and faint strains of rock music from the veranda lulled her into sensuous distraction, and she drifted in a sort of heat-induced haze, floating in and out of consciousness.

Her personal assistant, Frank, would bring her a fresh pitcher of margaritas if she buzzed for him, but then she’d be more than tipsy. For now, the simmering warmth of a little too much tequila and sunshine was enough to wipe out any anxiety remaining from Vincent’s departure earlier that morning.

As usual, she didn’t know where her husband had gone, only that he planned to return home to Chicago in a week.

“A long business trip,” he’d told her with a brush of lips against her forehead. “Boring, my love. You’d be miserable.”

Nevertheless, a sick knot of foreboding had tied itself in her stomach as she’d stood in the portico of their Barrington Hills mansion and watched him slide into his limousine. He wasn’t himself lately. He looked pallid, terse, distracted. And in certain lighting, like a complete stranger. Nothing she could explain without sounding like the clingy wife she’d promised herself never to be.

A trickle of perspiration slid down her temple, and she squirmed on the chaise lounge, brusquely wiping her brow.

Maybe he was in some kind of trouble. Vincent’s business dealings were unquestionably shady, and possibly even mob-connected. How else did the money just appear in his hands? Bundles of it. As though it grew in some secret, sprawling orchard for his benefit alone.

He would never tell her where it came from, of course, and she knew better than to ask. The one time she’d point-blank inquired about the nature of his mysterious business endeavors, he’d shut her up with a single, chilled look. A look that filled her with the sickening suspicion she’d married a man she didn’t know at all.

Still, Gia wasn’t about to leave him. He’d played Henry Higgins to her Eliza Doolittle, taught her how to dress, to speak, to exist on a lofty level of fine food, fine wine, fine literature and culture. He loved her as only an artist can love his creation, and pronounced it constantly, in words as well as in the tiny treasures he left hidden around the mansion.

As much as Gia appreciated the expensive trinkets, it was the symbolic meaning behind them she truly craved, and Vincent seemed to understand this. He understood her. Materially and emotionally, he showed her nothing but love and approval.

Except for that one bad moment in three years of blissful marriage, that icy look across the breakfast table that she shuddered to recall even now.

You’re being silly, said the pushy little voice that served as her mental stage mother. Silly Gia Torio, born in a bleak Chicago tenement to an alcoholic mother with no hope and no future. Look around you, Gia Torio. At this mansion. At these vast, lush grounds. Foolish girl. Sip your margarita and shut up.

Out of nowhere, a cool breeze shivered over her naked torso, raising goose bumps on her skin. The sun drifted behind the clouds and daylight faded, as though dusk had swathed the estate six hours too early.

Someone was watching her.

Tiny prickles of awareness raised the hairs on the back of Gia’s neck. Lifting her head, she slid on a pair of sunglasses and glanced around the yard.

Nothing appeared out of sync. A pair of golden butterflies chased each other among the ivy-filled urns lining the pool, until they caught a breeze and soared into the cornflower sky.

Her attention shifted across the lawn, where a gardener in a straw hat clipped topiaries with artistic precision. She didn’t recognize him, but the estate retained so many employees, she only knew the immediate house staff.

The gardener was fully absorbed in his task, his back turned in her direction. It wasn’t his gaze she’d felt a moment ago.

No one else was in sight. Still, she couldn’t shake the creepy sense that her solitude had been shattered by someone’s unwelcome observation.

Self-conscious of her skimpy bikini, she reached for her robe, then dropped it and bolted upright on the chaise lounge, heart pounding. Two men from the kitchen staff—since when did the cooks carry guns?—dashed across the gardens and disappeared into the woods surrounding the estate.

“What the hell…?” Before she could grab the intercom from beneath her chair, the snap of gunfire exploded through the air, followed by panicked shouting.

Fear clawed at her heart and she nearly tipped the chaise lounge as she leaped to her feet, her gaze wildly scanning the edge of the woods. Where had the shots come from?

Before she could make a mad dash for the veranda, Frank DeSalvo appeared and tackled her to the lawn, muffling her scream beneath his bulky weight. “Head down, Mrs. Rossi! Don’t move!”

Pressed flat and breathless by the man she’d come to regard as her oversized executive assistant, Gia couldn’t even cry out. The sweet scent of grass and suntan oil mixed with Frank’s rich cologne and threatened to suffocate her. Her mind went numb with terror while some lovelorn diva sang out from the house stereo about craving the man who’d dumped her.

For a moment, all was still. Then two sets of black military boots appeared an inch before Gia’s nose.

Materialized out of thin air.

Frank scrambled to his feet, his warmth and weight abandoning her, and she flung her arms over her head as the sound of scuffling and fists hitting flesh filled the air around her.

A male cry of agony tore through her paralysis—Frank!

“Frank! Oh, my God—what’s happening?” Wild with panic, she glanced up, but the glare blinded her.

It wasn’t the sun. Brighter than any solar glow, the preternatural radiance poured down on her, but she couldn’t identify the source. All she saw was the shimmering outline of three figures…two hovering over her and one prostrate in the background, motionless.

Stars and floaters danced in front of her gaze. The grass scratched her bare legs and torso as she shielded her eyes from the mind-numbing brilliance.

Then, as if someone had thrown a switch, the light dimmed. Gia immediately regained her faculties and got to her knees, but she couldn’t move fast enough. Strong hands hauled her to her feet, and pushed her forward when she tried to whirl free.

Petrified, she managed to look back at two black-attired assailants dragging Frank’s rag-doll body toward the mansion. It would have taken a bulldozer to bring down the giant of a man. What had they done to him?

A steely arm snaked around her bare waist from behind and pulled her in tight. Cold metal imprinted itself low on her spine.

“Walk,” a male voice murmured against her ear.

The need to survive took over, adrenaline pumping hot currents through Gia’s veins as she squirmed and flailed against his iron embrace. “Son of a bitch! Let…me…go!”

Her fingernails dug at the assailant’s muscled forearm where his sleeve had ridden up, but his relentless hold never faltered. He lifted her by the waist until her feet kicked aimlessly in the air, and walked for both of them.

She reached back to claw blindly at his face, but he merely ducked his head aside, skirting her attack with quiet patience. She jammed her elbow relentlessly into his ribs, but it was like punching concrete, and garnered no response, not even an indrawn breath.

Still, Gia struggled. As with the rest of her twenty-six years, the feral instinct to survive gave her no choice.

Only when her abductor hauled her around the side of the house and she spied the white box van waiting in the driveway did the will to fight bleed out of her, replaced by the black, coiling certainty that she was going to die.