Page 1 of Lovely Venom

PROLOGUE

Raina Riatt – Upper West Side, Manhattan

One year earlier

Idrop yet another pack of cigarettes into the trash. It was the fifth I’ve found hidden. Two cigs in this one. One was empty. Three weren’t even unwrapped.

Mom had everyone fooled into thinking that she’d quit smoking. Her lungs knew the truth. The house smells of lemon furniture polish and coffee grounds as usual.

Not a hint of smoke.

She scoured the place to a spotless shine every night before bed. I always thought she didn’t mind all the scrubbing and laundry since she’d cleaned houses and offices ever since we arrived in the States when I was a baby.

Mom was washing away her sins.

At the bottom of the plastic trash can, I stare at the five packs of Newport Red 100s. I hadn’t lived in this Upper West Side apartment with Mom since I left for Quantico, Virginia and did eighteen months of hard time. Not jail, but training to be a DEA agent felt like it.

No longer under my watchful eye, Mom’s smoking guardrails collapsed. A year later, she was diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer. I held her hand in that sterile white room when the doctor dropped the bomb. The blood didn’t drain from her face until we were told she was terminal and only had nine months to live.

On the way home, she smoked in the car, saying it was her last. But it wasn’t.

God, I’d hate to be addicted to anything that can kill you.

Okay, Iamaddicted to my job. DEA agents in Manhattan tangle with ruthless criminals. Drug kingpins are psychos. And mafia lords who traffic narcotics have deadly enforcers and mercenaries.

I’m trained to deal with cold-blooded gangsters with the same level of force if we take on fire. I’ve never killed anyone, but I ranked at the top of my class in firearm capabilities. Knives are a secret passion that has turned into an obsession. My hand-to-hand combat skills with a blade, honed by my sparring with instructors, are the best they’ve seen for my tender age of twenty-four.

A knock on the apartment door turns me around. After a glance in the hallway, I see it opening. Dropping the trash can, I reach for the small service revolver I always carry.

“Hi, it’s Dora.” Mom’s silver-haired neighbor opens the door. She’s sweet but a nosy pain in the ass.

Exhaling, I slide my gun back into the holster and pick up the trash can.

“In the kitchen!” I call out to her.

Dora sashays down the long hallway. “Thought you’d be hungry after a long day.”

I didn’t do a burial or cater a post-funeral get-together for my mother. Only a few friends, Dora included, showed up to today’s one and only wake service. It was all I could afford. Mom had been very closed off during my whole childhood. She didn’t even pressure me to move back in when I got assigned to New York City’s elite High Intensity Drug Traffic Areas task force, known as HIDTA. She preferred to be alone during her final months.

She wanted to keep smoking in secret. Mom was good at secrets. The biggest one being who my father is.

“I brought you a tray of ziti.” Dora waltzes past me and heads straight for the refrigerator, the smell of garlic and basil knocking me from my thoughts.

“Thank you.” I accept the pasta dish I won’t eat.

Taking a seat at Mom’s narrow kitchen table, Dora fans herself from the summer heat. “It’s warm. Your mom kept this place like an icebox.”

Because it helped hide the smell of smoke.

“I thought fresh air would do the place some good.” Even the sticky hot air that lingers for the entire summer in New York City.

Staring out at the two-bedroom Upper West Side apartment I grew up in, I take a seat as well. The gravity of Mom’s death hits me out of nowhere. Not that she’s gone, I was prepared for that. But I need to empty this apartment, contact the landlord, and break the lease. Or worse, pay the rent until it expires. I don’t have money fortwoManhattan apartments. I can barely afford my own.

“The service was lovely today, Raina.” Dora rests her hand over mine.

I stiffen from the contact, then give her one of my practiced mechanical smiles. “Thank you. She didn’t leaveany instructions.”

Not because she couldn’t. She had nine months. She didn’t plan.Wouldn’tplan. Said she didn’t want to talk about it and didn’t want to spend her last months ‘casket and grave site shopping.’