Prologue

Maxine

Past – Aged Twelve

“How about this show, honey?”

I glance up at the television to see if the movie that uncle Simon has selected is something that I want to watch. It’s just another B-list slasher movie – they are all the same. Some girl is shown on the cover with her breasts shoved up against the killer’s chest as she poses in an attempt to get away from him. This is the fourth movie he asks me to watch, and I’ve already shaken my head to all of the others. I know that if I tell him no again, he’s going to get angry. I nod, even though it’s not something that I want to see. I don’t like horror movies. I don’t like the creepy things and I really hate that he always insists on having the lights off for the duration. I would rather be up in my room reading, but he never lets me leave his sight when he’s babysitting.

Personally, I just want to close my eyes and wait for my parents to return home. I don’t see why I can’t just go up to my room and read.

I don’t like it when he puts his arm around me.

“See? I knew that we would find something that we both liked!” Uncle Simon leans back into the couch and puts his arm out around the back expectantly. He turns the movie on and soon the only illumination left is the glow from the screen, but even that quickly fades. The screen is dark and there is already some girl screaming and running across the screen. I pull my oversized sweatshirt over my knees and attempt to close my eyes, and start counting inside of my head. Maybe, this way I can just zone out hard enough.

“Ahem,” Uncle Simon clears his throat and I look up to him. He pats the side of the couch and then looks down at the seat expectantly with a nod of his head in the direction of the seat that I’m supposed to be taking. “Come on, honey, it’s tradition!” He says and taps the space again. I tuck my hands inside of my sweatshirt and shake my head.

I know it’s a mistake.

I know that I’m not supposed to tell him no.

I know this even as I do it.

I know he’s going to be angry with me…and his expression darkens instantly. He looks like the villain out of one of my books. Uncle Simon makes my skin crawl. “Come on now, you’re acting like you don’t want to see me!”

Not a single part of me moves other than the way my heart is racing inside of my chest. I wish I could close my eyes and make myself smaller, to travel somewhere far, far away from this living room and the stale, beer-soaked breath of my uncle.

My father never understands when I tell him that I don’t want to be alone with his brother. Of course, I don’t have any proof. It’s not like he’s ever actually done anything. At least nothing other than making me deeply uncomfortable.

I know that they deserve to get out of the house if they want…but then they could just leave me here alone. They don’t need to call him. This is exactly the argument I tried to use with my mother tonight before uncle Simon arrived. She told me to stop imagining things, that uncle Simon has helped our family in more ways than I can ever understand. They just don’t get it.

I unfold my legs one at a time, and I wear loose jeans, my sweatshirt is huge because he always…looks at me. I can feel those yellow eyes on me right now as I cross over to the couch and sit down next to him. I sit on the furthest edge, and the girl on the television is naked now…why do they always have to be naked when they run like that? It’s not practical even in a horror movie. It’s because of men like my uncle, I think. It’s because men like him like to look at naked women in a bad way.

Uncle Simon’s hands close around my hips, pull me back further onto the couch, and wrap his arm around my shoulders. “What? You’re twelve now, and so you can’t hang out with your Uncle?” he says while looking at me up and down, making me want to curl up into a ball and hide forever.

I want to scream that I’m not supposed to watch movies like this, that I don’t like it…but then he gets angry and threatens me with bad things If I can’t keep his secrets. He says he is just trying to treat me like an adult.

I don’t answer him. I cover my hands with my sweatshirt and wrap them awkwardly around myself, trying to keep from touching him in any way.

“I get it. I’m just an old man to you now, right? Well, that’s alright…I’ve noticed that you’re turning into a rather attractive young woman, so you need to get used to adult things. That sweatshirt doesn’t fool me one bit.”

My stomach flips. I think I’m going to be sick.

“It’s alright, I won’t tell that you still need to hide behind your hands when you’re scared! Come here, baby,” Uncle Simon teases in a sickly sweet voice, and grabs my shoulder, and pulls me back into his side, and this time when he lets me go…his hand is on my breast.

Does he know that his hand is there?

Did he do that on purpose?

Alarm bells, sirens, red flashing lights, flares of distress start to go off inside of my head, and I attempt to roll my shoulder backward to dislodge his hand, but he squeezes…and he starts to massage the skin of my breast painfully, pulling and groping. I don’t like this. I don’t want this. Get off of me. “Stop,” I mutter in a small voice.

“What was that, baby?” He leans into my air, and I feel like all of the oxygen in the room is being sucked out of the ceiling. He kisses me on the neck and makes a noise. “I know you’re scared, but you don’t have to pretend, I know exactly what you want…why you chose this movie…why you just wriggled your pert little ass against me…I’m only too happy to be your first baby.”

No.

No.

That’s not what I want at all. I didn’t do the things that he says that I did. I want to be in my room, locked behind my bedroom door, and safe. I didn’t even want this movie. He’s lying.

“No!” I push against his chest, hoping that I can break free, but he only tightens his grip around me.

“It’s okay, I won’t tell your father, I swear, baby.” Uncle Simon mutters and bites me on my neck, and I scream. “Oh yeah baby, I like that…struggle more, I know you want this.” He grabs the collar of my sweatshirt and pulls so hard the neck of the fabric rips, and it nearly chokes me, cutting off the sound. I’m struggling, but he’s got me trapped between the arm of the couch and his body…he’s so much larger than me. What do I do?

“Get off me!” I say, but my voice sounds so weak…strangled, he can’t do this. His hand is up to my sweater now…and I can feel him fumbling with the button on my jeans…and I manage to push myself up and off of the side of the couch, but he holds my pants that they scrape down my hips. Now that he has them,bare-legged and holding my sweatshirt to my body, I take off running across the room, tears are blurring my eyes as I run across the house to the front door, yet he’s laughing at me. I can hear his large footsteps thundering after me, mocking me with his slow pace as he follows.

I’m shaking so bad, I can’t stop…my hands almost can’t close over the locks on the door. I throw them open one after the other. I don’t even know where I’m going. I just know that I have to get out of here. I have to get as far away from here as I possibly can. “Stop! Please!” I cry, and throw the last lock open and grab the handle, but it’s locked, and the key is gone.

My stomach drops out of my ass as Uncle Simon grabs me by my hair and hauls me backward. I fall to the ground, and he follows right after, dropping himself on top of me heavily. “That’s my girl, oh your heart is racing…you want me really bad, don’t you, baby? Do you want my thick cock filling you? Ripping you open for the very first time? I’ve waited months to be alone with you again, baby.” His hand is between my legs – cupping my privates, and I’m sobbing, heavily sobbing, and I can’t breathe…I think he’s going to crush me to death. I think I’m going to die…if he does what he says….I’m going to die. I’m so scared that I think that I’ve pissed myself. I don’t want this.

I don’t want this.

“What the fuck are you doing to my daughter?!” Daddy suddenly screams and grabs uncle Simon by the back of his shirt and throws him off of me, and I swear that he throws him halfway across the room. I don’t know when he got in the house, but I’m thankful for it. Uncle Simon is no longer a scary man, he’s a terrifying man – he’s a beast, a wild animal, and I swear he looks like he’s made up of shadow and nightmare. I’ve never been more terrified of anything in my entire life. There’s murder in his eyes as he moves towards Daddy. Each step is steady, too even. It feels like he grows another three feet in every direction as his aura fills the entryway.

“Daddy!” I scream, reaching for my father and struggling to stand. I’m shaking so much it’s hard to keep upright.

“Baby, run…go out to the car, the driver is in the driveway…go…”

“No! Don’t make me go! He will get me!” I wail, but Daddy shoves me toward the door. uncle Simon is laughing and advancing on his brother – then they are fighting…they are fighting and somebody is bleeding. I don’t understand. Why are they fighting? I know that I’m screaming. I’m screaming for him to leave Daddy alone, but they don’t stop.

And then Uncle Simon has a gun…he has a gun and he fires…

Daddy falls to the floor.

There’s so much blood.

He shot Daddy. He shot him and he’s not moving. He’s kicking Daddy on the ground, and blood is slowly pouring out of him, and I don’t understand that I’m seeing the life leaving my father’s body. Where did the gun come from?

There’s so much blood on the floor and I’m panicking. When I find my legs, I start running and scream at the top of my lungs as I dash out of the house and to the driver waiting in the driveway as Daddy said. I barely throw myself into the car and shout for the driver to go to wherever mommy is. Yet, my uncle doesn’t let me go that easily, because I can see him running toward the car.

I slam my hand down on the door locks so hard it feels like I’ve broken something in my hand…but he can’t get in. Uncle Simon bashes against the window – he’s hitting the car with something – then bullets fly and I scream and duck as the window of the car shatters. The car swerves violently to the side at the break. I can hear the driver swear loudly from the front seat but my brain will not register what words he actually used. My breath is coming in rapid, short bursts. I can’t make it stop.

What if he drags me out of the window? What if he gets me again? I just keep screaming…and the car goes faster and faster until I can no longer see the blur that became my neighborhood out of the window.

I don’t know if I will ever be able to stop crying.

Chapter One

Maxine

Present Day

-I’m locking up now, I’ll be home soon.-

Laura hasn’t been answering my texts for a few hours now. Which usually just means that she’s allowed her boyfriend into our dorm again and she’s otherwise occupied…but that’s just another thing that the text messages are supposed to be for. They are supposed to be enough of a warning for her to stop boning her boyfriend, and then at least have the decency to stuff him under the bed or into her closet…not that they have to hide. I think that Laura just makes him hide out of reflex more than anything else.

At least this boyfriend is nice, and sometimes he even makes up those little toaster waffles in the morning. He says he would be only too happy to make some of the regular stuff, but we broke girls living that college life never can afford eggs regularly, let alone all of the stuff needed for real waffles, let alone real plates to eat them. Glassware is a luxury – which is exactly what I told Laura this year when we were shopping for dorm decor and she wanted to get a whole serving set – which meant that we would have to buy second-hand sheets again this year…and I was absolutely, absolutely, not going to be doing that for the second year in a row. I draw the line at used sheets.

While the campus bookstore tends to be a little bit too pricey for most of the students, we have this lovely back half of the store that serves as a real little bookshop and not just a place to buy used textbooks. Another one across campus sells all of the campus merch and the new books, but I like my little bookshop better. It’s cozy and has that rich old book smell that I never can get enough of. Plus, it pays decently enough to have us well-stocked in the name-brand toaster waffles, so I’m not complaining.

Still.

I’m a safe girl, and I ping her my location attached to the text anyway because you just never know when walking across campus this late in the afternoon. I would much rather be safe than sorry.

I drape my rape whistle around my neck. I keep my keys in between my fingers like I’m supposed to. I have a reflective strip on my messenger bag and I only walk on the well-lit paths. I don’t stop, I’m not wearing anything form-fitting, and I read somewhere once that you shouldn’t ever wear your hair in a ponytail because that makes it easier for bad guys to grab it, so I never wear my hair up either. Least of all when I’m out in public. I don’t think that I look like a person who would be enticing to predators…but I will take each and every precaution possible. I even switched to those slide-on trainers for shoes because I saw a story in the news that a girl tripped over her own laces and was kidnapped, raped, and murdered. One close call was enough for me – and I refuse ever to fall prey to something like that again.

As it usually does, my walk goes easily, and I don’t see another soul. I chose this campus because of the safety rating after all, and I love being able to walk home without having to keep watching over my shoulder. I do look over my shoulder anyway, but I like that I don’t have to.

I half expect to hear sex sounds when I unlock my dormitory door…but instead, I’m greeted with the strong scent of Vicks vapor rub and the lavender oil that Laura pumps into her humidifier. The lights are dimmed, and it feels like a sick person sauna in here. Coughing softly, I shut and lock the door behind me, step out of my shoes, take my backpack off, and drop it to the ground.

“Laura?” I ask, and move for the light. Laura flinches when I flip the thing on, and she pulls her fluffy robe higher up on her shoulders. She’s laying on the bed like she stumbled and fell there. I can see the fishnet stockings of her work outfit covering the leg that’s exposed and just the hint of the red lace of her garter, so I know that she’s wearing that new corseted thing that she came home with last week. “Laura, are you okay?”

My best friend attempts to smile at me, but her lips look chapped even with the face full of makeup that she’s wearing. Even the soft movement causes a nasty wet cough to rattle through her, and she lifts a tissue she holds clenched tightly in her fist. “I’m golden, Maxine, really,” she sputters between coughs and finally manages to grin at me properly. Laura wipes her nose, attempts to sit up, and falls back down.

“You’re not okay, you’re clearly really super-duper sick. What happened?! You were fine this morning!” I chastise and move to the bed, I attempt to wiggle her bedding out from underneath her body so that I can cover her in it, but she shakes her head.

“What time is it?”

“It’s Laura’s sleep time, that’s what time it is.” I shake my head and swat away the hands that she’s attempting to stop me with,

“I have to be at work at ten…is it ten?”

“You can’t be serious! You cannot work like this…you’ll be throwing snot all over your johns, that’s really sexy.”

“Johns? What is this? The thirties? No, they are clients or douchebag supremes and very little in-between.” Laura pauses to cough. “Besides, I have to go. I already paid for the stage tonight, we can’t afford that loss of money…not with tuition due in two weeks, Maxine, you know that.”

I do.

I pause for a moment, attempting to do mental math to calculate everything in my mind because I know how much money she needs to compensate for how far behind she is. “I’m sure your boyfriend will help you out again, it’s not like you can control that you got sick!”

“No, he won’t, he’s fighting with his parents right now, and they have frozen all his cards…really, what’s the point in dating a trust fund baby if I don’t get the sugar treatment.”

I roll my eyes. “Because you love him, that’s why.”

Laura shrugs as if that’s a silly reason. “Yeah, true. But mostly the money.”

“Yeah, yeah.” There is no point in arguing with her, my best friend hates talking about money if she doesn’t have to. “Anyway, this is just how I get sick. I’ll get up there on stage, sweat out my fever and then I will be right as rain, you will see. Don’t even think about it. Then there will be no money – cough- problems.” Laura nodded to herself. “I just need like…ten minutes to sit here in my snot. Okay?”

“No. Not okay,” I insist and bend to start unhooking the buckle on her giant plastic stripper heels and pulling them from her feet. I know that my choice is right because she’s not even fighting me on it, and she has leg muscles for days.

“We can’t lose the money, Max, it’s not like you can go and do it for me.” A lightbulb illuminates above her head, bright and shining as she seems to get an idea, and props herself up onto her elbows. “Unless…you’ll go for me?”

I snort, “Yeah, right.” I brandish the massive high heel in my hand at her as if that alone is proof enough to her that there is no way that I could ever fumble my way through one of her sets. “I would snap my ankle clear off of my leg in one of these!” I shake my head and move to unbuckle the second one with a forced laugh. Sweat is already dotting my palms and my chest is starting to feel tight. There is no way that I can do what she’s suggesting. “Me? A stripper? Hah, that’s a good one. I’ll make a list of unsexual things for three hundred, Alex.” I mock her, but she’s just staring at me. “Absolutely not.” I shake my head. We’ve been friends for more than long enough now for her to know that I would never debase myself in this way. I could never get up there and shake my stuff for the gawking masses. “You know how I feel about your career choice as it is!”

I keep waiting for her to laugh, or to say that she was only joking, or offer me an exit of any kind to this insane line of suggestion.

“It’s just for one night though, Max, you can do just one itty bitty night, can’t you?”

“I would kill myself, or puke from the stress…or…or…I can’t even move like that!

“I mean, you are always watching me practice. You’ve even joined me a couple of times.” Laura sniffles and wipes at her nose again.

“Yeah, I know but that’s just playing around in our sweatpants to kill the rest of your studio time.” I shrug.

“Well yeah, but you know all of my routines. You’ve got the best rack that I’ve ever seen, Max, so my costumes will be a bit tight on you, sure, but you can totally pull it off.” She’s looking at me as if she’s trying to picture me naked – bile rises in my throat, and I lift my hand to the collar of my shirt and pull it closed. It’s not that I don’t want her looking at me. The real issue is that I don’t want anybody looking at me in the kind of place she works, for any reason. Walking into a group of lustful men in almost nothing is my actual nightmare. It’s the furthest thing from anything I would willingly allow myself to do.

“No. It’s impossible.” I say firmly, and the words come out almost angry even though I don’t mean for them to.

Laura nods. “Okay, I’m not going to force you to do something that you’re not comfortable with, babe, really.”

I know she won’t, but now I can’t get the image out of my head. Nearly naked and having men leering at me with all of their perverted thoughts floating in the air between us, I can’t do that. I would faint…or worse.

“I guess I can ask for another extension,” Laura looked at me out of the side of her eye. I knew that wouldn’t work because she had already been late too many times and the admissions office no longer trusted that she was capable of paying. If I did not do this for her, there is a very good chance that she will either have to drop out of school or do something really illegal to get the money, and I don’t want to put her in that position.

“Just, as an aside…something totally unrelated here, but ah-” Laura pauses to cough, I’m almost tempted to drag her down to the nurse’s station. “On a typical Saturday night like this? I can make like three or four grand. Just saying.”

“What?!” I exclaim and fall over backward. It seems like an impossible amount of money for me to fathom, and I know how much that would help her. That would cover the rest of her tuition for the semester and feed us for weeks.

Laura nods. “You can probably make even more since you’re a new face and men love seeing a new face. Though, I do think that we will need to get you a fake name to use while you’re in there for safety reasons. Then you can just pretend that you’re somebody else and not have a single thing to worry about!”

“Just this one time, right? Like I can do your shift and then leave?”

“Yes,” Laura confirms. “Just this one night, you get the money and run unless you choose to go back.”         We both know that’s not very likely.

“What about that man who runs the club?”

“Constantino?”

I nod. I might be more on the innocent side than most girls my age, but even I have heard about him and the sorts of things that he tends to get into.

Laura waves off my concerns like they are nothing. “Constantino Negrini is a very busy man, he would never have the time to bother with something like a dancer replacement. I promise you he has much bigger stuff to worry about, a man as important as he is.”

I know his reputation, and I don’t even want to be in the same room as somebody that scary.  “I don’t think that I will be able to even walk in those massive shoes, let alone dance in them.”

“They are easier than you think that they are once you get the hang of them, I promise. I would say that you could go barefoot to appeal to the whole innocent thing you have going on without even thinking about it, but I wouldn’t walk on that floor without shoes on. You just have to make it to the stage, and they are really grippy, so that helps.”

“This is my nightmare,” I confess.

Laura sits up and pats my arm. “Look, I know that you don’t approve of what I do  and that this is going to be really hard for you, but think of all of the food that we can buy…milk in a jug and not powdered, babe, we can be real people.”

My grin is forced. My lips pull into a tight line of discomfort at the idea. It would be nice to be able to put actual creamer into my coffee for the next week. Really nice. Things tend to get really sparse here right before tuition is due, which is soon, so we have been going without a lot of things until after the tuition payments clear. She is right in saying that I never approved of her work, and that’s not because of her. All that Laura does is dance, she doesn’t partake in any of the other things that I’m always hearing about as going on inside of that place, and I know that she’s not even getting fully naked most nights. It’s the men. It’s the creepy jerks who go there to stare at her, knowing how they are all there just thinking about all of the things that they would do to her if they could. Just another reason why I like her boyfriend so much. While he never goes inside of the Leonessa club, he’s always there waiting just outside of the door for her to get off work so that he can walk her home. I really appreciate that about him.

It’s not like I hate all men.

I just don’t trust them.

“I know…I already said I would do it.”

Laura grins and holds her hand out for me to help her up, and when I pull her to her feet, my friend sways just slightly before settling. “Whoa,” she teases. “I swear, every time that I get sick it always comes on out of nowhere and kicks my whole ass for a couple of days or a few hours, and then it’s just gone. Just like that,” Laura snaps her fingers for emphasis. “Over and done.” She rolls her shoulder and points for her closet, and I help her walk over there.

“Okay so the heels there, the olive green ones are a little bit shorter so you should wear those. Man, we’re really lucky that we are basically the same size. Though, I wish that I was built like you. Yes, okay – grab that there, the little army uniform. They will eat that right up for your theme.”

I look at her like she’s insane. “This isn’t a uniform…this is floss…” I protest and she holds it up to my chest, pushing my breasts together and then frowning.

“Well, it’s either this or the tall glitter heels. My other ones haven’t been broken in yet so those won’t work for you since you don’t know what you’re doing.”

I sigh. “Okay….”

“Okay. Now off with the clothes.”

I blanch and stare at her.

“Well, I can’t help you get into the outfit if you can’t put it on, and it would really suck if you got there and then it didn’t fit, you know?”

I know that she has a point, so I head over behind the partition that separates her bed from mine and take off my work clothes quickly.

“You’ve shaved, right?”

“Yeah…I shaved my legs this morning.”

Laura laughs, “Oh you little lamb, no, I mean your kitty – have you shaved your vag recently?”

I blush, even though I get how it’s a relevant question. “Um…yeah…a little…um..”

“It’s okay Max, you don’t have to tell me the specifics. I just wanted to make sure that there wasn’t going to be a Wookie attempting to escape out of the sides of my booty shorts.”

“N-no…nothing like that,” I murmur and pull on the booty shorts in question, black glittery fabric that is so impossibly soft. However, it rides halfway up my ass and leaves very little to the imagination. I undo my bra and pull the top on. It’s army printed with tiny sleeves that just barely cover my shoulders, and the whole thing is attached by laces that criss-cross over my boobs to hold the thing together. If I lift my arms at all, my breasts threaten to spill under the shirt, and when I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I don’t recognize myself at all. I look like somebody else. The person in the mirror is attractive, there is no denying that. It’s just not me that is attractive. It’s some alternate reality version of myself. It’s the version that never learned any lessons the hard way…maybe the version of myself that will embrace her sexuality. Certainly won’t ever be the real me. I hate it. I tear my eyes away and don’t give the image another thought.

“Come on! Let me see, Max!” Laura wheezes and I wrap my arms around my belly and head out to let her see. “Damn,” Laura mutters and looks me over in a way that has my whole chest flushing red.

“I can’t do this,” Every single part of me wants to pull the sheets from my bed and wrap them around myself.

“You’re already doing it. You’ve already got the thing on…here, sit here and I’ll do your makeup.”

“I don’t normally wear…” I begin to try to keep the shake out of my voice, but I’m failing.

Laura gives me a stern look. She isn’t the sort of woman that likes to hear the word ‘no’.

“Okay,” I surrender to the stern look on her face and sit on the bed in front of her. I’m fairly certain that the shorts are attempting to crawl inside of my body for how tiny they are. I don’t even know half of Laura’s products are piling on my skin. At most, I wear just the basics of makeup: tinted sunscreen, mascara, and maybe some pink lip gloss.

When she’s finished, she bends over the end of her bed, pulls out a large box filled with smaller wig boxes, and starts checking them until she finds a black wig cut into a severe bob. “Now you can make them all call you commander,” she teases and starts to tuck all of my long blonde waves into a wig cap, and then covers the whole thing with the wig that she’s selected. “You look like a whole new person,so just pretend to be the commander tonight and you will be okay. Maxine who? You don’t know her. I’m going to call the club and let them know that commander girl will be filling in for me.”

“I don’t think that I can be a commander. Nobody will buy that for a second.”

“Yeah, no you’re all too sweet for such a thing, hm, well then we can’t call you Maxine, or Max, though I suppose that we could call you Heavenly…that suits you really well. Plus, it’s really super catchy.”

“That’s just my last name.” I object, but Laura shrugs.

“It’s perfect. Now go make that money, Heavenly.”

Chapter Two

Dalton

The man in front of me is not quite dead.

I cannot say for certain that he will live after what I have done to him. He will receive medical treatment, but I doubt the prognosis will be good. Either way, his heart is still beating, and he is alive for now.  I cannot say that I even feel any remorse for what I have done to this man. Perhaps I could even say that I feel it as a sense of justice for the poor choices he has already made in his life. What is left of this man has aligned himself with all of the wrong people. I might have been able to excuse that choice alone, perhaps even be so lenient as to think that he simply had been roped into a lifestyle that he did not understand at a too young age like most of us have. Still, he also made the conscious decision to betray the Negrini family, which is wholly unacceptable to me. I am not a man of many morals, but disloyalty is not something I can abide by.

I grab a clean cloth from the metal tray of instruments beside me. It is the only clean thing left. Everything else is dirtied in bits of blood or viscera, but none so dirtied as my hands. Call me old-fashioned, but I still believe that an old school beat down is one of the most effective ways to get information out of a person.

It adds that little personal flair.

I don’t get many opportunities these days to enjoy a bit of torture, but it makes something in my blood sing when I do. I am the sort of man that is good at my job, very much so. The only downside to being a great enforcer and right-hand man to one of the most powerful mafia families that is so excellent at their job is that not many people act against us. Therefore the opportunities are less and less.

It was an entirely lucky thing that this offense was great enough and my bloodlust might even be sated for a good while. Now I just need to handle the other issues that my bloodlust has as a side effect. It’s truly a fortunate evening since I only have to head upstairs to see any debaucherous act that my black heart truly desires.

I clean the blood from my knuckles and wipe my face clean.

“Boss?” The large man on the other side of the door calls to me. It’s been quiet in here for a while. Killian knows me well enough by now to know that I like a period of reflection before I enter society again. Before, I have to contain myself and pretend that I am simply a man, instead of every bit the bloodthirsty monster I have been for the better part of the evening.

I roll my head from one side to the other, listening to the satisfying cracks that relieve me of my tension, and roll my shoulders back. I pulled on the clean shirt that was waiting for me on the hook on the back of the door. I pull on my tailored jacket and take my time in doing up the buttons before I unlock the door and allow the thing to slide open. “Send word to Constantino,” I say without looking up. I can feel the way that Killian’s eyes widen at the sight behind me. Though to his credit, the moment I lift my head he schools his face into a mask of impassivity. “Actually, I will contact him myself to tell him that the little rat has confessed everything.” I glance over my shoulder to the lump of a man in the chair. “Then send Ernie to go and collect the little rat’s family.”

That stirred life back into the man, he groaned in fear and attempted to lift his head as if his pleas would stop anything now.

“You got it, boss,” Killian said and started inside of the room.

“Possibly call and have the cleaners on standby,” I add as an afterthought and give the rat one last lingering look to admire my handiwork before I turn and head down the long hallway that will lead me up and out of the dungeons. Really, it was a great idea to have them placed underneath a strip club. The loud music from upstairs, the pulsating light, and the gyrating distractions are all perfect to keep any stray noises that might filter up from my dungeons into the main part of the club.

Club Leonessa has become more or less an office to me in the recent few weeks. It’s comfortable, familiar. With Constantino away on his honeymoon, I would not contact him for anything less than what I have just learned. I cannot imagine that whatever paltry monetary sum that the rat sold his soul for was in any way worth it. However, selling Negrini business to the Russians? That is the sort of thing that Constantino needs to be aware of, provided he can pull himself out of Clelia long enough to answer the phone. That’s just another reason that I know I need to be the one to call him: he will answer for me.

There is a drink waiting for me the moment that I hit the top of the stairs. My favorite whiskey is set on the rocks beside a cigar, but I do not want this at the moment. I take the drink, breathe deeply, and then step into the Leonessa club. I nod to the man standing guard beside the entrance to the dungeons. Another benefit of the women who staff the Leonessa being so beautiful is that I can come and go as I please. Very few clients here are willing to turn their gaze from the stages. I slowly take a sip of my drink and square my weight between the pair.

“You look like you feel better,” Austin says to me softly, his deep voice intended to be heard over the loud music but only just for my ears to hear. I think out of all of my men, I am the most myself around Austin. I’ve worked with him longer than the others, we have seen more than our share of shit together.

“I like working with my hands,” I grin to myself.

Austin gives me a knowing look and then rolls his eyes at me. “Here I was, thinking that today might be the day that I finally convinced you to dip into the company honeypot.”

I shake my head. “Today is not that day, Austin, and it will never be that day.” I do not sleep with the women employed here. I don’t like to mix business with pleasure outside of the dungeons if I can help it. “I see that Ismenia is working today,” I comment over the brim of my glass.

Austin flicks his brown eyes over to the woman taking the stage, her golden-brown skin coated in glitter that makes her seem to glow under the stage lights. Even in the dim lighting I can see the embarrassed blush coloring the back of his neck. It’s cruel to tease him, but he has been obsessed with Ismenia for the last two years that she has worked here. Out of that entire time, I think that he has perhaps spoken to her directly only twice. Even if I were to try to tell him about how she watches him while she dances, I don’t think he would believe me.

I clap Austin on the thickly muscled shoulder with a smirk. “Tell you what, how about the day that you get the balls to actually go over and speak to her and ask her on a date will be the day that I consider sticking my dick into one of these dancers.”

Austin scowls. We both know that he is unlikely ever to take that step, that he will content himself to pine over her from afar.

“I’ll leave you to your stalking if you need me – I will be at the bar.”

Before I leave, something dawns on Austin, and he slaps himself in the forehead. “Boss, there is a guy there, he was asking questions, I had him wait for you in the booth over in the corner of the bar, good view of the stage – I knew that you were not in a position to be interrupted.”

“Name?” I sigh, I cannot afford to be sidetracked.

“Called himself Simon Hellbound,” Austin answers and then stops before he adds anything else, he’s listening to his earpiece. I extend my thumb in the direction of the bar and leave Austin to his business.

It’s not that the women here are not attractive to tempt me, it’s nothing so vain as that. I just know the particular tastes that I enjoy and these women, they are not it.

“Mr. Hellbound,” I greet the older gentleman at his booth, and he rises to shake my hand.

“Please, join me, have a seat and let me buy you a drink.”

I lift a hand and shake my head politely, “I’ll pass, thank you – doesn’t seem right to allow one of our newest business partners to spend his money in my club. Unless, of course, it’s in the back rooms. There you pay for how you play.” I do not smile, I rarely do, but Simon chuckles in a darkly perverse way as if he is imagining exactly what I’m suggesting. If he took an interest in one of the girls, I could send a lap dance or two his way but the back rooms? Those there are no discounts for. Business partner or not.

I do not join him at his table and angle myself away in order to watch the girl on the center stage finish out her set. Tiny little thing, all pale skin, and too many curves to naturally fit onto a body her size.

“I do not have the luxury of lingering tonight, unfortunately, Mr. Hellbound, but if you should need anything just ask my men, and they will do their best to accommodate.”

“Oh, please, I’m just here as a patron tonight. I just wanted to see all of the things that the infamous Leonessa club has to offer as we are in business together now, see how things are run – get the lay of the land and everything.” Simon smiles at me, and I nod.

“Of course, anything that you might need.” It is not my job to place judgment on people. Especially on people that Constantino has chosen to go into business with. However, if it were, I am not entirely certain that Simon is a man that I would have chosen. His accomplishments speak for himself. He has more business holdings in recent collections than nearly anything that I have seen. However, there is a reason that those things are left to Constantino and not to myself.

Schmoozing his business contacts while he is out of town does fall on me, and not even I would want to endure the man’s wrath if something were mishandled because then he finally took a much-deserved break. I can distinctly remember assuring him that everything would be alright in my hands. I can remember Constantino staring at me in challenge even as I said it. He is far better with these sorts of interactions than I am. I prefer to be the muscle, standing right behind him.

I turn from Simon, and my attention catches on the dancer’s change on the main stage, a girl that I have never seen before is taking her place in an army-themed outfit. I don’t mind that it is too small on her, it accentuates her full chest and her full hips but it’s abundantly obvious that the creature has no experience walking in heels that high. She does not move with the same grace that some of the other dancers in this club do. She does not sway her hips, and it appears that she is doing everything in her power to avoid looking directly at the men seated on the ground level. They are already whispering behind their hands.

Normally, our girls are better chosen than this. She seems to have the same sex appeal as an orange peel.

“Now on the main stage, a soldier discharged from sleeping her way through the barracks and discharged for being too sexy for the military – Heavenly!”  The music that Heavenly chose for her set starts, and it is quickly followed by a series of disjointed, stiff movements that I could tell are planned…but the lamb seems too nervous to remember what she is doing.

A sheen of nervous sweat already beaded her forehead, a trail of perspiration trailed between the valley of her breasts as she artlessly turned herself around the pole available to her. Somehow, her performance is disjointed and charming – wholly unappealing and yet alluring. She seems to be at internal war with herself, and all I can see is a woman who has not yet discovered her sexuality. Fascinating. Fish out of water.

My feet carry me toward the stage as I finish my drink and leave it on a random surface to be collected. As I grow closer, my hands slide into my pockets, close enough to hear the snide comments mocking the girl on the stage. I cannot assume just why she would be here, doing this, but I know that the Leonessa club has a hell of a lot more earning potential than a lot of the surrounding clubs. If the girl is brave enough to get up there, she deserves the chance to try.

“She could at least take her top off,” One man laughs as he twirls his thick mustache around his index finger. “Make it worth our while a little. I can’t even get a chubby one with her terrible dancing…if we could see her tits, then I don’t think I would care much.”

The other laughed at his friend’s comment, wadded up a dollar bill in his palm, and then pelt it at my dancer. The lamb flinches, and I can see something sad flicker across her eyes – to her credit, she tries to appear strong, but in the end, she flinches.

“Get out,” I say firmly. Both men look up at me with amused expressions.

“Who the hell are you, buddy?”

Buddy? The muscle in my jaw feathers. My posture shifts from borderline polite to downright hostile.  My tongue runs across my teeth, and the men turn back to their drinks – a drink that I lift from the closest one’s hand. “There is a zero bullying policy for my girls here at Leonessa, and perhaps you ought to consider that when the only thing that the lady has to look at is you two lepers, then it would be hard to wish to entice you as well.” Austin has seen the altercation and is now standing behind me. It does not take much further encouragement to have the two forcibly removed from their seats.

A seat that I wipe clean and occupy at the end of Heavenly’s stage.

If you liked the preview, you can get the whole book here

If you want to be always up to date with my new releases, click and…
Follow me on BookBub

Chapter One

Diana

I’ve always liked the snow.

I think that sitting here, watching the snowfall covering every inch of my family’s home, is one of the more peaceful ways to spend an evening.

My mom’s been searching for me for the better part of half an hour now. I’ve heard her walking up and down the halls, first calling my name and then screeching it. Dunno why she didn’t think to check the balcony; I’m always out here.

Since Nathaniel went missing, she is holding onto me far more tightly. Too tightly. It’s not that I don’t love my mother, or that I have a bad relationship with her, because I don’t. Most days, my mother is one of my very best friends, but since her son—my brother, also known as the head of the Angelo family—Nathaniel went missing, she’s been a little less composed.

She plays the dutiful, stoic leader and stands in whenever there’s anybody around, but whenever it’s just the two of us and those loyal to the Angelo family in the house, she can get a little neurotic.

I get it.

She’s lost her son, her oldest child, and she’s left with me. Nathaniel is the sort of man you can turn to for anything at all; he fit my father’s shoes perfectly whenever he stepped in as head of the family. I know she worries that if an unknown something happened to Nathaniel of all people, it might very well happen to me as well.

She’s been waiting for a ransom call—we all have—for some news as to his condition, and things have been painfully silent. My mother had no desire to be head of this family; she never wanted to run the empire any more than I have. The stress of it alone has been doing terrible things to both her body and her persona.

Nathaniel was always more like Dad, loud and larger than life. Being the head of the family was never a burden to him. It was a crown that he was happy to wear, and he was well suited for it. I was more than happy to let him handle the whole thing. Even if a woman was allowed to run the show as head of the family, I wouldn’t have wanted it anyway. It was too starchy, and I like my freedom. Just another reason why I like driving.

There’s no way to know what happened to Nathaniel or where he might be, but I know in my bones that he’s alive somewhere. We have the best private investigators and our entire network of contacts working on finding out leads and information.

I just hope they find something soon.

I think that’s the second biggest worry in my mother’s mind, that without a male to lead the family she’s not sure how long she will be able to bide our time before the vultures start to circle, intent on picking apart the famous Angelo family bit by bit.

Perhaps that’s why I need my alone time even more right now.

Sometimes looking my mother in the face and seeing the silent question of if Nathaniel is dead or not on her features is more than I can handle.

Attached to my bedroom is a small balcony, the sort of setup that is great for reading while enjoying early morning coffee. The view of the grounds is absolutely stunning. You can see everything for at least half a mile, and it’s high up enough to see clearly over the stables. My mother will likely head down there next to where her beloved racing horses are barned, being kept warm and well cared for by a whole team of equestrians. I’ve always liked it down there, but I’ve never been much of a rider.

Beside my balcony, the roof slants downward and is easy enough to step onto. I’m sitting there now, listening to her searching through the open balcony doors. The carpet just inside of my room is going to be soaked through with the melted snow, and I just can’t bring myself to care. It’s peaceful, and after the day that I’ve had, I need peace. Whatever my mother wants me to do is just going to have to wait.

I pull my blanket further around my shoulders, pulling my glass of red wine closer to my body as the snow swallows up all of the sounds around me. The entirety of our property is blanketed in white.

Sure enough, moments later, warm yellow light spills out over the grounds below me, disrupting the stillness of the night, and my mother starts stomping her way out toward the stables in search of me. She’ll get distracted in there. She always does. I chuckle to myself, content to spend my evening attempting to uncoil the knots of tension and dread that have taken hold of my shoulders and threaten to cripple me.

The door to my bedroom slams open, and I nearly fumble the wine right out of my hand.

“Miss!”

I don’t have time to even clamber off the roof before the owner of the voice is stomping through my room. She slammed the door so hard behind her that I can hear the thing bounce in the frame before she comes barreling onto the balcony.

“Oh, Diana! It’s the worst thing ever!” Violet wails. She’s never been very good as a maid, but she’s always been a much better friend to me. I think we blurred the lines between staff and friendship too far, too long ago to even attempt to put things back the way they were. She could stop working tomorrow, and I think she would still stay here on payroll just so that I can hang out with her every day.

If it were anybody else, I might have taken more offense to the intrusion, or at the very least I might seem slightly more concerned about the tone that she’s using. The clear urgency is written all over her face, but the unfortunate truth of the matter is that Violet’s always been on the dramatic side. Until I know what the cause for the theatrics is, I don’t know what level of invested I need to be.

“What is it, V? You know that I can’t understand you when you cry that hard.” My voice is nothing but patient as I scoot from the roof tiles toward my friend. I make it to the edge of the roof before she throws herself at me, and I’m forced to scoop her up into my blanket as I hold her.

“V, you’re trembling.” My hands rub in alternating directions, wrapped in blanket, up and down her back. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

If she makes me guess then we are going to be here for a long, long time. Last week she cried because the blueberries in the pancakes she made me didn’t come out the way that she wanted them to. I’ve seen her cry because a puppy was too cute, and she couldn’t physically process it. I saw her break her arm once, and she hardly even flinched. She’s never reacted to things in the way that I would have thought that she would. This could be anything from a chipped nail to her mother’s death.

“It’s Thomas!”

My shoulders relax, something she takes instant offense to and pulls away.

“No! Diana, it’s not what you think!”

“And what do I think, V? Did you break up again?”

“What?! No!” she blubbers, as if that hadn’t happened twice last week, not that she ever let that impressively sized rock off her finger for a second. They had called off their wedding more times than I could count. At this point, I was almost going to take the bet that Girard, my butler, kept offering me as to whether or not she was actually going to make it down the aisle to Thomas. I didn’t mind the guy; he was a security guard assigned to the perimeters of our house. They had a really cute little love story, but man, was it hard to keep up with them.

“Then what happened?”

“They took him!”

That sobers me up quickly. “Who took him? Tell me exactly what happened, V,” I say seriously, my hands gripping her arms and forcing her to look into my eyes. Her normally pale face is ruddy and peppered with splotches from her crying.  Her gorgeous red hair is a halo of messy curls sticking out of the bun that she attempts to wrangle it into for work, but it nearly always comes undone over the course of the day. She looks like she’s been crying a while.

“I—” Violet sniffs. She pulls away from me and starts pacing the length of my balcony like the rapidly thickening snow if of no consequence to her whatsoever. “I don’t know…he was at his new job when he called me.”

“The moonlighting one?”

Violet nods, “Mmhm, the one he’s been doing to get those store discounts that he likes. He’s trying to let me redecorate our space before the wedding; he’s sweet like that.” Violet’s chin dimples as if him being sweet and indulging in her rapidly changing opinions on decor makes her miss him even more. “We were on the phone, and he started whispering to me really fast. I tried to tell him that I couldn’t understand what he was saying and he needed to slow down…that I couldn’t hear him. And he shushed me, which he never does. And then he got real quiet…it switched over to a video call, but then he dropped the phone and-and there were feet, and they came up on him real quiet, and I could see them fighting, and then he hit the ground. My baby, he fell to the ground, and I couldn’t do anything. And they took him—they took him away.”

“Who took him, V? Did you see any of their faces?” I’m already switching into defensive mode; that internal training and my desire to constantly fix things is already kicking in hard. “Tell me he told you who they were…or what he thought. Tell me that he told you something that will help us get him back.”

Violet flusters, and I can see her attempting to squash down the dramatics and recall anything that might be useful.

“He didn’t do anything, did he? I know you hate talking about it, V, but he did have that gambling problem…are you sure that it wasn’t—”

“No! I’ve been watching our accounts so close, and he’s banned from like all of the bars here. You know that. He can’t even step foot into a casino, and I thank you for that, so much. He said something about the Lords…”

My jaw tightens, anger heating my core, and suddenly I can’t feel the snow at all. “Rat bastards,” I swear, my teeth grinding together. “What could they want with Thomas? Everybody knows that he does guard work for us. He’s supposed to be protected.”

As is everybody that works for the Angelo family. We’re a bit of a big deal, something that I choose not to acknowledge overly often unless it suits me. Plenty of people would love to be the beloved daughter of a powerful mafia family, sure—and then there’s the Angelo family. We’re practically royalty in this town, rivaled by only one family: the Lords.

If they have the nerve to interfere with our business…that’s not a misunderstanding.

“What am I going to do?!” Violet’s lip sucks between her teeth, the panic gripping her again. “What if they hurt him? I can’t lose him, Diana. I can’t…I love him.”

“I know you do, V. Nothing bad is going to happen to him.”

She came to me for a reason after all.

“I’m going to fix this. Right now. Don’t you worry.” I wrap her into my blanket and pull the edges around her tightly, leaning in to kiss her forehead in a friendly gesture. “You sit here and flip through channels or something to kill the time, and I’ll be back with Thomas before you know it.”

“What are you going to do?!”

“I may not like it, but I know the Lord family very well, V. They will talk to me if I show up on their door, and it’s going to mean a hell of a lot more coming from me and asking soft questions than it will if my mom goes over there and starts throwing around accusations, don’t you think?”

Violet looks like she might want to protest but thinks better of it. Even if she did, I’ve made up my mind, and there’s no way that I’m going to change it. “The snow…Diana, you can’t go. Haven’t you heard the news? They are saying that a blizzard is supposed to hit town any hour now. They’ve been telling people to stock up on candles and water in case we are all without power for a few days. I can’t let you go out there.”

“Let me?”

“You can’t go! Thomas is already missing. I’m not going to have you chasing after him on my behalf and then have to have a search team dig you and your car out of a snowbank weeks from now because you got swallowed by the blizzard!”

I stop, looking out over the grounds once more. I take extra care to study the sky, judging the clouds and how the snow is presently falling, and shake my head. “No, I’ll be fine. I just have to go now.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“That’s not necessary; they are supposedly friends of my family these days. I can handle myself, V.”

“I know that you can, but I cannot have that fear on my conscious. I am going with you, and that’s final. At least that way your mom won’t blame me if something happens to you.”

I laugh, crossing to my massive walk-in closet and flinging open the doors. I march inside and select a winter coat with faux fur trim I got at a PETA auction last year and pull on my snow boots. I toss another jacket out onto my bed for Violet, motioning for her to go ahead and put it on. There’s no room for debate, and she complies.

“The real question is which car do we take?” It’s not really a question. I definitely have my favorite out of the cars in the garage, but my heart belongs to my Range Rover. We take the back elevator down to the garage, and the lights turn on as we walk into the space. The waves of anxiety are practically radiating off of Violet as we move, but to her credit, she doesn’t say anything else. She doesn’t attempt to talk me out of driving either. The staff has given up on attempting to talk me out of driving myself places. I allow all of the other luxuries offered to me, but this is for me.

Violet is a statue in the seat beside me. We should have at least said something to my mom before leaving. I honestly don’t know what she would do if I didn’t return or if anything happened to me. My mother’s grip on me has been too tight with Nathaniel missing; she would never allow me to go to the Lord property in the dead of night. She would kill me herself if she knew what I was planning. She would insist on sending a small fleet of security with me, and we don’t have the time. If Thomas had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, or if he said the wrong thing to the wrong person, then I am exactly the right person to smooth things over.

I will not beg.

I refuse.

I could never beg to men like them, certainly not given my personal history with one Lord in particular, so we’ll just hope that it doesn’t come to that. They will listen to me, and if they don’t, then I will just have to make them.

Hostage negotiations aren’t my thing, but talking to arrogant men who think they know everything while also holding positions of power? Well, that I’ve been trained for my whole life. If they have Thomas, I’m going to get him back.

Chapter Two

Stephan

My arrival back into town was a little ahead of schedule.

I liked to make an entrance whenever I returned home from an extended period of time away, but I liked the element of surprise even better.

When I arrived at my family home, I thought that I might be awaited somehow anyway. My father tended to have a way of knowing just about everything that happened, most of all his only son’s arrival back home.

When the entryway was empty as I stepped inside out of the rapidly worsening snowstorm, I started to grow concerned.

Normally, my father would have made quite an elaborate deal out of parading the staff and any guests down to the entryway to greet me before insisting that he take me to the same restaurant that he always does, nevermind that it was never my favorite but my father’s favorite, but I was always happy to indulge him.

My gloves are yanked off my hands and tossed haphazardly over my shoulder; my scarf and jacket follow quickly after as I move into the belly of the large house. I couldn’t slow down long enough to pull my shoes from my feet, and they track fresh powder through the entry hall and then wet tracks on the plush carpet runner of the halls as I search for the man in question.

He summons me here in the black of night, and now he’s triggering my temper by making me wait. Whatever was so important that couldn’t be put into words in a text is now something that I absolutely must know. It’s been a little while since I’ve been back here, in my father’s home. I don’t have the time or patience to mentally track the changes that have been made or wonder if my room is still the same. Sentimental sap of an old man that I have, it was nearly impossible to convince him that as an adult I no longer needed to keep a childhood bedroom and would, in fact, be perfectly fine with a standard guest room when I visited, and he refused. He said it was insane to him to think that his only son wouldn’t have a dedicated space.

“Uncle William!” I bellow, waiting for him to show his round face, fully expecting for it to come popping around a corner at any moment. “Dad?!” I call even louder; surely they heard my car pull up. I had sent word that I would be back in the county this week. It’s not unusual for one or both of them to invite me over when I get back into town. It always feels like the only times that Dad ever allows himself to have a true break from the empire that he’s built is whenever I come back into town.

If he wanted to get drunk and play Pictionary all night, then he could just say that, but he doesn’t.

This is insane. Our property is simply too large to play this game and search every room. I set my feet on a course to my father’s office and pull my phone from my pocket, quickly dialing first my father and then my uncle and back again. William, my uncle, almost never has his phone on him, so that’s not usual for him to not answer. But my father never misses a phone call. The man always texts back within two hours, even if it’s the middle of the night.

He’s only ever been the stone-cold, ruthless mafia boss in public. Inside of these walls, he was never that person to me. Even if he used tough love rather liberally when it came to my upbringing, I never grew up without love.

The fact that he’s now missed five of my phone calls in a row…that’s what’s setting off the red flags in my head, blazing bright like beacons of warning that something is about to happen that I’m in no way prepared for.

William is seated in my father’s office. The supple leather armchair is used for guests that hold meetings with my father, but he’s sitting too stiff in it. William’s not a small man. Standing at six feet, he used to be an athlete but has physically softened with age, and his gut shows the rounding of a man who indulges in too much alcohol. He’s always had a round face, cherubic; he was like catnip to women in ways I never quite mastered.

William sits on the front edge of the chair, his spine too rigid as if he were in the middle of a conversation he couldn’t fathom having…but he’s alone. My father doesn’t sit across from him. I feel like I already know the news that I’m about to receive, even before he motions for me to sit down. “Have a seat, son.”

Would sitting make this news easier to hear? The knot in my throat forms before he even speaks, something about the way William’s jaw clenches, the sad look in his eyes, and I know. I just know.

My hand scrubs down the lower half of my face, and I stare at the seat offered to me as if the news cannot be real until I sit, that if I just keep standing here, he’s not about to tell me that my father is dead. If I sit there…then it’s all going to be real, and I don’t know if I’m ready for that. Can anybody really be ready for that?

My legs carry me to the chair, and I know I sit, but it all feels like a blur, a distant reality in which I’m allowed to live outside of my body. It’s a good thing that William doesn’t start speaking right away because my ears are ringing, and the room feels like it’s closing in on me.

I allow the moment of despair to last all of thirty seconds. Thirty seconds of wallow and ache, of mourning and a total, nearly consuming feeling of loss.

Then I push it away, and I will myself to be stone. I harden my exterior and narrow my focus to William and the fact that he needs to tell me what happened. “How?” There’s no need to beat around the bush, no need to worry about my emotions. It’s simpler to keep things clinical; I’ll have time for the rest of it later.

William swallows hard, as if he wants to offer me words of comfort or at least a playful slap to the side of my arm. “Shot.”

My head dips, and my hands clasp one another. My knuckles turn white with the force of my concentration.

“Caught bullets two nights ago. There was an ambush outside of our offices…” William trails off.

I have at least five follow-up questions to that statement, and William pauses to let me select them in the order I wish to ask them.

“Where were you?”

“Right beside him, all the way to the hospital. The doctors did everything that they could. The finest surgeons attempted to save him…but the damage was too much.”

I nod, unable to sit still; he should have called me. I would have flown home early. He could have gotten ahold of me, and I could have been here to be with my father for his last minutes. I would have taken a private jet and gotten here as fast as physically possible. Rage for the moments stolen surface, and I push those feelings down with the others. “Was he in pain?” The words come out too quickly, and I lift my hand to stop William from answering the question I didn’t mean to ask. I don’t want to know the answer. “Where are the bastards that shot my father?”

“We have everybody looking into it.”

That’s it? He must sense my affront to it because he keeps speaking.

“There’s more.”

“More than the fact that my father was gunned down in front of his own offices without provocation…and left to die on a surgeon’s table, and nobody thought to call me…you mean that there is more than that? You’ve had two nights to tell me, and you didn’t bother? There are arrangements to be made; there is business to attend to, not to mention the countless contracts that must be maintained. Or were you attempting to make a play for office yourself, William?”

My eyes are fire as they lift to my uncle’s; he’s never made any indication that he wanted the throne for himself, to take the seat that my father occupied. I thought that was why he was choosing to symbolically sit in the chair he chose.

“What? Stephan, I have no interest in being head of family.”

I stand, moving around the side of the desk to my father’s chair, hating that this will be where I sit now. It’s a job that I know I can do, and I know I can do it well. I’ve always been a natural leader…but I wasn’t ready to lose my father quite so soon. I pull the chair out and move in front of it, but I don’t sit. “Good. Then I’m going to need his medical reports, the life insurance policies, and his itinerary for the week.” Mentally, I’ve already started pushing aside all of my personal contracts and business happenings of my own companies because I know that I’m going to be needed here.

“That’s the other thing, Stephan; my son has expressed to myself and some others that he is intending to place his bid for head of the family.”

“Elijah?” I laugh incredulously. “His claim is shaky at best. He was my father. Elijah would be a reckless choice.”

My personal history with Elijah is shaky at best. I know him better than anybody else has managed to in his life, I’m fairly certain, and I know for a fact that he’s the last person I want in charge of this family. He’s hot-headed, temperamental, and far too impulsive. Despite the fact that he’s thirty-three, and three years older than myself, he’s about half as mature as I’ve ever been. Always the type to jump first and think about the consequences after the fact. There was no shoot first, ask questions later—there was only ever just shooting.

“He says that since he’s the oldest heir that his claim is as solid as yours to the throne and that he will not be turned aside. Believe me, Stephan, I’ve tried to talk him out of this. That’s why we had delays in funeral arrangements as well as getting you back here into the mansion for talks…he’s already attempting to make moves.”

“Well, I’ll just have to nip that in the bud, won’t I?”

“I sure hope that you’re going to have a lot more luck than I’ve had. The boy never listened to me before, and I doubt that he’s going to start doing so now. Elijah’s always been a greedy little shit; there’s no denying that.” William says, not hiding the fact that he and his son rarely have ever seen eye to eye and clearly not on this issue either. “He’s not somebody you can trust, Stephan; you know that.”

“Right,” I agree. “So what’s the question then? Just ignore him.”

“It’s not that easy, I’m afraid. It seems that some people have actually started to support his claims. The cousins are on the verge of being threatened into an agreement; his tongue is as silver as ever.”

“People do love his particular breed of chaos.”

“You just need to cement your claim, Stephan. Then all of this will be over, and we can get right back to business as usual.”

There will never be business as usual again, not without my father. I’m not sure that I’m going to be okay with this particular brand of new normal, but I say nothing. Instead, I make a gesture for him to continue speaking; if he has a suggestion then I want him to get it out into the open so that I can move forward. There’s so much to do, and I cannot risk being idle. If I don’t start on what needs to be done, and right away, then there’s a small chance that I won’t be able to start at all.

Despite what my reputation might claim about me, I am very capable of having emotions. I know all too well that people call me cold, heartless, ruthless, downright evil behind my back. That’s exactly what I’ve always needed them to call me; it’s a part that I play very well. That was one thing that I learned from my father very early on in life: that in this game, you only get anywhere by your reputation, and men looked up to men they could fear and see as a leader at the same time. I’ve always embodied that publicly to every person I’ve met.

Personal feelings are for private, another gem of knowledge that my father lived by.

Lived.

The knot in my throat grows, and, like all the rest, I force it lower, mind over matter as I look to William, waiting for his answer.

“The simplest way to strengthen your claim is a unified family front, which means that you need to find a wife.”

“A wife?!” I echo.

“Yes. Preferably from a high-born mafia family and as soon as you can before my son catches wise to that same idea and makes his moves.”

The idea of Elijah with a wife is impossible. I can’t imagine the sort of woman that might agree to such a union and least of all by choice. Not because he’s considered ugly or because he’s not without a certain charm, but I don’t think there’s ever been a woman capable of sticking around him for that long. Elijah is a powerful man, and despite all of the rest of it, I do consider him a friend, not just family. Elijah’s priority will always be serving the family, the Lord family, not a wife; she would only get in his way.

“One does not just pluck a wife out of thin air, William, and a high-born mafia daughter at that? They aren’t the sort that can be bought in the first place.”

“I have a few trusted men compiling a list of currently single women that might be suitable to you for your consideration, and whoever you choose, we will fly her right out here and make her an offer that she simply cannot refuse.”

“I see. You’ve just thought of everything, haven’t you William?”

“Son, I know that it’s not ideal, and I know it’s sudden and rather eliminates the whole love side of things out of the picture. But this is hardly uncommon; it’s been done for political power and influence for generations.”

“You do not need to lecture me about our family history, William; I know it just as well as you. Just because I’ve chosen to spend my time pursuing my own business ventures over these last few years doesn’t mean that I’ve been out of the loop here.”

“Of course not, and I would expect nothing less from you. Just like your father, always able to see everything at the same time and three steps ahead of the rest of us.”

I should have seen the wife aspect coming. Really, it’s such an obvious solution but one I’ve had little to no interest in finding for myself. I’ve been busy expanding our capital, our influence, and business range…and in truth, I’ve been indulging myself as I wanted. What I never would have seen coming is that, the moment that William suggested it, one name came to mind. The only daughter of the nearest mafia family…and a woman who has sworn to hate me for all time.

Best selling books of Faye

★★★★★ 51 ratings

Read the book

★★★★★ 37 ratings

Read the book

★★★★★ 45 ratings

Read the book

If you liked the preview, you can get the whole book here

If you want to be always up to date with my new releases, click and…
Follow me on BookBub