Checkmate

by Lindsey Powell

  CHECKMATE

  Written by Lindsey Powell

  Content copyright © Lindsey Powell 2020

  Cover copyright © Wicked Dreams Publishing 2020

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form, or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the author.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional. Any similarities to other fictional workings, or real persons (living or dead), names, places, and companies is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  The right of Lindsey Powell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents act 1988.

  A CIP record of this book is available from the British Library.

  Except for the original material written by the author, all mention of films, television shows and songs, song titles, and lyrics mentioned in the novel, Checkmate, are the property of the songwriters and copyright holders.

  Other books by Lindsey Powell

  The Perfect Series

  Perfect Stranger

  Perfect Memories

  Perfect Disaster

  Perfect Beginnings

  Part of Me Series

  Part of Me

  Part of You

  Part of Us

  Stand-alone

  Take Me

  Fixation

  Checkmate

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty One

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Chapter Thirty Three

  Chapter Thirty Four

  Chapter Thirty Five

  Chapter Thirty Six

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  Chapter Thirty Eight

  Chapter Thirty Nine

  Chapter Forty

  About the Author

  Author Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Joey

  Be cruel to be kind. Shit, that’s been my life motto for as long as I can remember. Becoming a ruthless bastard in order to protect anyone that meant a goddamn thing to me.

  I’ve survived in this world despite all of the odds being against me.

  My name is well-fucking-known in the underworld. It’s a blessing and a curse. Not many people bother me, because they know what I am capable of. They know that I follow through with my threats.

  But when she walked into my life, she blew everything I ever knew to shit.

  Paige fucking Daniels, the woman that invaded my cold-blooded heart and then ripped my fucking soul to shreds.

  She is my kryptonite.

  She is my only fucking weakness, so she had to go.

  I couldn’t fully bring her into my world. The guns, the violence, the drugs. To bring her in would have made her a target, and it would have shown everyone my Achilles heel.

  She made me laugh.

  She made me love.

  And she made me break her fucking heart.

  I always knew that this world was cruel, but I never realised just what it would cost me in the long run.

  Paige.

  The woman that sets my soul on fire. The woman that has my heart. And the woman that I have to let go.

  Being a leader comes with responsibility and learning to live without the things that we cherish the most.

  After my meeting with Raymond, my right-hand man, I realised that I can’t rule this world and keep her too. The two things don’t go together. I’ve seen men break from losing their loved ones. I’ve witnessed it time and time again, and my meeting with Raymond showed me just how much he is haunted by losing his wife, Antonia. She was killed in cold-blood by another family. They wanted to hit Raymond where it hurt, and they fucking succeeded. All I can say is, they better be good at hiding, because we’re going to hunt the bastards down and wipe their existence off the face of the earth.

  I can’t risk the same thing happening to Paige. It would kill me, eat me up and fucking destroy me if she were to be killed because of who I am.

  I won’t take that risk.

  I have to do the right thing.

  My father’s words come back to haunt me. “If you love someone in this life, son, learn to let them go.”

  Learn to let them go.

  Shit.

  Hardest fucking thing I will ever have to do.

  With a heavy heart, I call out her name and hear her shout, “In here, big guy.”

  I walk towards the bedroom, and when she comes into view, I almost lose my resolve to get her away from me. She’s on the bed, naked, waiting for me, and I’m about to become the biggest asshole that she has ever met.

  I had to push her away in the cruellest way possible. She will never forgive me, but I can live with that as long as she is safe.

  Safe from my world, safe from the danger, and safe from me.

  My reputation stopped me from having her.

  My role in this life stopped me from having her.

  Throwing her away like a piece of trash turned me into an even meaner motherfucker than I already was.

  Giving up the one good thing in my life left me with a bitter taste for revenge.

  I want out, and it won’t be easy. She doesn’t need to witness any part of what is to come. She doesn’t deserve to be tainted by me any more than she already has been.

  I have a plan to get the fuck out, even if I die trying.

  Paige

  You know those moments, the ones that hit you right at your core, and leave you feeling like you are on cloud nine?

  The moments that define our lives, and mould us into who we are today.

  The moments that leave us breathless, and constantly searching for the next high.

  That’s how he made me feel.

  That’s what every second of being with him felt like.

  Glorious, mind blowing, all consuming.

  Moments that would stay locked in my heart forever, until the day that he ripped those moments apart and shattered my heart.

  Lying in bed, naked, waiting for him to come back has got to be one of my favourite ways to kill some time. The way he makes love to me, fucks me and leaves me feeling like a goddamn goddess is like nothing else.

  I love him, and he loves me.

  He may act like a hard-ass, but I get to see the softer side of him, and I love every single second of it.

  I don’t need anything else in life other than him.

  “Paige,” I hear him call out. Speak of the delicious devil and he shall appear.

  “In here, big guy,” I shout back, waiting for him to appear and fill the doorway with his tall frame, broad shoulders, muscular arms and thick thighs, which he does no more than five seconds later.

  God, he really does take my breath away.

  His eyes take in the sheet that pools ar
ound me, my breasts uncovered, my nipples stood to attention. His gaze slowly moves up, his face giving nothing away, but his words make my heart start to pound, and not in a good way.

  “Get dressed,” he barks as he bends down and picks my dressing robe up off the floor, throwing it towards me.

  “Why? Are we going somewhere?” I ask him.

  “I’m not, but you are.”

  What?

  “Excuse me?” I say as move from the bed and put the robe on, wrapping it around my body tightly.

  “You need to leave, Paige,” he says, causing my whole world to shift.

  “Leave? Why?” I ask, wondering what happened in the last hour for him to tell me that I need to go.

  “Because I said so.”

  “Because you said so?” I repeat his words sarcastically. “And you think that I am leaving here without a reason for this sudden turn-around?”

  Jesus, yesterday he told me I was his fucking everything, and now he’s saying I need to leave?

  “Yes, Paige, because I fucking said so.” His voice echoes around the room, his words turning my world upside down.

  “But, why? What did I do?” I sound pathetic even to my own ears, but this man is my life. I can’t be without him.

  “You didn’t do anything.”

  “Then what the fuck happened? You left me here an hour ago and everything was fine, but now… Now you’re making me feel like I’m an inconvenience.”

  “Maybe you are,” he says and the first piece of my heart breaks.

  “You don’t mean that,” I whisper, shaking my head from side to side.

  He scoffs. “Don’t I? And what makes you the fucking expert on what I mean and what I don’t?”

  I take a deep breath, trying to calm the rage boiling inside of me.

  “Because I know you. You don’t want me to leave, so what’s really going on here?” I ask, hands on hips, trying to hold my own.

  “You have been nothing but a distraction when I’ve needed it,” he says, his face hard.

  “A distraction? That’s bullshit,” I say, struggling to understand why he is being like this.

  “It’s not bullshit, Paige, and we’re done.”

  He goes to turn away from me and I panic. I surge forwards, moving around him so I am standing in front of him, stopping him from walking away from me.

  “Don’t do this, don’t ruin us and what we have,” I say as I rest my hands on his chest. He looks down, his eyes trained on my fingers as I grasp his shirt. “You love me, I know that you love me… Please don’t shut me out,” I plead, practically begging him not to cast me aside.

  He takes a breath, I hold mine.

  His ice blues connect with my stormy greys. Except, they probably don’t look stormy right now, more like sad and desperately hoping that he isn’t going to follow through with this.

  His lips part, his shoulders tense, and I can already see that he’s closing down, putting his walls into place.

  “We’ve had fun, we’ve messed around, but I no longer have a place for you in my life.” His words cut deep, like a knife straight to my heart.

  “No,” I whisper as the first tear falls down my cheek.

  “Yes. I don’t need a distraction anymore, Paige. You were a good fuck, but that’s all it ever was for me, a fuck and nothing more.”

  “You’re lying,” I manage to say as the tears fall faster.

  He shrugs his shoulders. “Believe what you want but make no mistake that we are done here.”

  I grasp his shirt harder, not wanting to let go. If I let go, I know that I won’t get him back, and I won’t survive losing him. I’ll never get over the heartbreak.

  “Please… Please don’t do this,” I say as I sob. “I love you, I love you so much.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to learn to live without loving me. Take it and give it to someone who deserves it. I’m not the person for you, Paige, and the longer you drag this out, the harder it will be,” he says, his voice stern, never wavering.

  “Harder for who?”

  His jaw tenses and he steps back until I’m no longer fisting my fingers in his shirt. My arms fall to my sides, and I know that I have lost him. The love of my life. The only man to ever make me feel.

  “You need to get dressed, pack your stuff up and go, now,” he barks, ignoring my previous question.

  “You’re going to regret doing this.”

  “I don’t regret anything,” he says, and the piece of my heart that broke first has the rest of the pieces scattered around it.

  “Tell me that you don’t love me, and that you never have, and I’ll go,” I say, forcing him to voice the words that may shatter me beyond repair. If he never loved me, then I need to hear it.

  He takes a step forward and bends down a little, so that we are eye-level.

  “I don’t love you, and I never did.”

  The air whooshes out of me.

  My legs struggle to keep me upright.

  And I realise that whatever the game was here, I just fucking lost.

  Love is fragile, like glass. If you don’t handle it with care, it will fall and break, leaving tiny little fragments in its wake that you will be finding days later.

  In my case, the days turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into months.

  There is no end in sight for my pain.

  There is no happy ending for me.

  It’s over.

  Prince Charming doesn’t exist.

  True love doesn’t exist.

  I am living proof. Broken beyond repair and struggling to move past all that I knew.

  Joey Valentine did that to me.

  He crushed my soul. Trampled on it and made sure that it was ripped apart.

  You see, the problem with love is that it makes you blind.

  Blind to faults.

  Blind to the truth, and blind to the person that you love the most in the world hurting you, like you were nothing but a fucking pawn in the game.

  I was his pawn.

  He played me and won.

  And he’s still living the high life whilst I’m roaming in the gutter.

  I was just a game to him, someone to relieve him of his stress as he worked his way up to where he is today, and then he threw me away like trash.

  He may have played and won, but he isn’t expecting my revenge.

  He won’t see it coming, and I’ll be the one to call checkmate.

  Chapter One

  Paige

  Three years later

  I exit the car and stare at the building in front of me. The sheer size of the hotel overwhelming me. Large bay windows, flowers lining each one, red bricks, and a huge set of wooden doors make this a place for the rich and famous. Because that’s who will be here tonight. The rich for sure, the famous being a little different than the A-list stars of this world.

  The famous people here tonight are all criminals. Well known, respected, and likely to shoot a motherfucker’s head off for so much as looking at them in the wrong way. Dangerous, yes. Exciting, maybe. Intimidating, not so much.

  You see, I’ve had dealings with all of these criminal assholes for the last two years. I worked my way up from gutter rat to boss bitch. I did it for me, and because it was all I knew at the time.

  Leaving school with no qualifications and having Joey Valentine throw me away like trash meant that I was at a loss as to what to do with my life. He always thought that he hid his criminal world dealings from me so well, but little did he know that I was taking it all in from the side lines. I watched, I kept quiet, and I retained any piece of information I overheard. Joey tried to keep me away from his business, but I would sneak around, listening in, just so that I could feel closer to him. I was desperate; I needed him like I needed air to breathe.

  And now? Now I need no one. He taught me not to trust easily, and boy has that come in handy over the years. Joey shattering my heart to pieces was the best thing that ever happened to me. It made me who I am today. Stro
ng, independent, and fucking respected.

  It’s not often that women get the respect that they deserve in the underworld, but I did. I’m only twenty-nine but I made it, and Joey Valentine is going to look like he’s shitting broken glass when I am done with him.

  I thank my driver and smooth down the front of my gown. Black lace that hangs down to the floor, slits either side of the skirt that go to the tops of my thighs, and thin straps over my shoulders, the corseted top hugging my womanly curves. My blond hair is hanging down loose and poker straight. The accompanying eye makeup is dark like my soul, the deep red of my lipstick standing out against my fair skin. And the black stilettos with the red heels, fucking stunning, if I do say so myself. I am a sucker for a beautiful shoe, and these are no exception.

  I carry a small black clutch purse with me, containing my handgun. There is no need for anything else. I won’t have to pay for a thing this evening, and my boys are on standby at my house, meaning I don’t have to carry keys with me. I exude the bitch boss vibe, and tonight I will get to show every asshole in that room who I am. They all know me by the name of Miss Roderick. Not Miss Daniels. I dropped that name when Joey dropped me and kept my first name a secret. Never let them in. Never allow them close.

  I keep my cards close to my chest, never meeting with the assholes that I am about to reveal myself to. It gives me power, and I know that every man in that room tonight will fucking hate the fact that I have controlled my empire whilst remaining in the shadows.

  I conduct my business through my right hand man, Donovan. But tonight that will all change. And there is only one person in that room that knows my first name is Paige, and he will wish that he had never laid eyes on me, because once I am done with him, he is going to be the one with the shattered heart.

  Chapter Two

  Joey

  God, this kind of shit bores the ass off of me. I’ve been doing events like this for as long as I can remember, and I have never once enjoyed them. The people in this room all think that they are worth something, and that others should bow down to them. Well, everyone except me, because I bow to no one. I run the motherfucking game, and they all know it.