Savage Queen

by Eva Ashwood

  Everyone agrees, and Hale and I break apart and sit down to finish breakfast. The men talk lightly of other mafia business, but I don’t listen to much of it. My mind is too preoccupied with thoughts of my mother, excitement and dread twisting through me at the idea of speaking to her.

  This is what you wanted, I remind myself.

  I can tell the men are still concerned, but none of them mention it, not even as we head to Onyx to meet with the higher-ups of the syndicate.

  I recognize several of the men who’ve gathered, although there are some faces I’m not as familiar with. I notice the older members shooting me stone-faced looks, and I’m reminded all over again that a lot of these people hate me because of my father. But if any of them are displeased by the fact that I’m being included in this, they’re careful not to show it openly. This is Hale’s ship to run now, and he’s made no secret of the fact that he’s on my side.

  Once everyone is assembled in the large meeting room, Hale leans back a little in his chair. That small movement brings the gathered men to silence, and they all watch him expectantly until he begins to speak.

  He’s right that there’s little reason to hide the truth now. With Leland dead, it wouldn’t take long for his betrayal to be discovered anyway, so there’s no point in trying to cover it up. It doesn’t appear that any of Damian’s other captains have joined forces with the Rooks, and if they have, they should know what happened to Leland. They should know that one way or another, double-crossing will get them killed.

  Shock and anger greet Hale’s pronouncement that Leland was a traitor and that he had a hand in Damian’s death. But when Hale delves into who Leland was working for, naming my mother as the leader of the Rook Syndicate, I can feel the entire atmosphere of the room shift.

  Gazes dart in my direction, and I see Frank LeBlanc and Stanley Wheeler murmuring quietly among themselves at the back of the room.

  Hale raises a hand, once again making the room fall silent. He glances from face to face, his expression steely.

  “Grace is not her mother. The sins of Camilla Weston do not rest on her shoulders. Nor do the sins of Samuel Weston, for that matter.” He gestures to me. “I trust the woman sitting beside me, and I will not have that questioned. Samuel, like my own father, is dead. The only Weston we need to be concerned about now is Camilla. She is the enemy, the one responsible for trying to destroy our family. Do you all understand?”

  There are nods and murmurs of assent. Frank and Stanley don’t look happy, but they both nod as well. I take some solace in the fact that their dislike and distrust of me probably means they truly aren’t working with my mother.

  “Camilla has requested a meeting with Grace,” Hale continues. “And we’ve decided to agree. I don’t like it, but it will give us a chance to feel her out, to find out what she’s after and how she plans to get it. I’ll want several teams involved in that, and once a location is agreed on, we’ll work out the details. Grace’s safety during the face-to-face is our utmost priority.”

  He continues speaking, asking questions of his men and plotting out a course of action. As they offer up their opinions and suggestions, I watch Hale listen intently to each one, weighing it carefully before making a decision.

  He’s a good leader, I realize. Better than I think he even knows. I’m certain he wishes it was still his father in that chair, his father whose responsibility it was to bring his organization out of this dark time.

  But whether he sees it or not, they’re lucky to have a man like Hale at the helm. His father would be proud of the leader his son has become, even in such a short time.

  I just hope it’s enough to get us all out of this mess alive.

  11

  Grace

  The next two days are a whirlwind.

  By agreeing to meet with Camilla, I’ve agreed to completely and utterly submerge myself into the world of the mafia, and if there was no turning back before, there’s certainly no backing out now.

  There are endless meetings.

  Security briefings.

  Plans made for every possible contingency.

  Zaid and Lucas have already mapped out the warehouse that Camilla requested to meet in, an abandoned shipping facility on a deserted side of town, and just yesterday I spent hours with the guys and a team of men, going over positions. We’ve mapped out exactly where everyone will be positioned and where the backup crews are going to be. Vans full of mafia men in critical locations go as far out as ten miles away from the warehouse, prepared for anything.

  Hale isn’t messing around.

  The meeting is set for seven p.m., so we head out at six thirty. An outside observer would guess, based on the sheer number of heavily armed men gathered around me as we walk toward the fleet of vehicles in the underground parking garage, that I’m someone of great importance. Looking at the guards that flank me on every side, they might imagine I was their mafia queen, their very own Camilla.

  Fuck. I hate that I am my mother’s daughter.

  But I remind myself that this is what tonight is about. I’m not only going to this meeting for the sake of the Novak Syndicate, but also going for myself—to see exactly what I came from, and who this woman has turned out to be.

  Who I could turn out to be.

  The drive is quiet, everyone laser-focused and tense. Finally, the van pulls up to the warehouse, and as it rolls to a stop, my heart rate jumps.

  This place is nothing short of creepy. Camilla—I can’t bring myself to think of her as Mom—chose her location well. The Chicago fog rolls in, thick and tinted yellow by the few streetlights, and if it weren’t for the full moon, I’m not sure I’d even be able to see the warehouse.

  My nerves are strangely steady. The last couple days have been so packed that I haven’t had time to freak out, and I don’t plan on letting myself start now. My steps are measured and even as we walk into the warehouse.

  I know why Camilla chose this place—it’s huge, but it’s open. The place is abandoned, all of the merchandise long since cleared out, leaving nothing but an empty space.

  Leaving nowhere for anyone to hide.

  The Novak men have already arrived and stand exactly where Hale told them to, and it seems we aren’t the only ones who came prepared. The other side of the warehouse is filled with Camilla’s own security, her own warriors, and it hits me like a ton of bricks to the chest that this isn’t child’s play.

  I’m walking into a den full of criminals and murderers, only to face the worst of them all—my mother.

  She stands on the other side of the room, watching, waiting. Surrounded by her own men, she looks nothing short of a mafia queen herself. As agreed, she breaks away from her group of security forces, moving slowly toward the middle of the room. She’s graceful as a cat, her movements as smooth and controlled as a predator’s. I don’t even hear the heels of her boots click on the pavement.

  I wait.

  I wait until she’s standing there waiting for me before I break away from Hale, Ciro, Lucas, and Zaid. They all tense behind me, not liking this any more than I do, but none of them make a move to stop me.

  I don’t look back at the men. I keep my focus straight ahead on my mother, on Damian’s murderer, and I don’t let myself drop her gaze until I’m standing in the middle of the room with her, less than four feet away. My heart flips in my chest, but I’m proud of how steady my pulse remains.

  “Grace. Look at you.” She speaks warmly, a smile spreading across her face. “You look stunning.”

  I fucking know I do, but I refuse to acknowledge her compliment. Instead of my usual jeans and a sweater, I’m dressed in a plunging black shirt with a blazer over it, and sleek black pants with a crisp line down the leg. I even painted my nails a bright crimson, reminiscent of the blood that spilled from Leland’s mutilated body on our front stoop.

  Every piece of this outfit was chosen to send a message. This woman doesn’t know me any better than I know her, and she doesn’t know how mu
ch I’ve changed in the years we’ve been apart. I’m not the innocent, naïve girl she left behind.

  I’m a fucking mafia princess, and I mean business.

  I also have a gun in a small holster hidden beneath my blazer, and a knife strapped to my calf.

  My mother is likely carrying concealed weapons too—although they’re pointless, really. We all know Camilla isn’t going to pull anything tonight, not if she’s smart. Not when there are armed men gathered in a tight arc on our side of the warehouse, able to expertly snipe her before she could even make a move.

  And she knows that I can’t pull anything either, for the exact same reasons. Even though we’ve both stepped away from our personal protection teams, it’s nothing but a pretty lie.

  The bullets can still reach us, and if we kick off a gunfight, no one is leaving here alive.

  Still, being armed makes me feel better. I spent four hours with Ciro last night learning the basics of everything—and maybe that’s why I don’t feel as nervous as I thought I would. I have control over my own protection, should I need it.

  I don’t reply to Camilla’s comment. The men didn’t give me any instruction on what I should and shouldn’t say, but I’ve already made up my mind to not respond to anything she says that isn’t related to what I want to hear. I’m not going to entertain her by taking a sentimental trip down memory lane, especially when those memories might as well be dreams for how real they are.

  I’m here on business.

  As if she stepped out of my memories of the last day I saw her and into the present without passing any of the years in between, Camilla looks almost exactly the same. She doesn’t look a day older. But there is something different about her, something I can’t quite place that bothers me. A small change, maybe something that was already there when I last saw her, just hidden… something I didn’t want to see back then.

  But I can’t ignore it now.

  There’s a hardness to her. That’s what it is. As if she’s been carved perfectly out of stone, unflinching, with no warmth or softness to her features at all. Her golden blonde hair is shorter than I remember it, cut into an angular bob that drops below her chin, and the sleek line of her hair only accentuates the angles of her face.

  Her funeral had a closed casket. My dad told me, as gently as he could, that the body they pulled from the car was too badly damaged to be displayed in an open casket. So the last time I saw my mother’s face was in the kitchen before she left to go get her hair done, when I was sixteen years old.

  In spite of myself, despite not wanting to give her the satisfaction of knowing I care even a little, I can’t drag my gaze away from her.

  It’s like looking at a ghost.

  Except I know all too well that my mother is real, and that she’s more dangerous than any phantom could ever be.

  “I’ve missed you, Grace,” she says, though she’s not stupid enough to try to hug me. “It’s so good to see my daughter again.”

  “That’s strange,” I shoot back, “considering you tried to pay Brian to kill me.”

  She makes a clicking noise with her tongue, her brows pulling together. “Oh, Grace, did they make you believe that?”

  “No. I heard it from one of your own.”

  “Leland?” She raises an eyebrow. “He was never mine. He was an expedient way to get what I wanted, but I knew he would never defect to me entirely. He only did what I asked of him because I held so much power over him. I always knew he hated me, and I knew he didn’t have what it took to play this game for long. It’s no surprise he ended up dead.”

  “Yeah. I bet not. It could hardly be a surprise considering you were the one who ordered his death,” I shoot back, trying to keep my voice steady.

  Images of Leland’s mutilated body flash through my mind, and my hands curl into fists. I didn’t even like that asshole, and I want to punch my mother in the face for what she had done to him. For being the kind of person who could do such a thing.

  “And no surprise considering he worked for you,” I add, venom in my voice. “People who work for you seem to have a tendency to end up dead. Like Brian. Hale shot him before he could kill me, thank fuck.”

  Her lips tighten at the corners, revealing only the slightest hint of annoyance at my mention of my ex-fiancé.

  “If Brian tried to kill you,” she says firmly, “it was not because I told him to. He disobeyed direct orders, I only wanted him to find out what you knew about the Novaks and deliver you back to where you belong—with me.”

  “I don’t belong with you or to you,” I bite out. “I don’t belong to anyone but myself.”

  And the four men who’ve claimed my heart.

  I don’t say that though. I don’t even mention them. I’m not sure how much of our relationship my mother has guessed at from whatever intel Leland gave her, but I don’t want to give her any more reason to target them.

  “Whether you choose to believe it or not Grace, I truly did miss you. I loved you, but I wasn’t willing to sacrifice everything I wanted for you.”

  She tilts her head to one side as she regards me, and I wonder if she’s remembering our last conversation, replaying it in her head just like I have so many times. Is she remembering how I asked her for ice cream? Remembering how easily she said “all right” when she knew she’d never be back?

  Is that really love? I want to retort, but I clamp my mouth shut.

  “I suppose you have a lot of questions,” she continues, standing a little taller.

  I don’t give her the pleasure of a response. She’s going to tell me anyway. I can tell she’s been waiting for this moment.

  Her face softens a little. There’s something strange about it, something false, like she’s an actor playing a role. It’s convincing, but I can see behind the curtain now. “I don’t know if your father ever told you, but our marriage was an arranged one. I didn’t want anything to do with it from day one. Did you know that?”

  I didn’t know it, but despite my racing heart, I don’t say anything.

  Arranged?

  And unwanted?

  It’s hard to believe, considering how much… peace there was in our home. How normal things were, despite the mafia aspect of our lives. My father doted on my mother, and I suppose there were times that I picked up on the fact that she didn’t love him as much as he did her, but that was always the end of things for me—as much.

  She was always well-dressed and polished, always conscious of her appearance, so I just assumed she was less open with her feelings.

  Not that she didn’t have them.

  As if answering the question I haven’t spoken, my mother shakes her head.

  “No. I didn’t love him. Ever. My father promised me that I would learn to love him after a while, that those sorts of things always worked out. But I never did. Sometimes I imagined that I hated him.” Her expression grows thoughtful, and my stomach turns at the casual way she talks about despising my dead father. “I wanted to be in control. Not just an obedient mafia wife, always turning a blind eye to her husband’s absences, his control over the money, the marriage, the house.”

  “Dad wasn’t like that,” I blurt, anger rising up in me. “He would’ve given you anything you wanted. He would’ve let you have a hand in his work if you wanted to. He loved you!”

  She gives me a condescending look, like I couldn’t possibly understand. “I wasn’t interested in his love. And I wasn’t interested in having a hand in his work. I wanted my own empire. So I decided to change my fate. To ‘die’ and rise again—on my own terms, this time.”

  I swallow. “The car accident… whose body was it?”

  Camilla smiles, like she’s enjoying watching me try to piece together the truth. “It wasn’t an accident, you know that by now. And the body? No one important. Just a necessary sacrifice if I wanted to make my ‘death’ believable. I planned and planned. You don’t know how long I waited, Grace.” She shakes her head ruefully. “You don’t know how much I
suffered for years and years, being tied down to your father like that, wanting to live my own life. To control my own destiny.”

  She speaks as if she’s asking for sympathy, but I don’t feel anything but hatred welling up in my chest. I thought I couldn’t hate her any more than I already did, but I was wrong.

  Dead fucking wrong.

  I have plenty of room left to despise her.

  “I was delayed longer than I wanted,” she says absently, as if remembering something hardly important to the story. “I never let your father touch me. I hated it when he touched me, it made my skin crawl. But one night when I was drunk and miserable, I let him. A month later, I realized I had a problem. I fixed it.”

  My head spins as I begin to realize how she works. Camilla sees a problem… and fixes it. Cruelly and murderously, she fixes it.

  “It was too young to tell the gender,” she explains. “Don’t worry yourself with thinking you had a sibling you never got to meet.”

  “You… fucking bitch,” I say, my voice rising. It’s all I can manage, and I grope for words as they fail me. I know it’s probably not smart to call her a bitch when dozens of her men are itching to pull a gun on me, but I can’t help it. “You’re a monster. You kill without thought—”

  “I kill when and what is necessary.” She cuts me off, her voice sharp. “Isn’t that what your father and all of his mafia brothers did? What Damian Novak did? I’ve played the same game they do, Grace, and I’ve played it better than them.”

  The way she talks about the awful shit she’s done—as if she’s proud of it, as if she’s been waiting all these years to tell me, wanting me to rejoice with her—is fucking sickening. It makes me want to retch, to turn away and hurl up everything in my stomach onto the concrete.