We stopped in front of the sleek, white marble bar top. “For the lady?”
“Milk,” Tank said with a grin.
I smacked him on the arm. Not an inch of fat on him, was there? “I’ll have white wine—”
Tank’s sigh interrupted me.
“What’s your deal, dude?” I elbowed him harder.
“Typical. Perfect daughter. Perfect, innocent little…girl gets boring white wine. I think I’d shit myself if you got anything harder than—”
“Whiskey, neat.” I changed my mind and then looked behind him.
“Why the hell are you staring at my ass?” Tank shoved me lightly.
“What?” I laughed. “You said you’d shit yourself. I’m waiting for the storm.”
“Disgusting.” He sighed, despite the cute bartender hiding a smile.
I grabbed my small glass and lifted it in cheers to Tank. “You’re the one who said it.”
“See…terrifying,” he mumbled. “And as loath as I am to admit it, I’ll have what the small child next to me is illegally drinking.”
I stuck out my tongue. “I’m not a small child, you asshat. Oh, also, he’s on the Abandonato payroll. He checks my ID, he gets checked out”—I paused for drama— “of life.”
Tank took his drink and lifted a brow. “That true?”
“I don’t ask questions. Whatever the princess wants, the princess gets,” he answered wisely and then nodded his head. “Cheers, Miss Abandonato.”
“Cheers, cute bartender. Cheers.” I lifted my drink in the air and then clinked it with Tank’s as we both walked off toward the rest of my cousins. They were all sitting around with numerous bottles of wine, looking as relaxed as I suddenly felt with the whiskey burning down my throat.
Maksim and Izzy were clearly still on a break.
Though I had insider information that Chase had threatened to turn Maksim inside out if he kept sneaking into the house, a lot more went down that nobody knew.
Not my story to tell.
And I had to take sides—naturally, I took Izzy’s since we were good friends. I couldn’t ask for a better cousin.
Then there was Valerian and Violet close by, him in his tux, her in her dress as they slow danced by the group.
Serena, my other cousin, and her boy toy, soon-to-be fiancé, Junior. He had her tucked against him as he played with her hair.
And then there was Ash.
My favorite.
His expression dark, circles under his eyes—I was afraid the most for him.
Not of him.
King kept trying to get him involved in the conversation, but it was like every time he said something, it pissed Ash off more, and the alcohol went down his throat like water.
I normally wasn’t with those I referred to as the older cousins. The Five Families all had a ton of kids, and they kind of arranged us in order from the bigs to the littles. Until you turned eighteen, you weren’t allowed to hang out with the bigs because, according to all the dads, they were a bad influence—bloodthirsty, beautiful, scary, loyal, and sometimes, when necessary, mean.
But I was just shy of eighteen now.
I was ready to join.
They’d always tried to include me. I mean, it wasn’t like I was a stranger, but I could tell they tried to censor themselves around me. Case in point, the minute Junior saw me, I knew he was going to pull both hands away from Serena’s boobs, and she’d stop massaging the obvious bulge in his pants with her one fingertip.
I may not be deadly.
But I noticed everything.
And they were seconds away from sneaking off and screwing against the nearest hard surface.
Tank walked in silence next to me. “Your cousins are all crazy.”
“Yup.”
“I like it.”
“Me, too.” I smiled up at him. “It keeps things entertaining.”
“You may be small,”—he wrapped an arm around me—“but I’m glad you’re finally going to be at the big kids’ table, Tiny.”
“Awww, Tank, that was very drunkenly heartfelt. Thank you. And might I add I’m very glad you didn’t shit yourself earlier? Not a good look if you wanna pick up one of the bridesmaids.”
“Rightttttt.” He laughed. “Because the one in her sixties was really doing it for me.”
“That’s a cousin from Italy. Word to the wise, if she makes a beeline for you, cover your dick. She likes to pull things.”
“Dicks don’t like being pulled.”
I put my hand on his shoulder as we got closer. “Exactly.”
We shared a smile, and then I heard my name.
What?
My name?
Who was talking about me?
“I’m just saying, I like the group as it is. Now, all the young ones are growing up, and it fucking blowwwwsssss.” Serena leaned her head back against Junior’s chest. “I mean, we can’t even cuss around them!”
“But Kartini isn’t so bad.” Izzy came to my defense. “I mean, she’s gorgeous, knows how to pack a punch, and is super sarcastic.”
Ash snorted out a laugh.
“What?” Izzy smacked him on the back of the head.
“I think she’d cry if she saw a dick, lives to please dear old dad like a pathetic little child who needs a pat on the head and a glass of milk before bed, and if I hear her call him ‘Daddy’ one more time in that syrupy-sweet voice of hers with those fucking dimples, I’m going to lose my shit.”
“Ash,” Junior warned. “Don’t be a dick. Meaning, don’t be yourself.”
“What?” Ash was clearly drunk. “She doesn’t belong here, not with us, not ever. God, can you imagine if she saw half the shit we did? She’d run to Sergio in a heartbeat with crocodile tears in her eyes, and we’d all get the shit beat out of us.”
“She wouldn’t tell.” Izzy glared at her brother. “God, you’re even more of an ass than I thought.”
“She would.” Ash just kept talking. “I’ll say it again, Kartini can’t hang. She doesn’t belong here, and—”
Tank cleared his throat.
I looked down at the shoes I’d had trouble walking in.
And, suddenly, felt like an imposter.
A big, giant fake.
A little girl playing dress-up in her mom’s closet, holding her dad’s whiskey and pretending she knew the horrors of the world when she’d only ever been shielded from them.
Every single cousin gaped at me, most likely to see if I’d cry or just yell at them. Instead, I handed Tank my drink with a shaking hand, kicked off my stilettos, and threw both of them directly at Ash’s drunken face before I turned and ran toward the shore.
Fighting ensued.
Tank’s voice rose.
I tried to catch my breath, but it was like there was no air for me to suck in, as if someone had rid the universe of all of it and left me with lungs that wouldn’t work.
I stumbled onto the small shoreline and watched the waves of Puget Sound wash across the rocky shore.
“Hey.” One of the guys from before, the blond one, approached. “I’m Jenner.”
He held out his hand.
I stared at it and then finally shook it. “Kartini.”
“I know.”
“Apparently, everyone does.” I crossed my arms.
“You alone?”
I frowned. “Uh, no. There’re like a billion people at this wedding.”
He chuckled and tossed back the rest of his beer then set the bottle on the shore. “Nah, I mean out here…”
Goosebumps rose all over my body when I realized just how far I’d run—the music would drown out my screams. I’d left my heels, which meant I only had the knife I kept strapped to my thigh. And even then, he’d see me reach for it.
“I’m waiting for my boyfriend,” I lied. One thing about the mafia, the parents taught us how to lie very well at an early age. “He was grabbing us more drinks. So, basically, that’s a no. I will not make out with you, Jenner.”
&nb
sp; He threw back his head and laughed as if it were the funniest thing in the world. “I heard you were cute…pristine…untouched, but I had no idea how funny.”
“I’m hilarious,” I deadpanned. “Now, leave before my boyfriend rips your head from your body.”
“I wonder…” He started to circle me.
“Fine, I’ll play.” I crossed my arms. “What? What do you wonder?”
His fingertip traced across my shoulder and around my neck to my other bare shoulder. My navy-blue strapless dress suddenly felt like too little clothing as he moved to stand behind me. “I wonder how good it’ll feel to rip this dress from your body while nobody hears you scream.”
I tried not to shake. “Your funeral, Jenner, your funeral.”
“You don’t have a boyfriend,” he whispered in my ear, placing his hands on my shoulders and gripping them tightly. “And nobody’s going to hear because you won’t be alive when it’s happening. Think of it as a parting gift. That I’ll kill you before I fuck you.”
My legs wobbled. “Go home, Jenner, you’re clearly drunk, and only sociopaths are into necrophilia.”
His dark chuckle wasn’t helpful at all as his hands continued roaming from my shoulders down my arms. “I think I can be into anything if it means I take out Sergio Abandonato’s favorite daughter.”
“So, this is a hit?” I hoped I sounded curious as I slid a shaking hand down the front of my dress and slowly started to hike it up.
“Imagine when your daddy finds you on the beach, dress ripped, virginity stolen—”
“Then don’t let me die a virgin. If you’re gonna kill me, you may as well send me off with a nice screw. That is unless your dick’s tiny. And if that’s the case, no thank you.”
He shoved me forward. “You little bitch!”
I laughed, hoping to taunt him. “Oh, wow, so it is small? Is this your kink, then? You have to wait until the girls are dead so they don’t point and laugh?”
“Shut your mouth!” he roared as I continued lifting my dress, inviting him to watch. His eyes were furious, but his jaw went slack when he saw what I was doing.
“Like what you see, tiny dick?”
“Say it again, and I won’t do it.”
I pouted. “Fine. Tell me how much you want me, gorgeous.”
He grunted. “Better.”
Men were idiots.
I sauntered toward him as he jerked off his tie then pulled his black trousers loose, taking himself in hand with a moan.
I nearly barfed as I smiled up at him. “That’s hot…”
“You’re not…”
“Yeah, too bad I’m about to be dead…cold…”
“I have to.” He hissed out a grunt as I moved toward him and then gripped him with my hand, shoving his away. “Oh, shit…”
“Glad to be proven wrong…” I whispered. One hand worked him, and the other finally reached the holster around my upper thigh. I slowly slid my knife out.
His eyes popped open.
I gripped him harder.
He stumbled forward just as I pushed the tip of my blade toward his stomach and shoved, using the momentum of his body to get it in deep.
“Son of a bitch!” He slammed me away from him, my knife still sticking out of his gut as blood stained his hands. “I’m gonna kill you!”
He grabbed me by the hair. I kicked him in the thigh and then kneed him in his engorged dick before he slammed me back against the rocks.
He jerked out the knife and came at me.
I jumped to my feet and knew in that moment that every moment spent training with my dad at five in the morning and learning how to defend, how to kill, came down to this man and my life.
His smile flashed before my eyes.
My cousins’ hurtful words came next.
And then Tank, calling me “little girl” as I shot toward Jenner and flipped myself around to his back, putting him in a chokehold as he tried to slam his body back against the rocks.
With each slam of rock digging into my skin, I held tighter.
And I screamed.
I screamed until my voice was hoarse.
And until he stopped moving.
And then I screamed some more, only to hear Maksim’s voice.
“No, get away. I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!” I yelled.
“Tiny!” Maksim peeled me away from Jenner and held me in his arms, bloody. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s me, it’s just me…calm down, he’s dead…”
“H-he’s dead? Are you sure?” I was shaking like a leaf as he held me close in his arms. “Are you sure?”
Maksim squeezed me harder and whispered, “You were fucking brilliant, Tiny.”
Blood stained my hands.
Tears stained my cheeks.
I would have scars forever on the inside.
And on my back.
And I knew, in that moment, that I’d just gone from sitting at the kid’s table to being made.
All before my time.
I’d killed Jenner.
And part of my innocence had died with him.
Chapter Two
Kartini
Present Day
“You look like shit.” Izzy plopped down on my bed with her phone and yawned. How she managed to look completely put-together in nothing but knee-high boots and a long sweatshirt was truly beyond my comprehension. She made effortless look chic and flawless.
“Thanks, bitch.” I smacked her on the ass then studied myself in the mirror. Sometimes, I still saw the blood on my hands.
Other times, I woke up with a choking sensation as Jenner promised to screw me after he killed me.
The worst was when I heard his dark chuckle, his voice still whispering my name as if he had a right to even conjure it from the pit of Hell.
Therapy hadn’t worked. Thanks, Dad. At least you tried.
And acting out was the only thing that made me feel…alive.
Less dead.
Less like a disappointment.
God, that had been the worst day.
Truly the absolute worst of my existence.
And it wasn’t just Jenner’s death.
It was that he’d told. Maksim.
He’d told my dad. My hero. Mine.
Maksim had brought me to him.
No longer the perfect princess but broken, bruised, battered, used, even though my virginity was still intact at seventeen—yay, me.
I couldn’t scratch the image of leaving him on that dance floor and then returning a failure from my mind. Even though he’d said he was proud of me, I could see the sadness in his eyes.
And it wasn’t because I’d lived.
It was because he knew what I would have to live with for the rest of my life, and the fact that he knew only made it feel worse, like swallowing fire and staring at water but not being able to reach it.
Since then, I couldn’t even look at him, my hero. Something had shifted, like I’d suddenly been altered, turned into this unsure villain despite my dad’s encouragement to defend myself, kill, whatever was necessary.
And that’s when I realized it.
Something I hadn’t seen.
The one thing that was broken inside me.
My confidence.
Because all my life, my confidence had been in my Family, in my father, in our name, in what we did.
And in one moment, one horrible person had shattered that.
And no matter what I did…
How many times I changed my hair…
Took shots of whiskey…
Got high like I actually enjoyed it when it only ever made me feel numb to the darkness that always tried to close in on me when I was by myself…
I was sick.
Broken.
And I felt stupid that it was over something so…ridiculously dumb when you compared it to everyone else in our Family.
I mean, my cousins Junior and Serena were willing to die for each other.
Valerian had an entirely different id
entity and then seduced Violet out of pure love and need to keep her safe, only after seducing her as, um… well, not a nice guy.
And don’t even get me started on Ash and Annie. The hate and the love were almost equal and yet it worked, you know, after he got over blaming her for his fianceé’s death.
I groaned.
See?
I had no reason for the baggage.
No reason for comparing my story to my cousins’—comparing my suffering.
And yet, there the baggage sat, unchecked, dangling from my arms and legs.
Izzy was quiet for way too long.
Had I been in my head—yup, I had been because her crystal-blue eyes stared at me in comfort and support, through my reflection in the mirror.
“What do you see?” I asked, crossing my arms across my black Nike crop top. It left a few inches of skin visible before meeting my white, high-waisted leggings and blue Jordan high-tops.
“Welllll…” Izzy winked. “I think you look hot. But what’s more than that…” Her face sobered briefly. “I think…no matter what you look like, you’ll always feel lost.”
Her eyes flickered away while mine turned down to my feet, to my brand-new expensive shoes, something that anyone nearly nineteen would kill for. And they were just shoes, footwear that hid something that was dying inside me.
Something that needed to be set free.
Something I couldn’t identify.
Couldn’t save.
“Look…” Izzy was suddenly behind me, her chin resting on my shoulder. “I love you, no matter what, Tiny. But I know something happened. I wish you’d trust me enough to tell me. The point in all of this is to find something that truly makes you happy. That makes…” Her eyes darted away and then back. “That makes you want to live. Do you think…you have that something?”
“You’re just a little girl!”
“Am not!” I stomped on Tank’s foot and then stormed off.
With a grin I hadn’t felt in a year, I looked up into the mirror and smirked. “I think I know what would make me happy.”
“Me?”
“No.”
“Good, because that smile was starting to make me feel like I needed a security detail and an AK-47.”
I laughed even harder. “He’ll be fine.”
“He?” Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh, wait, we’re torturing someone?”
Mafia King: A Mafia Royals Novella Page 3