by SE Chardou
Devil’s Pawn
A Dance With The Devil Novel
SE Chardou
Devil’s Pawn
A Dance With The Devil Novel #2
Dance With The Devil Trilogy
Copyright © 2015 Selene Chardou
All Rights Reserved.
Cover Artist: Cover It Designs (http://coveritdesigns.net/)
ISBN: 978-1-3119-0808-7
Publisher: Midnight Engel Press, LLC
License Notes:
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Publisher’s Note:
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without express written permission from the publisher. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, resold (as a “used” e-book), stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.
Published Novels by SE Chardou
Dance With The Devil Trilogy (Romantic Suspense/Contemporary Romance)
Devil’s Prey
Devil’s Pawn
Published Novels by Blanche Hardin
Break Her Trilogy (Dark Romance/Psychological Suspense)
Resist
Novels by Selene Chardou
The Rough Riders MC Series (Romantic Suspense/Contemporary Romance)
Ride to Temptation (Cillian & Gisela)
Ride to Chaos (Trey & Kyra)
Ride to Vengeance (Ronan & Naomi)
DC Affairs (New Adult/Contemporary Romance/Politics)
Book 1
The Covet Duet (New Adult/Contemporary Romance/Women’s Literature)
Covet
Love Unexpected Series (Romantic Suspense/Contemporary Romance)
Love TKO (Torin Duffy’s story)
Scarlet Fever Series (New Adult/Contemporary Romance/Women’s Literature)
Rock My Heart
The Will to Love
One More Night Trilogy (New Adult/Contemporary Romance/Women’s Literature)
Falling Into Lust
Falling Into Us
Falling Into Love
The Lovers Duet (New Adult/Romantic Mystery & Suspense/Contemporary Romance)
Out From Under
In Too Deep
Novels & Novellas by Elle Chardou
The Ties That Bind Trilogy (Contemporary Romance / Romantic Suspense with erotic and BDSM elements)
Killing Time
Killing Inhibitions (Re-issue Spring of 2015)
Killing Me Softly (Re-issue Summer of 2015)
Seasons of Love & Lust Series (Contemporary Romance / Contemporary Women/ New Adult)
A Summer to Remember
Undertow Series (Contemporary Romance / Contemporary Women / New Adult)
Undertow
The Atonement Series (Contemporary Romance / Contemporary Women)
Atonement, A Novel
Only Love
The Vamp Saga (Paranormal Romance / Urban Fantasy)
Immortal Lair: A Novella (A Prequel to Mortal Death)
The Hart Family Saga (Paranormal Romance / Urban Fantasy)
Hart Attack
Superstar Marriages Novella Series (Contemporary Romance)
Lara & the City of Angels
The Supernaturals Novella Series (Paranormal Romance / Urban Fantasy)
Darkness Rising
The Dawn of Darkness
Darkness Awakened
The Cloak of Darkness
The Theft of Darkness
The Plague (Dystopian Romance / Horror)
Beginnings: Book I
Lies have nearly destroyed me. The absolute truth is what drives him.
I’ve sworn allegiance to the only family I have left. He sides with my family only until he realizes he still has one of his own.
I have few people left I can still trust. He refuses to allow anyone inside his own private hell except for me.
The only way to live is to use the power we now possess.
I am torn because I have committed the ultimate sin, and yet there is still a greater truth I have yet to find out.
What do you do when the truth could destroy the one person you have placed your trust in only to find out they have deceived you all along?
Magnolia Abandonato and Maksymilian Gillespie both understand what true horror can do to a person. They’ve lived it and now, as trusted members of the Abandonato Mafia, they have come into their own. No longer on the run from Dimitri Koslakov and free from the threat of death, they take their place in one of the most powerful Mafia families in the world.
However, Mags has a deadly secret only a few people are privy to and that person does not include her fiancé. As they become comfortable in their new positions of power, she can no longer keep quiet about what she’s done.
As they both make their bloody mark in the new world they find themselves in, a battle is brewing but it will be fought inside the very family they have embraced as their own.
A decision is slowly approaching and Mags will have to decide whether she will seek vengeance or quietly move on and embrace the Gillespie family. Being an assassin is easy but plotting the murder of one of their own might be their undoing.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Novels
Blurb
Dedication
Devil’s Pawn Playlist
Prologue - Mags
Part One – The Execution
Chapter One - Mags
Chapter Two – Max
Chapter Three – Mags
Chapter Four – Max
Chapter Five – Mags
Chapter Six – Max
Chapter Seven – Mags
Part Two – The Aftermath
Chapter Eight - Max
Chapter Nine - Mags
Chapter Ten - Max
Chapter Eleven - Mags
Part Three – The Job
Chapter Twelve – Max
Chapter Thirteen – Mags
Chapter Fourteen – Max
Chapter Fifteen – Mags
Epilogue
Excerpt from Beyond the Pale
About The Author
Stalk SE Chardou
Future Novels
Dedication
This novel is dedicated to my daughters; my editor, Juli, and my best gal pals, Dusty Rose, Needa Warrant, and Sonja H. Be strong ladies—you already know women can do anything!
Devil’s Pawn Playlist
“Love Is Blindness” – U2
“Ultraviolence” – Lana Del Rey
“Sound of Madness” – Shinedown
“Gunshot” – Lykke Li
“Till It’s Gone” - Yelawolf
“Getting Away With Mu
rder” – Papa Roach
“The Troubles” – U2 (featuring Lykke Li)
“My Disaster” – Seether
“Carnivore” - Starset
“Guilty” – Gravity Kills
“Moth” – HELLYEAH
“Fear” – Disturbed
“Can You Feel My Heart?” – Bring Me The Horizon
“Deal With The Devil” – Pop Evil
“That Day” – Nonpoint
“This Is A Trick” - +++ (Crosses)
“Set Me On Fire” – Flyleaf
“The Enemy” – Saliva
“Monster You Made” – Pop Evil
“Sick Like Me” – In This Moment
“Bad Company” – Five Finger Death Punch
“Snuff” – Slipknot
“Killing Strangers” – Marilyn Manson
“Stars” – Sixx:A.M.
Listen to the complete Devil's Pawn Playlist on Spotify!
“The devil changed me and he released me. I am no longer prey but I am a pawn in a game that can never be won.” – Magnolia Abandonato
Prologue
Mags
I ached.
Every part of my body hurt, but most of all, that place between my legs where my mother told me no man should ever enter without certain feelings involved.
Did she mean love?
Hate?
Revenge?
What exactly?
The very act of being deflowered hadn’t involved love but it certainly had involved hate and revenge.
My captors wanted to punish me and they had done so with flourish and abandonment.
I could stop the tears from pouring during the atrocity enacted on my body by simply shutting myself off and detaching myself from the moment. I wasn’t there and this wasn’t happening to me.
Afterward, as I lay on the bed in the bedroom that belonged to me, I couldn’t. Tears flowed down my cheeks, unabated and no matter how much I tore at my tender flesh with my fingernails, I couldn’t stop crying or shaking.
Was I no longer that beautiful young girl my parents cherished?
My violation had both soiled and tainted me.
Not to men.
I couldn’t give a fuck about what that sickening male species thought.
They were the ones who’d inflicted the pain on my thirteen-year-old body.
I knew I stood on a precarious precipice.
I could allow them to use and abuse me—to take advantage of me over and over again. I could become a shell of my former self and live in my head.
Essentially, I could cease to be what made me the person I am.
Or I could fight and demand I received something in return for their defilement and lack of respect for my personal wellbeing.
The second option seemed much better than the first.
I was not only a Reynolds.
They were tough, strong stock. Made of the blood from Celts, Slavic and Teutonic people. None of the ethnicities that had ever shied away from a good knockdown drag out fight. They were the perfect stock to be used and abused because they could take it and always come out stronger than before.
I was also an Abandonato too.
Although not one hundred percent Italian on my mother’s side, most of her relatives had been Austrian on that side of the family branch. Austrians were strong, worked hard and always managed to get ahead. Not to mention all the fierceness inside of me from the other half that didn’t have a last name I could attach to my own.
Before my maternal grandmother had become an Abandonato, she’d been a Renault. French Creole from the heart of Louisiana, born and bred from tough, unrelenting people mixed with blood from the immigrants who’d managed the seas; the native people who’d been here long before the white man had bothered to show his face on this blessed and cursed land; the African slaves sold by their own kind often for pennies on the dollar.
Yes, I had a very fucking unbeatable bloodline and I would hang on to that memory and hold it close to my heart.
I wasn’t a quitter and I most certainly wouldn’t give up without a fight.
I drifted in an out of consciousness, my mind playing tricks on me. I wished for that Calgon moment to be taken away and immersed in a bubble of positive thoughts, illusions and dreams.
Before I settled into a restless sleep, the door to my room opened and I couldn’t pretend to be asleep. I didn’t care what they did to me. They couldn’t hurt me any more than they’d already done but that was before I realized situations could always be worse than they were.
If this was my living hell then I’d barely skimmed the first circle of Dante’s Inferno and there were eight other realms I could pass through that would make me wish I wasn’t human.
For now, this was the most degrading and awful situation I could ever face.
I clamped my legs shut and buried my broken body underneath the covers. Hopefully, I would become invisible and they wouldn’t inflict any more damage on me. I’d been through enough for one night—surely they would show me mercy?
It wasn’t them.
It was him.
Although he only watched from afar, he’d become my guardian angel and as long as he was around, which wasn’t often enough for my liking, they wouldn’t hurt me too much.
“Nothing that will leave any physical scars,” he’d told them repeatedly. “She must remain immaculate and pure from the outside. The scars you leave on her soul are of no importance to Dimitri.”
I slowly lowered the blanket as he sat on my bed, the weight from his body leaning toward me. Instead of touching me, he stroked my hair and whispered sweet words to me in a language I couldn’t understand.
“Ty v bezopasnosti, moy angel,” he said in a soft voice. “When the time comes, I will save you—not only to ease my guilty conscience but because you’ve touched me in a way no one has. And I fear no one ever will. Your suffering will not be in vain, eto torzhestvennoye obet ya obeshchayu vam.”
He kissed my forehead and stood before he left as quietly as he’d come and stole away as quietly as a thief in the night.
Or maybe more like an angel with dirty wings.
He certainly was the closest I would ever find myself to divinity.
His strong physique and quiet nature suggested a man, not a boy. God help me but I think I was starting to fall for this man who made empty promises in a language beyond my comprehension but he allowed me to hope and pray one day I might find redemption…
I startled awake.
My body, soaked with sweat, acclimating myself quickly to my surroundings. I was no longer in Vegas but Miami. I’d come here for a specific purpose and after checking into a five-star hotel in Boca Raton, I’d decided to sleep for a few hours.
The artificial chill in the room completely galvanized me and made me realize how cold it was for me to be sweating at all.
I stood and threw the covers off my body before I strolled to the bathroom and started the shower.
I had more than enough rest to prepare for tonight.
I would make myself no less than stunning for that evening was one of celebration.
Finally, I could take revenge upon the one person who’d set this whole twisted plan into motion.
The bitch that’d sold out my parents because she could.
Mila Koslakova.
The fact she was Maksymilian’s mother—the man I loved and my secret guardian angel—had absolutely no reflection upon my actions.
He would be upset and he would grieve but I wasn’t asking him to endure anything I hadn’t. At least he was a grown adult. I’d lost my parents as a child.
No one said you’d ever be able to make an omelet without cracking a few eggs.
Unless you had Egg Beaters.
I considered myself my fiancé’s shield.
His Egg Beaters if you like.
He didn’t have the balls to kill her so I would do the deed myself.
And I would enjoy every minute it took to watch her die.
This, I had absolutely no doubt about.
In my mind, she was dead already.
Part One
The Execution
Autumn, 2014
Chapter One
Mags
Miami was alive and sparkled like a bright gorgeous diamond most weren’t aware was actually an expensive piece of cubic zirconia.
It was a vibrant and beautiful city that seemed to be cousins to both Las Vegas and Los Angeles—the residents never slept and there was always something going on.
I strolled out of The Setai in a scarlet lace dress, which came to mid-thigh and black pair of Christian Louboutin stilettos. A personal driver—arranged by my uncle, Angelo Abandonato—waited for me. The chauffeur bowed slightly as he opened the back door to the black Cadillac Escalade and helped me inside before he closed the door.
“Nice of you to make it on time,” a deep, sexy voice that would give Vin Diesel a run for his money greeted me.
I turned toward Vincent “Shadow” Abandonato and smiled beguilingly. “My goodness, you sure do take the fun out my grand plan to cut a bitch.”
My new co-worker smirked, his brilliant blue watchful eyes an arresting color that I’d somehow remembered but couldn’t place. “Listen, Angelo has every faith in you, Magnolia. I’m merely here to make sure everything goes smoothly. I never knew my real parents—he and Rose have always treated me like a son. They even bestowed me with gift of their surname. He doesn’t want anything happening to his favorite niece after what she suffered through. Do you blame him?”
“No, I don’t.” I shook my head, knowing we were no longer talking about the current situation but my past.