A beautiful, perfect hand.
Elation runs through me. In that moment I know exactly why Daddy gambles. It’s impossible not to love this, not to become this wild triumphant creature. Intellect may make us human, but this desperate desire for risk keeps us animal.
Damon’s eyes glint dark in the lamplight. “You look pleased,” he says.
And he doesn’t look worried.
Because he wants me to win? Or because he knows he can beat me.
I put down my cards. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t react beyond a genial nod of his head, acknowledging a good hand. “Well played, baby genius. Not good enough, but still. A very good showing.”
One thud in my chest. Another. Painfully slow, time crawling now.
“How?”
He tosses down his cards with casual superiority. A royal flush. The only thing that could have beaten my cards, almost. And nearly impossible. The odds…
God, the odds.
Randomness doesn’t play favorites. That ace of spades is as likely to appear as any other card. The king, the queen. Except when you put the odds together, they multiply. They become infinitely smaller. Like in calculus, they approach zero—never quite reaching it.
My breath comes short. “You cheated.”
He laughs. “How do you know? Did you see me do something?”
My mind races, a hundred numbers swirling around, a thousand of them clamoring for attention. It’s really the simplest one that has the answer. The cards that we played. My hand of nothing, queen high. His three of a kind, queens.
“The queens. They’ve all been played.”
Which means the one sitting in front of us right now, it doesn’t belong in the deck. Whether he modified the deck beforehand or whether he used sleight of hand to insert it, that queen doesn’t belong in this deck. And I’m willing to bet the entire hand is fake.
“I don’t see how you can prove it,” he says, his voice mocking.
I stand up. “If you’re cheating the game doesn’t count.”
He stands too, reaching for his shirt. Putting it back on, like armor. Covering up the scars of the past and all that beautiful vulnerability. “Oh, the game most definitely counts. Your father is forfeit. And you, my sweet Penny, are free to go.”
* * *
I hope you loved reading Damon and Penny’s emotional book. Read the conclusion of their duet with the epic full-length novel THE QUEEN. Find out what happens when in this game of lies and loyalty, of betrayal and power.
Damon Scott is my own personal dragon, the fight I’ve always lost, the secret hope of my heart. And he needs my help right now. Only my mind can solve the puzzle. Only my presence can keep him sane as the city fights against him.
Only my heart can unlock a man with such a tragic past.
This is my final gamble, with everything at stake. One last game to win a future for both of us. And a love strong enough to break the city apart.
ONE CLICK THE QUEEN NOW >
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DARK MAFIA PRINCE
ANNIKA MARTIN
I remember him before he was a monster. Before they told us the prince was dead.
My father destroyed Aleksio’s family when he was just a boy. Now Aleksio’s back, beautiful and brutal in his Armani suit, wrapping my hair in his fist. He’s my captor, my tormenter…and I’m my father’s only weakness.
“I’m the most dangerous enemy you’ll ever have,” he says, “Because every time you look at me, you see somebody good.”
But I can’t help it. I remember when Aleksio was my only friend. I remember when they they lowered his tiny casket into the ground, and how I cried when they lied to us and told us the prince was dead.
Chapter One
Aleksio
Most people who see the ancient cigarette burn on my arm assume it’s from somebody who was trying to hurt me.
They couldn’t be more wrong.
My cigarette burn is from somebody who was trying to protect me.
It’s been years since it actually hurt. Even if you poke at it, there’s no feeling.
Which goes to show, if you mess something up enough, it loses its ability to feel.
That’s true of skin, and it’s also true of people.
Still, it gets irritated from the kind of hand-to-hand fighting I’ve been doing today. Like a grouchy childhood friend.
Hiding in the gloomy boathouse, I yank the folded handkerchief from my front pocket, loosen my cuff links, and tie the thing around my forearm, making a protective wrap.
My phone vibrates. It’s my brother, Viktor, letting me know another attack is coming—Nikolla and his top guys will rush down from the main house now.
It’ll be bad.
I don’t care; I’ll do what it takes to find our baby brother. He’s out there and he needs us.
I’ll burn the world down to find him.
Burning down the world would actually be easier than doing what we’re doing—attacking Aldo Nikolla.
Aldo Nikolla is the boogie man and Godzilla, rolled into one. The most dangerous Albanian mafia kingpin who ever walked the earth. And his summer residence is guarded better than Fort Knox.
You gotta do what you gotta do.
I fix my cuffs, let my Sig hang loose in my hand.
The hitman who rescued me from Aldo Nikolla when I was a boy never let me forget the mafia traditions—the suits, the codes, cuff links just so.
The sleeping king, he always called me. You will gather your brothers and take back your kingdom from Nikolla.
All my life, this was the plan—find my brothers so we can take our kingdom, our vengeance.
I focus on the pile of bodies in the dark corner. Six guys shot up with enough tranquilizer to sleep for a day. Still, I think they might wake up. Because they’re Aldo Nikolla’s soldiers. Like he’s all-powerful.
It doesn’t help that the hitman who rescued me tried to stop this attack. Don’t do it—you’re only two brothers. All three brothers must be together.
The three brothers must be together. You are too early.
Well, priorities change. Our baby brother needs us.
The last time I was this close to kingpin Aldo Nikolla was the night I got my burn.
I was nine. Konstantin—that’s the hitman who rescued me—and I had been on the run two months by then. I had a fever. We crashed in an abandoned building—Kansas City, I think. I woke up in Konstantin’s arms as he sprinted past caged-up storefronts and turned into a dank alley. He had a disguise stashed there—a dirty wig and lipstick and clothes. Konstantin did a quick change into a bag lady. It was a disguise no self-respecting Black Lion clan member would ever adopt—that had been the genius of it.
A few terse words from him and I made myself invisible under the pile of clothes next to him, eyes and lips squeezed tight. Old Konstantin lit up a cigarette as they approached. If you knew him—and these killers knew him well—it was the opposite of his way. Konstantin never smoked.
We could hear Aldo Nikolla and Bloody Lazarus and the rest of them going at the bums on the next block. I pressed my forehead against Konstantin’s massive thigh, hiding, as the footsteps slowed in front of us.
One of Aldo’s soldiers kicked Konstantin and asked whether he’d seen a man and a boy. Konstantin screeched back in crazy old lady gibberish—real Academy Award shit.
That’s when the old man moved his hand—just enough to press the cigarette to my arm. Just pressed that thing right in there.
He didn’t know he was burning me. He had no idea. He was trying to save us, screeching in that bag lady getup.
I forced myself to stay still—any movement would give me away.
So I let it burn, let the pain turn my brain red with ice. The cigarette had burned through whatever polyester thing I was under, and I’ll never forget the smell. I let the ember sink deep into my arm like a blistering sun, praying he’d move his hand on his
own, but he didn’t. All his attention was on screeching at the soldiers, putting them on the defensive.
Keeping us alive.
I let the pain be my teacher. The pain taught me I could survive, that I could endure anything. That I would endure and fight another day, just like Konstantin always said. “Mbreti gjumi—the sleeping king. You live to fight another day.”
But that day has never quite come. Konstantin wants everything perfectly in place first. All three Dragusha brothers united. Legions of men behind us. They will fall into line when they see the Dragusha brothers have made their way back to each other.
Our baby brother is in too much danger for us to wait. He has no idea the danger he’s in.
We’re coming for you, Kiro, I whisper into the night.
The next guard strolls in the far door, heading for my side of the line of boat slips. This guy’s not thinking about who might be lurking in the best hide-and-seek spot in the place—he’s thinking about the lunch spread that’s supposedly waiting for him on the upper level. Viktor and I took over the texting between the guards as part of the attack. Like taking over their hive brain.
It’s true what they say—the fastest way to a man is through his stomach.
As soon as he’s in my orbit, I lunge for him and twist away his weapon. I choke him out before he can make a sound, and then I jab the needle into his neck and he’s down.
Some of the soldiers are surprisingly easy to take. But then again, all these guys were suckling at the tit of the Xbox while I was getting beaten to a bloody pulp by Konstantin in our endless training sessions.
My guys are up at the house. The idea is to flush everyone my way. We’ve been silent so far. As long as nobody shouts or shoots, we keep our element of surprise.
When Aldo Nikolla senses trouble, he’ll come down with Lazarus and leave Mira at the house, where he’ll think she’s protected.
She’s his one weakness.
I’ve played this day out in my imagination so many times. The horror on Nikolla’s face when he sees I’m back—Aleksio Dragusha all grown up and in his face.
The shock when he realizes I’ve reunited with my brother Viktor. Because hey, you’d think that when you send a toddler off to a Moscow orphanage with no identification, he’d stay there, right? Wouldn’t you think?
Surprise, motherfucker!
No way will Mira recognize me as the boy she goofed off with a lifetime ago, lying on a soft sea of grass in front of this wedding cake of a castle, clouds like seahorses.
I’m worlds different from the good-natured mafia prince she knew. I’m pretty much a different species. Because when you’re hunted every day of your life like a rat in a pit of vipers, everything inside you changes. You develop talents no sane person would want. You lose your humanity.
She thinks we’re dead, anyway. Everybody thinks that we three Dragusha brothers died alongside our parents. I suppose in a way we did.
Mira is worlds different too, now—sometimes I can’t believe the shopaholic posts she puts out there on Instagram. Everything in her life is about shopping now. It’s sad, because she was amazing as a kid—brave and loyal and kind.
I guess this life twists everyone, eventually.
It’s better that she’s not the same person. It makes my job easier.
Chapter Two
Mira
My father has a black cellphone that he never uses, but it’s always on, always charged, and always within reach, full of dark threat, just like his gun. He’s had it for years, and I never heard it ring.
I hear it the week after my twenty-eighth birthday.
It’s a Saturday afternoon. We’re out on the porch. I came back for a ribbon-cutting ceremony where I put in a rare cameo as mafia princess Mira Nikolla in Oscar de la Renta and Manolo Blahnik. I was so proud that he’d funded the research wing of the local hospital where Mom died—a research wing in her name. Not a lot will bring me back home these days, but a wing in Mom’s name? I’m there.
Missing Mom is one of the few things we have in common anymore.
The cynical part of me wonders if he funded the wing just to get a visit out of me. Maybe he did. It doesn’t even touch the debt he owes to society.
Do I sound pissed at my own father? I am. Do I still love him? Always.
We’re all each other has left. We’ve had each other’s backs since the day Mom died. The day he fixed me with that intense gaze of his and said, “It’s us two now, Kitten. It’s us two. Two against everything, alright?”
I should be packing—the limo is coming in a few hours to take me to the airport. I’ll be back in New York at the advocacy center where I work, back to being the lawyer in jeans and Target tops, like some kind of reverse Wonder Woman—I spin around and turn into a girl you’d forget two minutes after you pass her by.
Which is exactly how I like it. It makes it easier for me to do my job, fighting for kids and families.
We have people thinking I’ve spent these past years on worldwide shopping sprees, which is embarrassing, but better than having bodyguards follow me around—that would not work at the advocacy center. PR people maintain a fake life for me. A sad social media construct that keeps me hidden under the radar. And mostly it keeps Dad safe. I’m his Achilles’ heel.
There’s a type of bird that lays its eggs in other birds’ nests. Sometimes I feel like I ended up in the wrong nest like that. But we’re family—that’s the bottom line.
Dad did terrible things coming up like he did, but we have each other’s backs. Even at the age of ten, I understood. Me and Dad against the world. It still means everything that he said that.
So we’re out on the porch of the lake residence, me still in my mafia princess pink, when the chirp sounds out. I have no idea that it’s that second cellphone. I guess I never imagined it would have the bird-chirp type of ring. I always thought it would be something more ominous. Like a blaring horn.
But the chirp is ominous to my father. His face goes white.
He answers it, and I can tell it’s Lazarus. In addition to being Dad’s enforcer, Bloody Lazarus is pretty much the worst psycho I’ve ever met. Even across the large, lavish porch table laden with feta and olives and strong Turkish coffee in priceless china, even with my dad pressing that phone to his ear, I can hear the psycho.
It takes exactly two seconds for Dad to pull me inside and call out for the house staff guys.
“What’s going on?”
He just shakes his head and resumes his conversation. “Put Jetmir on it. Fuck! Fuck! Where’s Leke? Fuck.”
Dad’s voice is higher, not in volume, but octave. It’s a bad sign.
But here’s the really bad sign: Nobody comes. Dad called for staff, and none have arrived. They always appear instantly. “Staff,” in this case, is a euphemism for soldiers whose job is to hang around the house and not be seen or heard unless they’re needed.
I never see Dad worried. I never see the world not bending to his every whim. My blood races.
There’s only one reason dozens of soldiers wouldn’t come running when my father yells for them.
He gets his go bag out of the front closet, grabs his headset, and sticks his Luger into his belt. He hands me a small revolver. Mother-of-pearl handle. Loaded. “Down to the seaplane. Now.”
“Dad.” I hold it like a dead thing, looking up at him, like, really? I don’t do firearms, and he knows it. But he’s completely freaked out. And I’m thinking about his bad heart. I shouldn’t add to his stress.
“Fine.” I put it in a proper grip like I learned in shooting lessons. Like a dog, fake sitting down.
I’ll ditch it later.
He throws me the boat and seaplane keychain. The keys are attached to a little buoy that floats if you drop it in the water. “Get that plane out of the boathouse. Now! I’ll meet you.”
“We’re going in the seaplane?” The seaplane is a fun-time thing. It’s a recreational vehicle, not a getaway vehicle.
He tips hi
s head up at the ceiling, a movement that tells me everything. We’re going in the seaplane because somebody might be on the roof, expecting him to go in the helicopter.
It’s a takeover.
Shit.
I grab my purse, kick off my heels, and take the stairs to the lower level. I head through the ornate rooms and back through the servant areas, and burst out the side delivery door.
It’s a cool autumn afternoon. Nice. Or at least, a few minutes ago it was nice.
I run along the perimeter of the estate, where it’s shaded by trees and the limestone wall. Less obvious if you’re on the roof.
The first few minutes I jog stealthily, grass cool on my bare feet, but then something builds up in me and I’m just running like hell, shoes and satchel in one hand, gun in the other.
Dad always says having to shoot just means your threats didn’t work. As if I’ll even make threats.
I round a tree, keeping to the shadows. I get down to the seawall and run along it, heart thundering, up to the boathouse door. I punch in the combo and pull it open.
It’s dark and gloomy inside the boathouse; Just a few high windows let in the sun.
I scurry around the slips past the speedboats to the seaplane at the end. I unlock the lift with the key that hangs from a string, and then I hit the button to start lowering it to the water. Usually the grounds guy does this. Where is everybody?
The motor whines as it lowers the plane, white with blue stripes and blue pontoons. While I’m waiting for that, I go to the corner, lift a panel, and slam my palm onto a button. One of the boathouse doors jerks and squeals as it begins to rise up like a garage door, unveiling the sparkling blue water of Lake Geneva.
Inch by inch, the light slants in.
Movement from the dark side. I’m not alone. A man.
My heart skips a beat as he pushes off the wall, his face in the shadows, dark curls catching the light. His suit jacket hangs open to reveal a white shirt and a black slash of a tie. Slacks cup and kiss his thighs as he moves. Do I know him? I can’t make out his features in the gloom.
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