Crowne Rules

by Reiss, CD

  “That’s the point, amea.” He kissed my lips. “That’s the point.”

  ***And they lived happily ever after***

  * * *

  This is the last Crowne book, but I have so much in store for you. A super, duper dark romance with a mafia guy, a kidnapping, an underground society, a forced marriage, betrayal, passion and the kind of hurts-so-good heat I love to write.

  TAKE ME is coming out in January, but I have a SNEAK PEEK of the first three chapters. The books are going to be 5.99, but if you preorder Take Me now, you can get it for 3.99.

  So keep scrolling to read the chapters, or just get it now.

  TAKE ME

  Have you read the other Crowne books?

  Iron Crowne | Crowne of Lies

  * * *

  Follow me on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram (but don’t expect much)

  Join my fan group on Facebook.

  JOIN THE MAILING LIST for deals, sales, new releases and bonus content.

  My website is cdreiss.com

  email: christine@cdreiss.com

  Check out Take Me….

  TAKE ME

  THESE CHAPTERS ARE UNEDITED

  Between now and publication, things will change and hopefully improve. Except the idea, which is simple.

  She’s kidnapped on her wedding day, held by a man who wants vengeance on her father, married to him against her will, and forced into a world of betrayal, lies, and sexual deviance she’s lived in her entire life…but never known it.

  All she has to do to escape is destroy everything she’s ever loved, and love a man she wants to destroy.

  TAKE ME

  * * *

  Copyright © 2020 Flip City Media Inc. All rights reserved.

  No part of these chapters may be reproduced by any electronic or mechanical means without permission, except for brief quotations in a book review.

  This story came out of the author’s head. Any similarities to persons living or dead makes you a sick puppy in good company.

  Chapter 1

  NEW YORK CITY

  SARAH

  The sun’s first rays spill over the horizon, blushing the white silk of my dress a sweet, shimmering pink. It was dark when I woke, cool blue light rendering the world outside my window in smudges and shadow as I was helped into my gown, but now the sunrise is a riot of color in the slit of sky between the buildings of 37th Street.

  I’m a pragmatic person. I don’t believe in omens or a benevolent God. There is no capital-U universe. There’s the world as it exists, and the people in it, and the collectively they’re the only force that can change how they exist in the world.

  All the same, I can’t help feeling like the intense, singular beauty of the sky on my wedding day bodes well. I almost press my fingertips to the town car’s window, but pull them away at the last moment, mindful not to leave a smudge that someone else will be responsible for cleaning later.

  The warmth on my face feels like a caress, and I soak it up—allowing myself a little bit of indulgence on today of all days—the culmination of so much work and effort. My life will be realized before the witness of all of us—I become a wife.

  From the other side of the black glass that hides me from the driver, I hear a rustling, then a murmur, and my thighs tense until it stops. I can’t see the man driving me to my wedding. I assume it’s Timothy, who’s taken me everywhere since I was small, but the voice is deeper, more urgent, and even though I can’t make out the words, they’re more commanding than a driver’s needs to be.

  Definitely a new driver not used to my father—who never tolerates anyone else’s lateness, but often arrives slightly behind schedule for his own appointments. I’ve never been able to confirm he’s unapologetically late on purpose, but I’m sure of it. The only question is why, and my theories have swung between a need to show everyone waiting how powerful he is and a consideration for anyone beneath him who might be running behind. Either he’s displaying his strength or showing consideration for those who are weaker. Maybe it’s both. He’ll never tell me anyway.

  Right now, he needs me to be patient, and I can stay patient, even today.

  I crack open the car’s window and take deep lungful of the sweet morning air, my ribs working against the tightly-tied laces of my dress. Will the air taste different once I’m a wife? Deeper, or richer? Or a word I haven’t learned yet for a sensation which will be revealed?

  The doorman, William, sees me through the crack and tips his hat with a nod. He’s one of us, and though his uniform means nothing to the rest of the world, we know how important and dangerous his job is.

  I roll the window back up.

  My father, Peter Antoine emerges, his gait as certain and unhurried as ever. On another man, his black tuxedo might be out of place in Murray Hill at five thirty in the morning, but he wears it like it like a second skin. With his slicked-back dark hair and gold eyes, his elegance is striking, even to his only child.

  There’s always a moment when I see him like this, out of context, as a stranger might, and wonder: how can he possibly be related to me? I have none of his power, and certainly none of his ability to wield an almost lethal authority. I am skilled at my duties, not an embarrassment or a failure, but I am my mother’s daughter.

  That’s what I’ve been told, anyway.

  William opens the car door and my father slips in next to me. The door snaps closed and the locks click. The driver pulls away from the curb without another rustle or muffled command.

  There isn’t much traffic this early, and I can feel more than see us picking up speed. The route to the Hollow is familiar. East on 37th. Right onto First Avenue. Left on 20th. Into Resident Services to stairs. Fourth level down. Through the unremarkable double doors, and into our world. I didn’t even need to follow the colored lines on the floor anymore.

  “Kyle’s on time,” my father says, putting his phone away as if he just finished a conversation with my fiancé. “Whole family, too. The Dows are filing in.” He looks at his watch, then shakes it down his wrist. “Should go on without a hitch.”

  My palms sweat into elbow-length fingerless gloves. I fold them together, but that makes it even worse. Will Kyle feel the dampness during the ceremony?

  “I’m glad.”

  My father senses my nerves, but not my overactive glands, and puts his hand over mine.

  “I have something for you.” With his free hand, he reaches for a pocket. “From your mother, for your new husband.”

  He holds out a zip-lock bag with a lacy fabric inside. I slip my hands from under his and take it.

  This gift could be a mile away from Kyle’s fantasies, I have no idea yet what my husband will like. We’ve met a couple of times. He’s handsome and powerful. All I have to do is make him happy, and all he has to do is tell me clearly how to do that.

  The streets of Manhattan whip by the window, a blurred melt of sunstruck color lighting up the buildings’ gray. We’re going down Second Avenue instead of First. There must be traffic.

  I open the bag and release a circle of lace and elastic.

  A garter.

  My cheeks flush, and I look down at my dress to hide their color. I allow myself to finger the soft lace, reveling in the handmade luxury. Tonight with my husband I will feel much finer things than this, I know, and I’m breathless just imagining it: the caress of his mouth on my skin. The way my body will please him, and a twinge of worry that it won’t.

  No. I was prepared. Every part of my body had been trained to please. None would fail.

  “It’s lovely,” I say. “I wish she could be here.”

  “The Colony survives,” he says absently.

  “And so it shall, my own life,” I recite back, sitting straighter as I claim the truth. The endurance of the group is more important than the death of any, single individual. Even my own mother.

  I’ve been looking down at my dress, then straighter, but when I look at my father’s face, hoping to see happiness, he’
s frowning. Perhaps he senses the turn my thoughts were taking—my pride, and my anxiety? Should I have avoided mentioning my mother?

  Men are easy to read.

  Dow Hannah had drilled this into me, and I’d forgotten to think of my father as no more than a man. So I read him, and it takes half a moment to realize he’s not frowning at me.

  He glances past me, out the window again, to where another shiny black car is keeping pace with us. We’d passed the 20th Street Loop in Stuy Town, and were heading under the FDR. When I look over my father’s shoulder, I realize that we have more neighbors, flanking us in every direction.

  We are in the wrong neighborhood, and now we’re in what seems like bad company.

  For a glancing moment, I panic about being late to my own wedding. The disapproving looks of the Dows. Kyle’s disappointment. The Schenker giving him the opportunity to back out, and me the opportunity to beg in front of everyone.

  “Sarah,” my father murmurs with a tight vocal control he uses when he expects difficult obedience. “You will not speak.” He takes his eyes off the window long enough to meet my gaze. “Or scream. Or do anything to show them you feel fear. Do you understand?”

  “What’s happening?”

  “You are the Colony.”

  Then the phalanx of cars veers off the main street and turns sharply into the empty parking lot under the raised highway, stopping so abruptly that my father and I are jolted forward.

  There’s a moment of perfect stillness. Then the partition window that divides us from the driver rolls silently down, and he turns to us.

  I don’t know him, and I know everyone I’m supposed to know.

  This driver—this man—he’s not one of us. I can tell. It’s not the inappropriate length of his hair, which drops below the driver’s cap, over his ears and high forehead in dark locks, or eyes so black all the detail’s been inked over, obscuring what has to be ten lifetimes of terrible stories.

  He’s combustible, with an interior so much bigger than his body that it presses against the shell of his skin like an overfull balloon ready to explode.

  In fact, he looks like he wants to eat my father alive.

  “Petyr Antoine,” the man says, confirming this isn’t all a big mistake.

  It isn’t until I hear him speak that I fully understand the gravity of our situation—or that gravity can even exist around this man.

  “And who are you?” my father demands.

  The man lifts his driver’s cap from his head, almost a salute, and places it on the seat next to him. I realize that what I had at first taken for a trick of the light is something else entirely: the tops of his ears are missing. Between the locks of hair is only a flat black line where there should be familiar whorls of skin and cartilage.

  I feel certain that he will be furious if he catches me looking at his disfigurement, but I can’t help myself—I’ve never seen anything something missing make the whole seem so much more beautiful.

  He trains his black eyes on me for only a moment, but that’s all he needs to strip me, shred me bare, rummage through my heart and find the place I keep my deepest fears and desires before turning back to my father.

  “You don’t know who I am?” he sneers. Behind him, through the windshield, men surround the car. I take my eyes off the man long enough to look at my father, who’s tapping his finger impatiently—as if this entire thing is a nuisance—and out the side window behind him, where more men surround us.

  “No,” my father replies. “Should I?”

  “Of course not,” he scoffs, then pulls out a gun and points it between my father’s eyes. “You’ll know before I kill you. You’ll remember it all.”

  My father doesn’t blink or stop tapping his fingers. He breathes in the same slow rhythm. He doesn’t fear death. That’s why he’s First Watch.

  “But will I care?”

  I care. My fingers clutch palm sweat and my toes curl in my shoes. My lungs ache in their cage, and that’s when I realize I haven’t taken a breath since my father demanded silence.

  “No,” the half-eared man says, with a fascinating twitch in his lips that sends a bolt of unwanted arousal through me, and I wonder, deep in my core, who this man is. “You won’t care who I am. Only what I can do to you if you don’t accept this deal.”

  My father doesn’t respond. He just taps the same beat. It’s almost a sigh of boredom.

  “You’ll give me as much money as I tell you to,” the driver explains. “And a list of names. The New York Council. Then I’ll let you live.”

  A tremor of relief whispers through me, though I am determined not to let it show. We have plenty of money, and if he needs more, the Colony’s coffers will cover whatever our private wealth cannot. A list of our elders—that seems less likely, but my father is an expert dealmaker: that’s why he works in the Outside as a state senator, ensuring the laws favor Colony interests.

  It’ll be okay. It’s always been okay, and so it will be, again, this time. My mind repeats this mantra like a prayer, but my father still hasn’t responded, and the driver’s still aiming a gun at his forehead. Against my will, my body shakes with fear, and I curse the bodice of my dress, which I had Dow Hannah lace as tight as I could bear this morning.

  Don’t cry.

  You are Sarah Antoine, and today is your wedding day. You will not arrive at the Hollow late with ruined makeup. But you will be beautiful.

  You will be pristine.

  And you will beg for forgiveness in front of everyone.

  My father shifts in his seat, and the driver and I both startle at the motion.

  Once he’s comfortable, he says, “No.”

  For a moment, I know I’ve misheard him—misunderstood the finality packed into that single, definitive syllable. He must have more to say than that—some plan, some argument, some something—but he doesn’t. There’s more silence than my heart can bear.

  And then the gun swings left.

  At the first sign of movement, I’m convinced the man’s going to shoot my father, but he doesn’t.

  He aims it between my eyes, using the full length of his arm to place the barrel so close to my forehead, I can feel the chill of the metal.

  “I won’t hesitate,” the driver says.

  I squeak, kneading my hands together. Any thought of composure is gone. My heart races. My cheeks are hot, and then cold; sweat dampens my armpits and the backs of my knees. I try again to breathe but the dress is so tight, and I can feel my heartbeat everywhere, like my blood is trying to pound its way out from under my skin.

  And through all of it, the edge of the bodice cuts into my breasts as they heave, and my nipples harden under the lace that was meant for a man whose name I barely remember.

  “Hesitate or don’t,” my father says. “No names.”

  I focus past the gun, to the man holding it. He’s intense. Confident. He’s a man with nothing to lose because he’s bet his life on this one moment.

  “But the money?” The man seems to find the question amusing.

  “You’re not interested in money.”

  “I am not,” he says. “I’m interested in those names. And your daughter.”

  Hi tongue flicks over his lower lip as he clicks off the safety.

  An exclamatory hm! escapes my throat. My vision blurs, stars spangling themselves in the car’s dark interior, and I long to be back in that quiet, peaceful moment in the rose gold of the morning sun.

  “The Colony survives.” My father’s voice is as cold and flat as the driver’s, but in speaking of the colony to an outsider, I know he’s not as composed as he seems.

  “So you say.” The man’s voice is blocks away, down the length of a tunnel that’s getting dimmer and dimmer, leaving me taut, gasping, pulled toward him by an arousal that terrifies me.

  “You aren’t getting those names,” my father says.

  “Then I take her instead.”

  No. I cannot be killed by this firestorm of a man. I cannot
die wet between my legs from my murderer. I want to turn to him—to plead, to beg. Stall. Figure it out. Pay him money. Give the names.

  “And so it shall,” my father murmurs. “My own life.”

  Then I disobey my father’s edict of silence with a hot scream that’s louder than a gunshot, and the world goes black as death.

  Chapter 2

  I am made of white light.

  Death is final and unavoidable. Death is a shrug. Death is useful. Death of the individual is insignificant as that individual’s life, and as utterly crucial.

  The Colony cannot survive without lives, and without deaths, it dies.

  My eyes blink open and then slam shut again. I curl in on myself; my eyes hurt, and my head hurts, and I can’t get my thoughts in order, especially in that blinding brightness. I take a long, deep breath and it feels steady but hitched. Easy, yet constrained. But possible, and essential. So I take another, and another.

  I am Sarah Antoine, and it’s my wedding day.

  The last thing I remember with any certainty with the car ride to the Hollow.

  What happened to me? I don’t feel injured, exactly, but I’m sore and achy, not to mention hungry and thirsty. How did I end up in so much pain?

  Today, under my husband’s command, my training ends and my purpose begins.

  The looseness around my ribs suggests I’m no longer wearing my wedding dress, but my ankles are bare on a hard floor and yards of fabric bunch where my knees bend, suggesting otherwise. My hands are hot but my fingers aren’t and one side of my face is pressed into soft, but uneven fabric.

  I’ve fallen asleep with my head pillowed on my fingerless embroidered gloves.

  Keeping my eyes closed, I touch where the seams have left tender grooves in my cheek, and then my dry, chapped lips. I can tell just by feel that my hair is a lost cause; the morning’s perfect updo, constructed by Dow Norah before the sun rose, has dissolved into a disheveled wreck. Could this all be the result of a long, late party? Did I have too much to drink and manage to forget the day I’ve been waiting for my entire life?