Queen of Hearts

Chapter Seven

JULIAN

I’ve waited for ten years to taste Rosie, to touch her like this, to own her. She’s been the thorn in my side, and a constant reminder of everything we should have had. She was always supposed to be mine, like this. The scent of cherries is strongest on her neck, like she’s been rubbing it with cherry juices still on her fingertips and it drives me wild. I keep burying my face against her skin, needing more. If I could subsume her, keep her like this, I would even, though I can hear Eli’s warnings rattling around my head. She’s dangerous but I can’t seem to stop myself.

It’s surreal as she offers herself up to me willingly, giving me everything I wanted with no resistance. Encouraging it, moaning as I rub against her damp underwear. Kissing me like I’m the air she needs to breathe. She wants me. There’s no denying that. No doubt of the attraction between us. It’s always been there since we were teenagers in that damn garden. That spark was now a roaring flame as my hands followed every line and curve of her body. She’s on the table like the finest dessert, spread wide for me, eager and waiting.

But does she want me enough?

Is it enough to put an end to her vendetta? To come back to The Family and be by my side? Could we even have that? Would the others accept her?

I was getting ahead of myself, those were problems we could discuss later, when we were naked and tangled up in one another. Right now, I just wanted to be buried inside her, to consume her, to hear her moan my name while she rode my dick like she was a jockey at the fucking Kentucky Derby. I wanted Rosie Gambino like I’d never wanted anyone else and it was burning me alive.

My fingertips brush against the lace of her underwear again, and as I’m about to slide my hand inside and feel that slickness for myself, a wave of nausea washes over me. My stomach clenches. I feel wrong. Slow. My head feels fuzzy, and my mouth is suddenly dry as I try to get my words out. Everything is hazy, blurry around the edges as I step back from Rosie.

I open my mouth to say something, to reassure her, but when I see her pull up her dress to cover her tits, and she crosses her legs elegantly as she perches on the edge of the table, skirt pulled back down in place, I know. This is undoubtedly her doing.

“Whaaa . . .” I groan as I fall back into my chair, my body heavy and cumbersome. It was like I could no longer support myself, I felt exhausted. It’s like she’s a succubus, draining the life from me as it becomes effort to even think.

“I’m sorry Jay, I was having so much fun.” She pouts a little, as she straightens her hair. “But I can’t trust you to let me leave and I have somewhere else to be tonight.”

She didn’t trust me? My brain might be turning to mush, but the irony of the situation wasn’t lost on me. She’d lured me down here, removed half of my clothes and then poisoned me. Yet I was the one who couldn’t be trusted?

“H-ooo-w?” I manage to rasp out as my limbs ache. I can’t even lift my hand as I sink back into my chair.

“I didn’t put anything in the wine, I knew you’d suspect that.” She shrugs, looking around at the mess we’d made. Smashed glass and discarded cutlery littered the floor, the red wine had spilled, creating a blood-red puddle on the hardwood floor. “It was my lipstick.”

Of course it was. She was a Venus flytrap. Enticing and deadly. I knew that and yet I still kissed her, I still held her like she was mine. Did that mean she only kissed me to kill me? Was that her plan all along? No, she wanted this as much as I did. I felt it.

Her shoulders droop a little as she stands, brushing her hands down over her dress as if she was trying to smooth out the creases. “I told you I was poison. I warned you, I’ve been warning you for years.”

She did. I knew not to trust her, and yet for some reason I thought…I thought the chemistry between us might have been enough to convince her to change her mind. I should have known better, Rosie never trusted anyone. She wouldn’t listen to me that night and not in the aftermath. I blamed her father for that, for her deep suspicion of everyone. For all the love Vincent Gambino had shown his wife and daughter, he’d never taught them how to trust anyone else. He kept them cloistered away in their giant home in the suburbs, with the sprawling rose gardens and endless rooms. He made sure they were separate from The Family, never mingling with anyone outside of Vincent’s circle unless they had to. He taught her to be a weapon and a woman, both dangerous.

Was my irrational trust in a woman I barely knew but felt like I’d known my whole life about to get me killed? Probably. It was a highly likely outcome given how I could no longer feel my fingers or toes.

It’s like she can read my mind as she grabs her purse and explains, “It won’t actually kill you, it’s just to buy me some time to leave.”

And humiliate me, since someone will find me like this. Word will get back to my Captains, filtering down to the others and once again, Rosalyn Gambino will have made a mockery of me and my position within The Family.

“Why?” I croak, my throat on fire as I force the word out.

She pulls red rope from her purse, and quickly sets to work fastening me to the chair. Looping and knotting the cord across my chest, binding my hands until I have no hope of moving, even if I was able to. Standing back to admire her handiwork, a flash of desire lights up her gaze and I wonder if she’d done this before. Glancing away, she bends down and scoops something up off the floor.

“I can’t be here…I’m supposed to stay in the shadows,” she offers up, clutching my tie.

It wasn’t time, that was the unspoken truth. There were still others on her list, still names that had to be crossed off before she was supposed to approach me. She was breaking her own rules by seeking me out and it was jeopardizing her entire plan.

Silence fills the room before she takes a deep breath and flashes a big smile at me. It’s fake, the smile. It doesn’t reach her eyes as she looks me over once more. “I think I should take my leave Jay.”

“W—aaait.” I can’t believe she’s doing this to me. When I’m able to move again, I’m going to wring her goddamn gorgeous neck. I’m going to chain her up so she can never run away again. I can’t move at all now and it feels like I’m sitting in a block of concrete as my chest gets tight, my breathing ragged and rough as I attempt to suck in more air. Panic starts building in my chest, and I don’t believe her earlier words that she isn’t trying to kill me off just yet.

“Breathe, Jay, it will feel uncomfortable. But I promise you, you’re not dying.” Her fingers brush against my cheek as she attempts to reassure me. Her hand drifts up to my hair, where she plays with it for a few moments, running it through her fingers.

I stare at the tie; she’s still clasping it and I have no idea why.

“Oh, I’m keeping this.” She frowns, withdrawing her hand and ending our contact. “Hmmm, it doesn’t seem polite to take something of yours without giving you something in return.”

If I could move, I’d snort. Rosie didn’t give a damn about manners or being polite. I know she’s waiting to make sure that the toxins are fully in my system, I can tell by the way she keeps checking the clock above the door behind me. Always meticulous. Always calculating.

My lips are no longer my own as they refuse to move. I can’t even groan out an attempt at a word anymore, my whole body rebelling thanks to her. Making a mental note to never underestimate her again, I try to calm my breathing.

She pulls out her compact and reapplies her deadly lipstick. The red brings out her pronounced cupid’s bow and the fullness of her bottom lip. “Oh. Wait, I have it.”

I watch, my brain foggy as she slips a hand up her dress and shimmies out of her underwear. With a grin, she tucks them between my lips, carefully checking that I can still breathe. “Until we meet again.”

Planting a kiss on my cheek she sashays away. I’m left, paralyzed by the whirlwind that is Rosalyn, tied to a chair with damp panties, still smelling like her, shoved in to my mouth.

“She did what to you?” Elijah tries to hide his laugh but fails as he sits in my living room, drinking beer and eating pizza. His long dark hair is tied half-up with a messy bun, the rest falling down past his shoulders. He looks relaxed and at home, in his grey sweats and a tight black T-shirt.

I was still wearing my suit from another hectic day at the office, I’d barely stepped through the door of the large house I’d bought on the outskirts of the city and removed my tie before Eli had thrust a cold beer into my hand and slapped my back with a wide grin.

Elijah Creed is more than just my Left Hand, the man who enforces my rules and cleans shit up when plans go wrong. He is my friend. We’d met when we were just ten years old, our fathers both Captains under Belcastro. Mine was responsible for managing The Gryphon and several businesses up-town, while Eli’s father oversaw drug warehouses downtown, in the shadier part of Newtown. They were working a job together, another one of Belcastro’s witch hunts for people allegedly stealing money from him and we’d been forced to watch the interrogation as part of our ‘education’.

He was another kid who grew up in a fucked-up situation, with a drug addicted mother, a vindictive, cruel father and now he can’t do anything else but fall into this life. It’s all we know. It’s the only place we feel like we can survive and that’s why we call it Family.

“Yep,” I swig my bottle of beer. “My bodyguard had to come and help me home. And I still can’t get this damn red off my cheek.”

I glance in the mirror behind Eli, where her lipstick mark was still visible on my cheek. It had barely faded, although I had scrubbed and scrubbed, but it was like Lady Macbeth’s damned spot. A symbol of my guilt, of my stupidity in trusting a Gambino when I should have known better. It wasn’t enough that the woman tricked me, poisoned me, left me half-naked and unsatisfied but she had the audacity to mark me too? I had to hide in my office all day to avoid anyone seeing it while I was at work. It wouldn’t happen again. I couldn’t afford another slip-up like that one, not when I was responsible for making sure The Family ran as it should.

“So, what was she like?” Elijah asks from my armchair as he tucks into another slice of meat feast pizza. “You said you didn’t really talk much at the gala, but last night you were there for a while…”

“Fucking crazy. Certifiable,” I groan, as I lean back on the sofa. I don’t have the words to describe her, not in a way that would make sense. I hate her, but I also want to fuck her. I want to kill her, and ruin her life but I also feel guilty over our past and I want to make her happy. How was that even possible? What was wrong with me?

Between mouthfuls he waggled his eyebrows at me. “Crazy, as in freak in the sheets, or as likely to stab you for breathing the wrong way? Reckon she’d eat your heart?”

“You know that’s just a rumor.” I slide my hand into my pocket and touch the lace underwear she left behind. I don’t know why I’ve been carrying her panties with me since yesterday, but I have. I laugh before polishing off my beer. “Both. At the same time, knowing her.”

Fuck, wouldn’t that be an insane way to die.

“And is she hot without the mask?” Eli ventures, watching me carefully. I hate it when he does this, morphing from my friend into my Left Hand seamlessly. He’s assessing the risk; trying to work out what his next move should be and whether he needs to defy me to eliminate the threat. There is a reason I will never play chess with a man like Elijah Creed, and it’s because I know I will always lose. He’s the best at out-thinking his opponents. He’s always five steps ahead and when he catches you, you never see it coming. He may be relaxed and easy with me, but I knew others found him intimidating and oddly quiet, but that was just him, waiting for monsters to jump out of the shadows at any moment.

I take another bottle off the coffee table and pop the cap, taking a mouthful and swallow slowly before I answer with a grin. “A ten. Easily.”

“Well, there are worse ways to die.” His voice hitches, and for a second, he sounds almost interested. He shrugs, holding his hands up in defense when I fix him with a glare. “I’m just saying…”

“She’s going to cause trouble again. I can feel it.” I run a hand through my hair in frustration. How could she just leave like that? There’s no way she’ll be able to stay away, not now. Not knowing what the heat between us feels like. She won’t be able to resist that for long, because I don’t think I could.

“Then let me handle it.” Creed sits back, head tilted as his dark eyes narrow. The logical part of my brain tells me that I should just let him. If he killed her, Lawrence and the others would stop pressuring me to do something about her. They’d quit bitching in my ear about how I was letting a woman make a mockery of me and our organization.

“She’s mine,” I mumble, aware that I sound a little bit like a spoiled child, unsure whether to be angry at what she did, or upset that she left. Could I be annoyed at both? Blue balls might kill me first, if Rosie doesn’t and I don’t know how to feel about that. Was it normal to lust after the person trying to kill you?

“And there’s your problem, Jay,” Elijah teases, before becoming more serious. “You’re too attached. God knows why, I mean didn’t you only meet her once before she showed up at the charity gala?”

Elijah didn’t understand. His father hadn’t cared about Family politics, Augustine was happy with the slice of pie Belcastro had given him and he defended it furiously. My father wanted seconds, and thirds, desperate to expand our influence and reach. I’d known about Rosie Gambino since the day she was born even though I never actually had a conversation with her until I was twenty-two. I’d seen her though, at Family events, heard about her from the soldiers and even some of the Captains had whispered about her as her skills grew.

Everyone knew about Rosie; they knew what her father was grooming her for and that didn’t sit well amongst the traditionalists. She was a threat to their way of life, their values and the very notion of Family. Vincent kept her away from the other high-ranking Family members, so that they couldn’t influence her, keeping her sheltered. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, The Family hated anything they didn’t understand, and a female leader came under that umbrella. They didn’t invite her to events and gatherings unless all the Captains were expected to be in attendance, and that suited the Gambino’s just fine.

A power that can’t be influenced, bribed or threatened is a dangerous one and so they made a decision to cut her down before she had the chance to bloom, just like one of her mother’s precious roses. If only they realized the part they played in creating the monster she was now, since that distance from The Family also allowed her to kill them without remorse.

My father had watched her progress with eagle eyes, noting every time Vincent made a kill that seemed unusual or out of place. He wanted to know what Rosie was becoming, and when our engagement was decided, I knew he was concerned about the arrangement since my father didn’t believe I was ‘man enough’ to tame a wild woman like Rosie. He was right. In the garden, I hadn’t been prepared for the reality of it. I hadn’t been prepared for the beautiful girl, with the sad eyes and the gentle laugh. I certainly hadn’t been ready for the warrior Queen, who slid her knife into my hand like I was nothing, not a living, breathing person but an obstacle.

“Everything changed that night. Everything,” I mumble, reaching for the last slice of pizza.