Queen of Hearts

Chapter Eight

ROSIE

Isit back and watch as the others sitting around the table begin to argue amongst themselves. I cannot believe I left a half-naked, fully hard Julian Asaro tied to a chair for this. Naked hot man who was desperate for me, in exchange for a bunch of idiots who can’t see farther than the noses on their faces. Rubbing my temple, I glance around the crowded room, taking in the faces of the people who were here tonight to support me.

The shouting and name-calling start quickly, voices getting louder and louder but I can’t make myself play mediator tonight. I could have been having the best sex of my life, and I don’t have any second guesses about it - it would have been incredible. And instead, I’m here. Not bitter about it, not bitter at all.

Grabbing the small gun out of my purse, I fire two warning shots into the ceiling without hesitation. Chunks of plaster land on the long table in front of me, but the mess is nothing new. The walls were covered in cracks and missing chunks, graffiti and faded posters barely covering up the rundown state of our meeting place.

“Are you done now, children?” I ask, clicking my tongue, sitting back and looking at all the stunned faces. Great, there was plaster dust on my dress.

Silence greets me.

“Good.” I cross my arms and glare at all of them. “I am not going to hurt innocents to get a reaction out of Asaro and his supporters. That’s not how this is going to go down.”

Several people nod and others look annoyed but they bite their tongues. Our aim was to undermine Asaro’s authority in The Family, not kill whoever we pleased just to create carnage. I’d spent too long plotting and planning my revenge to go off on some half-cocked killing spree that had no benefit for me.

I wasn’t a bloodthirsty psycho; I was a considerate one.

A rat-faced man, with red cheeks and small beady eyes down the end of the table scoffs, “Don’t tell me the Queen of Hearts is afraid of a little bloodshed?”

He chuckles bitterly as he crosses his arms, mimicking my pose as he looks to the others, trying to get them to join him as he grumbles about how I run my ship.

Squinting, I try to place him, but I don’t recognize his face at all and yet he thinks he can taunt me. Rolling my eyes, with a bored sigh I take a small throwing knife from my garter. I’m grateful I thought to pack it in my purse, quickly sliding it up my leg in the cab over here from the restaurant. It’s flying through the air and into the man’s skull with a meaty noise before anyone even has a chance to blink.

I stand, slamming my hands down. “Bloodshed isn’t the problem. The innocents are. And who the fuck was that guy anyway?”

“Paulie, are you bringing randoms in here now?” Everyone either avoids my glare or shrugs. “Don’t we have a vetting process or something? A secret knock? A code word that excludes douchebags?”

Our monthly meetings were held in the cellar in one of Paulie Russo’s strip clubs. He was an older man, gruff with a salt and pepper beard hiding a face that might have been handsome in his younger years. He was one of the good ones, who’d helped me because of his loyalty to my mother and the friendship they’d had when they were younger.

His clubs aren’t the most glamorous, the music vibrates through the ceiling above us, and the venue is seedy and sticky but it provides an excellent cover for gunfire and heated arguments. Plus, it’s another Family property, which is like sticking two fingers up at Julian as I plan to bring his kingdom down.

Paulie flips me off with a grin. He’s one of the few that I can joke with since he understands my humor and doesn’t think I’ll carve out his heart to eat it. I sit back down with an exaggerated huff. “Just letting anyone in I fucking see.”

“Rosalyn, we need to do something that will have Julian’s followers questioning whether they’re on the right side,” a voice to my left fumes. I can barely make out faces with the crappy lighting down here, but I don’t need to. I can hear the murmurs of agreement and know that this is causing ripples in my little rebellion.

“Everyone knows he’s too soft, he won’t retaliate. He’ll let it slide,” Esme, one of my Captains, remarks with a frown on her face. She’s young, smart and very vocal about her unhappiness with how certain members of The Family are treated. “I mean, you murder his men and send him the hearts like a gift and he’s still not reacted.”

I am the exception. Julian doesn’t let it slide like they assume; he’s just playing the long game and they seem to forget that. I don’t give him much of an option, since I refuse to stop. Besides, I think a small part of him accepts his role in what I do every year, his guilt is what keeps him from finding me.

Cassie, another of my Captains, an older woman whose husband is actually one of Julian’s Captains, chimes in. “They’ll think he’s weak.”

Her husband thinks she’s at a knitting circle this evening, learning how to make scarves ready for the winter.

I raise my hand and silence the growing titters and mumblings. “And they’ll think we’re crazy and have no regard for life. That’s not how we roll. Necessary sacrifices only, and not like this. Not to prove a point.”

I don’t even know how we got here, earlier this afternoon I was getting the sanity kissed out of me by the very man I was plotting to bring down. Now I was attempting to calm an angry mob of women and men marginalized in their own organization. In their own Family.

At the restaurant, I’d included the lipstick poison as a failsafe, a way to get out of there without him following me or trying to keep me as a prisoner. I had planned it so that if it got out of hand, I would still be in control, so why did I feel disappointed that we had to stop when we did? To top it off, I also felt more out of control than ever.

A nasal voice I recognize as belonging to Valentina Bruno, one of my more challenging supporters since her husband is Julian’s Consigliere, intrudes upon my thoughts of Julian. “His leadership is tenuous; people want to go back to the old ways. They want power and glory, like the good old days.”

Her words don’t sit right with me, they sound just like her husband’s and I can’t believe the levels of stupidity in this room tonight. I didn’t exactly trust my Captains, not the way I did Lola or even Cato, but there was no way to challenge Jay on my own. I needed support, and I needed it to be solid, otherwise it was worthless. The people in this room were the result of almost ten years of cultivated friendships, relying upon my parents’ connections and recruiting the generation who knew that things needed to change.

“Excuse me?” Leaning forward to rest my elbows on the table, I look around. Some of them wriggle beneath my glare and others try to hide, sinking into the shadows. “Look around you. In the good old days, how many of you would have been sitting at this table?”

Silence once again as they look at each other. In my little rebellion, women had as much right to men to have a place at my table. Yep, that’s how I garnered support in the aftermath of my parents’ death.

I didn’t go to the men in the organization for support, I went to their wives and their daughters. I went as an orphaned eighteen-year-old girl, who had everything ripped away by the patriarchal, outdated system we had in place. I played the gender card, and I reinforced the idea of family…actual family. Having one another’s back and caring for each other. I reminded them that I had been chased out of Newtown, and I was risking everything by coming back to seek support.

They all knew who I was when I travelled into town from East Point and begged for their help—I’d been making their husbands nervous since I was eleven. My name spread through hushed whispers in the kitchens, in the baby and mother groups and at the bingo hall but they seemed to be forgetting what it was I was offering. I wasn’t some sort of evil Queen unleashing my hatred on Newtown, I had very specific goals and desires and I was willing to do what it took to achieve them.

“Exactly. I’ve brought you to my table so that we can create something better. Not the same. I am not going backwards, and if you have a problem with that then you need to leave now.” I wait.

Paulie opens the cellar door, but no one moves. Good. Because despite my brave words, I probably need them more than they need me right now.

“We do this my way and we do it right,” I say. The rat-faced man’s body is still slumped at my table, blood slowly trickling its way across the varnished wood. “Can someone please take this idiot out of here. He’s ruining the vibe.”

The rest of the meeting seems to go okay, but there’s still a feeling of unease as I leave. They want results faster, and they’re starting to not care about the methods any longer and that doesn’t sit right with me. There still needs to be boundaries in place, otherwise the city would become feral.

“Well, that was intense.” I laugh as I link my arm through Esme’s as we make our way towards her apartment. I’m staying at her place tonight since I have business near her home tomorrow, and then I’ll be at Lola’s again for a few more nights.

“You’re always intense Rosie,” Esme chuckles as she pats my hand. We’d met not long after the attack on my house, Esme was another victim of that night. Her father had been helping Felix, following orders like a good little soldier while his wife, Esme’s mother, had been caught in the crossfire and lay dying in my hallway. She blamed her father for the death of her mother, it was unnecessary and violent. It could have been avoided if the entire situation had been handled differently, but that night was a stain on the memories for so many of us.

I sigh, knowing that some people saw me as bloodthirsty and reckless, not understanding that every move I made was carefully calculated to keep me off Julian’s radar while gathering the support I needed for a coup. I had a plan . . . my father had taught me to always have a plan.

“I know you don’t mean to be.” She squeezes my arm, trying to reassure me. “I just don’t think you realize how scary you can be.”

Flashing her a sweet smile I pull her into a hug.

I know how frightening I am.

I know what I’m capable of.

I’ve always known.