Dark Queen

Taking the phone, I hear Marcello’s voice sigh with relief. “I’ve been calling your cell. What the hell is going on? Jared said shots were fired at the club?”

“Not on this line,” I warn, ending the call.

“What do you want us to do?” Ricardo asks, stepping from foot to foot.

Blue and red lights dance across the video monitors. Officers fill the streets. This is bad for business. “Open the shutters.”

Five people dead. Three civilians, one of my security men who took the bullets that could have hit Alyssa, and one of their men who took a bullet from it ricocheting off the shutter door.

Idiot.

This is not how the re-opening was supposed to go, a lingering strain coats the air.

“They’re just thugs for hire. We already have three of them in custody. The other car has been found abandoned,” Detective Morels informs me, breaking away from other officers.

The club has been cleared out. The media is swarming the place. It’s a shit show. And I want blood. They’ve declared war and have no idea the mistake they’ve made.

This isn’t warfare, it will be annihilation.

“I want them,” I tell him, fury burning through my veins.

“They won’t be released. Once processed, they’ll be transferred to a holding prison until they get a court date.” He rubs his jawline with one hand, the other placed on his hip.

He knows what’s coming.

“I want to know where and when. This was one of my clubs—me,” I growl, fisting my hands, my eyes closing briefly.

There’s nowhere on this earth where these men are safe from my wrath. Prisons give me easier access. I’ll make sure they share a cell with the vilest creature in there. By the time they’re done, they’ll wish for a bullet.

“Do you know who’s behind this?” he asks, awarding himself a scathing glare.

“Someone well out of their league,” I grumble, splitting away from him when I see Marcello coming down the hall from the back entrance, a visible pulse in his neck.

“What the hell happened?”

“Those brothers,” I growl, planting my hands on his shoulders, squeezing to alleviate the coiling of my muscles.

I want blood.

I want to throttle the life from those bastards until their pulse stops, only for me to bring them back to life and start all over again.

“Bring it all down,” I tell him though gritted teeth. “I want everyone on this. Deplete their accounts. Send a Leto message to everyone who ever supplied for them. Make their men suffer—but save those bastards for me.”

His eyes gleam with pleasure. “On it.”

“And, Marcello,” I call before he makes it to the exit. “Don’t involve Antonio. He’s done enough.”

Chapter Thirty

Alyssa

The door opening causes me to jolt up from the couch. I’d fallen asleep, the adrenaline fleeing my body as fast as it came.

Luca stands there, staring at me, another man at his back. “Take her home,” he tells this man, making my stomach lurch.

Do I not need to speak to the police or stay with him just to be sure it’s safe?

The man with him is wearing a cheap tweed jacket and week-old scruff covers his chin. Stress lines wrinkle his face when he asks, “Who is she?”

Am I invisible?

“She’s no one of importance,” Luca tells him, turning his gaze from me. The cruel words wound me like a physical attack.

My breath shudders from my lungs. An overwhelming cloud of sorrow sits heavy over my heart.

I could have died tonight, doing Hannah and what I thought would be him, a favor. Simon reminded me that being here could put a stain on my position at Swan, and this is what I am to him?

No one of importance.

Getting to my feet, I will my legs to carry me and not buckle beneath me.

“I’m Detective Morels,” the man informs me, opening the door. I don’t give Luca the satisfaction of my gaze.

I’m taken through the same back entrance I came through earlier tonight. This is the exit I should have left through. If I had, though, those men would have made it inside. I quake at the thought of how many would have perished.

When we get outside, I give the detective Simon’s address. The dorm curfew has passed.

“How do you know Mr. Leto?” he asks once we’re inside his car. I squirm a little. Fast food bags and wrappers litter the floor and it reeks of smoke and sweat.

“I don’t know him,” I say honestly, looking out the window as we pass reporters camped out in front of the club.

“Just got unlucky, huh?” he muses.

“It would seem so, yes.”

He lights a cigarette, the toxic plume of smoke filling the small space.

Inconsiderate asshole.

“What about those marks on your neck?” My hand instinctively reaches up to stroke the skin there.

“It’s a sex club, Detective. Some of us like it rough.”

The lie empowers me.

I like the bruises Luca’s hands and mouth left on my flesh—a reminder of how badly he wanted to mark me, taste me.