Royal Heart (Black Rose Auction #6)

Prologue

PROLOGUE

ARI

I had a bad feeling about this.

They were late. Dad was never late. He hated being even a minute late to anything . He was always drilling into me that timing was everything.

But they weren’t here.

I paced back and forth in the repair shop, checking the clock.

Aunt Adele, my dad’s bookkeeper, glowered at me as I moved.

I turned around as soon as I reached the wall to the office and started pacing back the other way.

“Hey, girl, enough is enough. You’re going to wear a path into my concrete.”

“Sorry, Aunt Adele. It’s just... they’re late.” I played with the ends of two of my box braids like I always did when I was anxious.

Adele rolled her chair from her desk to Dad’s, then rifled through a drawer, looking for something. “Ari, you know your father. He’s an expert at planning. He always has a plan B, a plan C, and a plan D. Everything is fine. And if it’s not fine, he has a plan for it. So sit down with a book or whatever the hell and stop with the pacing. You’re making me nervous.”

I chewed my bottom lip. She was right about Dad. He always had a plan. So why couldn’t I ignore the feelings skipping up my spine?

“When it comes to your father’s job, you’ll learn to deal with the ups and downs. You’ll learn to sit with certain things that nobody else has to deal with.”

Like the secrets you all have to keep.

For a while there, when Mom was in and out of the hospital, my dad had been my best friend. He used to show me blueprints of buildings and ask me how I’d break in. Unconventional, but it kept me distracted from Mom’s illness. He was all I had left after she lost her battle with cancer right before my tenth birthday.

But, when I’d started building safe schematics in fifth-grade art class, he’d become increasingly distant, started pushing me away, and made it a point to keep me away from the life.

I would sketch schematics out by myself. Make my own plans based on the conversations I’d overheard or the things I’d seen that I shouldn’t have. He’d put a stop to that too.

After that point, it seemed there was nothing I could do for him to look at me the same way. Our bonds were frayed.

To the outside world, my dad owned this repair shop. Cars came in, got fixed, and left. It was his side business that no one knew about. And the side business was where Dad built his nest egg.

Monetarily, he made sure I had the best. I attended Saint Alban’s School for Girls, which would have been shocking on the kind of salary he pretended to have. But as far as the outside world knew, I was on a scholarship. And anyone at the school would tell you that a donor had paid my way. What they didn’t know was that my dad was the donor. He had found a way to give me everything I needed and deserved. Even without Mom.

Everything except someone to talk to. Someone who made an effort to understand me.

That didn’t stop me from trying to repair our connection though. I kept thinking that if I kept at it, he’d eventually see me like he used to.

“Honey, I swear. You’re driving me to drink more than I already do.” Adele adjusted her glasses so they slid down to the tip of her nose. “Or is there another reason you’re trying to get your steps in?” Eyeing me shrewdly, she added, “Another reason you’re anxious? Maybe someone else you’re waiting for?”

I whipped around, my face flaming. “Wh-what?”

With a chuckle, she turned her gaze back on her papers. “Ari, love, I have eyes. And the kid is cute. Going to be a real looker, that one.”

Oh God, was it obvious to everyone? “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

When in doubt deny, deny, deny.

So what if Damon Hunt was the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen?

He was annoying. Not to mention he hogged my father’s attention. And he wasn’t even as good with safes as I was. It honestly wasn’t fair that his jaw looked like it belonged in one of my mom’s old fashion magazines. It made it harder to loathe him. But I was committed to my hate-Damon-Hunt-forever cause.

“Please. I have taste. He’s not even that cute.”

Adele only lifted a brow and chuckled under her breath. “If you say so, honey. Come find me in a few years when you start noticing other things about Damon Hunt.”

“Never going to happen.”

For another thirty minutes, I tried to pretend I wasn’t watching the door for them, but then I gave up. Half past twelve. They should’ve been back by now. They were more than forty minutes late.

My father would be pissed to see me waiting. For years I’d been begging him to teach me again, to let me learn from him again but he’d refused, preferring to train his precious protégé instead.

So I’d kept learning on my own.

My gut churned and twisted, sending splashes of bile up my esophagus—not enough to rise but enough to injure.

Finally, the gate opened and we heard screeching tires. Adele tried to keep her face completely neutral, but we both knew that sound was bad news.

The van blew in past the open rolling metal gate with razor wire on top, and it didn’t stop. The tires smoked as the van barreled straight at us. When it squealed to a stop, Damon Hunt jumped out first.

He ran to the back and swung open the van doors before climbing back in and carrying out my father’s body.

I froze as I watched them. Damon screamed at Adele to clear the gurney and bring it out.

The bottom fell out of my stomach. My knees quivered, but I managed to stay upright and run with them as they pushed him into the back room.

All I heard was Damon cursing as he pressed his hands to Dad’s ribs. “Paul. Paul, you look at me. Eyes on me. What the fuck happened? We were supposed to stay together.”

I frowned at his back. “You didn’t stay together?”

Damon’s head whipped around, and he went pale. “What the fuck is she doing here, Adele?”

Adele frowned at him. “This is her father’s shop. What, did you guys think she was going to go to bed and wait for you to get back?”

His face was bleak, his eyes cold and flat. The faded scar on his cheek was far more prevalent now that he was so pale.

He turned back to my dad and continued to press on his chest. “Where the fuck is the doc?”

There was so much blood. So much.

Damon was going to let him die. And I’d be all alone.

So I broke the cardinal rule. I pulled out my phone and dialed 911.

My aunt and Damon stared at me, horrified. But I didn’t care. I cradled my father’s head where he lay and pressed my hand over Damon’s on his chest.

“What have you done, Ari?” my aunt asked as she tried to move me but I wouldn’t let her. If I let go, he’d die. It would be my fault. I didn’t have time to feel, and I didn’t care who was mad at me. He was all I had left.

Even if he didn’t want me, I couldn’t let him die.

As the sirens drew nearer, Damon paced and cursed. Aunt Adele told him to go, to run, but he stared at my father and said, “No. I’m not leaving.”

I lifted my gaze, staring through, but not really seeing, the boy my father had chosen over me. The boy with the dancing eyes and quick smile, who made me nervous with his presence. I knew what would happen if he stayed.

I knew my father would never want that, so I whispered, “Go. Run. I’ll stay with him.” Damon tried to shove me out of the way, but I batted his hands away. “Just go!”

He tugged at his hair. “I’m sorry, Ari...” His breathing was choppy as he continued to mutter. “What the hell was he even doing there?”

I was barely listening. My gaze stayed pinned on my father.

“Daddy. Dad, come on, you promised you wouldn’t leave me like Mom did.” My heart thundered in my chest.

I couldn’t let him die. Please . Please, please, please.

Damon

I was out the door and running along the back alleyway. My heart and my lungs were ready to burst, but I still pumped my legs and my arms furiously as I sprinted away from the screech of sirens.

By the time I crossed over three blocks and two more alleyways, I was panting. I finally stopped at one of the row houses with a hose connected in the backyard, and I turned the water on. Red ran off my hands as I scrubbed at them furiously, trying to get Paul’s blood off me.

I had fucked up tonight. This was all my damned fault. I never should have left him. Thank God I had gone back to look for him when he didn’t meet me at the rendezvous point.

Tonight’s job was supposed to be simple: in and out. Paul was so anal about his plans. The timing had to be perfect. But something happened tonight. Something that made Paul frown and deviate from his usual plan.

The plan where we were supposed to stay together .

But he’d sent me the longer way toward the safe and told me he’d meet me there. When I made it and he didn’t, I went looking for him. There was a man standing over him. The man took off running as soon as he saw me.

“What the hell?” I rushed to Paul’s side, only to find him bleeding. There was no going after the compass now; we wouldn’t make it.

The compass was his white whale. He’d been after it for years. I gave not one shit about it. So when he tried to pull himself up and head toward the retreating bastard, I had to stop him and help him to his feet.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I asked.

It was then that he whispered the two words that said everything. “Michael Lane.”

My heart tripped into a gallop. It couldn’t be.

Paul was always so mellow about everything. He wasn’t given to overt big emotions, but get him started on Michael Lane and he would bluster for hours. Apparently, this Lane dude was the poster child for there being no honor among thieves. He’d beat Paul out on a couple of jobs before—jobs he hadn’t planned or participated in. He’d just waited until Paul and his crew had done all the work, then swooped in and stolen from Paul.

“What the hell was he doing here?”

Paul’s weight on my shoulder had been heavy as I’d tried to drag him toward the door. His words in my ear had been barely intelligible, but I’d heard him mutter, “Silent alarm.”

And sure enough, as if on cue, I’d seen flashlights and running feet down the right in the other hall. It was time to go.

As I’d dragged him out the side entrance, he’d wheezed. It wasn’t until I’d managed to get him back into the van that I saw the problem. Lane had shot him, and if I didn’t do something quick, he was going to die.

It’ll be your fault.

I’d left him alone instead of staying with him like always.

Paul had all these rules. When you went into the field, you followed the rules or you never got to do another job again.

But that night, he’d broken his own rules, and I had listened to him like a fool. Now Paul was bleeding out and Michael Lane had almost taken our prize. My only satisfaction was that the overconfident prick had tripped a silent alarm, so he’d walked away without the compass as well.

The compass was part of a private collection. Easy job. Certainly no one was supposed to fucking die.

I’d managed to get Paul into the van and back to the garage. On the way, I called for his doctor friend to meet us there, but Paul was barely hanging on.

When we pulled in, Ari was right there. Like she had somehow known she needed to be there.

Her face when I opened the back of that van was not one I’d soon forget. I was responsible for it. And now... now I was running.

No. You are doing what Paul trained you to do. You are going to get somewhere safe, get your go bag. Recover, and make a new plan.

That was what he had taught me. He’d spent weeks teaching me how to survive in case shit went wrong. He had a safe house not five miles away from where he actually lived. A little basement apartment. Nothing special. But it had go bags with money, identification, clothes. And it was a place to rest. I guessed he’d always known that something could go wrong and had wanted me to have a way out.

But the idea of continuing without him left a giant, gaping hole in my chest—the size of the very real one in my mentor’s chest.

I didn’t know how I was going to do it. But one day, I was going to make Michael Lane pay.