CHAPTER EIGHT
Ava – New York City – One week before Christmas
“H ello, old friend.” I run a comb through my dark hair. No point in staying blonde. Of course, I argued with Ares just to be a brat.
My Aunt Helena, Father’s sister, let me stay in her guest bedroom for the last two weeks because I refused to live with Ares.
I don’t think he wanted me there either. Not unless he wants to lock up all the knives.
I’ve been numb the whole time, only finding solace at Alexander’s grave. Ares should be in that thing. I practically lunged for him when he told me that my role in his plan is to marry some Irish mob boss as part of a truce deal.
What’s worse is we don’t know who that will be. The head of the Irish Mob in Lower Manhattan doesn’t have an heir at the moment because Alexander accidentally killed the old one. Now the two sides want to come together to do a deal. And I’m the payment. I can’t believe I’m back where I started.
As Ava Zervas, I don’t have a penny to my name. Atlas closed all my Hadleigh Castille accounts and put what little money I had saved in a trust for me that will be transferred to my new husband.
Assholes!
My cousins Lucia and Lola are home from college, but out with their friends. I had friends in my private school, but when I graduated, that was it. I didn’t go to college, I went into the Navy. My only adult friend has been Cherise.
Aunt Helena took me shopping for a new wardrobe, a trousseau that will come with me when I’m handed over to the enemy.
Tonight! Troi Keller is choosing an heir tonight at a medieval council meeting. My future husband will be revealed to me, to my family.
“Are you ready, Ava?” Aunt Helena asks.
I smooth out the forest green wrap dress she laid out for me on the bed. I don’t mind my aunt choosing my clothes every day. I forgot how to dress up, I’d been putting on a damn uniform for nearly ten years. I hope whoever the hell I’m forced to marry doesn’t want a stylish wife.
Once I say I do, I plan to stay in sweats and a T-shirt. I won’t shower every day, and if something spills on my clothes? Oops!
I also haven’t bought a razor in years. I’m two hair sprouts away from a unibrow.
I want my husband to hate me and not touch me. It will take everything I have not to kill him. I’m stopping a war on the outside, but under my mystery husband’s roof, there will be a cold war.
“No, Aunt Lena, I need a few more minutes.” I feel bad for sluggishly getting ready for tonight.
“My father arranged my marriage, you know.” She comes up behind me and removes the necklace I put on, replacing it with a bigger one. She speaks with the same British accent as my father and my brothers. But she sounds much more regal.
“Why didn’t you and Uncle Filipe have more children after the twins?”
“Because he made it clear he preferred his whores.” She leans in. “Until...”
I turn around. “Until?”
“He got older and his penis stopped working.”
I snort. “And?”
She shrugs. “We became friends without that tension between us.”
I sigh, thinking of all the years I have ahead of me. What if this husband they find for me is the same as Uncle Filipe?
I’m not sure I want kids. And if my husband doesn’t want to fuck me, I’ll be set.
Unibrow, don’t fail me now.
***
F EELING LIKE A PRIZED cow, I walk into the grand ballroom of the Winthrop Hotel for the Irish council meeting holding Ares’ arm, my head held high. We are guests of Troi Keller, and I’m merely an ornament as allied families put forth names of men to succeed Troi based on their business connections.
We’re surrounded by Greek guards, who don’t go by names. They are each tagged with one of the seven deadly sins.
Once we pass the doors into the ballroom, my brothers’ guards remove the guns from their jackets and hold them against their chests in a show of force.
Troi spots us. Towing an oxygen tank and surrounded by his guards, he ambles toward us using a cane.
“All these savage brats who want to slit your throat and you’re staring them all down, Zervas,” Keller says with a scraggly voice. “Impressive.”
“I don’t think blood will go very well with this wallpaper,” Ares mocks with constrained politeness. “I present my sister, Ava.”
“Hello, future queen,” Troi addresses me as a foregone conclusion, and it makes me sick.
“Thank you for this invitation while you listen to claims on your throne,” Ares says when I keep my mouth shut. “I reserve the right to renegotiate our truce if I find the man put forward is not a suitable man for my sister.”
I inwardly gasp. Ares said no such thing to me.
Troi squints red, watery eyes at my brother. “Mr. Zervas, I still have breath in these weak lungs and I am widowed. I can take your sister to wife myself, have my guards hold her down while I fuck her until she makes me a new heir.”
“And how is your colon cancer treatment working?” Ares says without missing a beat or getting offended on my behalf. “I hear it makes a man impotent.”
Oh... That’s why.
“Fuck you,” Troi curses and stalks off.
I pull my brother aside. “Will you seriously not give me up?”
Ares stares at me like he’s not sure he can trust me.
“There’s more to this than just peace,” he says and sits me down at our table.
“Talk to me.” I sit with my elbows on the table. A sin for a princess. But I don’t want to be a princess. Or anyone’s queen.
“There’s a multibillion-dollar land development project for the United Nations on the line,” Ares begins. “The current building is falling apart and they need to move. Fast. The UN campus is technically Greek turf, just a few blocks north of where Troi Keller drew his borderlines years ago. No one respects borders anymore. Especially not me. Troi has powerful allies everywhere and refuses to be left out of this project. The city liaisons to the UN aren’t stupid and know our two crime families have been at war for several years now. They know choosing one over the other, if we make separate bids, will sabotage the project and they will never get the new building constructed. I have the connections to ensure we get the deal, but...” He trails off.
“But what?”
“I don’t have the cash.”
My fingers stop drumming the tablecloth. “So you’re selling me. Just like Father tried to. It’s not about a truce.”
When I stand, he yanks me back down. “It’s complicated. The project was announced last year. We can’t do the deal without each other and we can’t do it without a solid truce. That’s where you come in.”
“Hard pass,” I say, rolling my eyes.
“Not an option. This is your duty.” He leans in. “You will be a queen, Ava. You don’t find that appealing at all?”
About as appealing as taking a bath in a swamp. With malaria-ridden mosquitos who ride alligators.
“Figures you’d ask that because you don’t know me. Alexander did.” And why he wanted an assassin, not a princess to hand over and forget about.
I’d kill Ares since I’m that good, but then the job goes to Atlas, who will just pick up where Ares left off. They won’t let it go to Ambrose, who’s smart enough to come up with something less barbaric.
“Mr. Zervas?” A man in a suit approaches us. “Kai Powers, counsel for Mr. Keller. Please come sit with me at my table. I assure you, it’s safe.”
“We are fine sitting alone. We are not aligned yet,” Ares dismisses him.
“If you change your mind.” He bows his head and walks off.
The meeting comes to order. Troi blusters and barks at the bosses and capos who run his house for him. I don’t like this man. At all. And these...bozos wanting to take his place make me sick.
Troi’s words left a stain on my soul: Hold her down while I fuck her until she makes me a new heir.
I avoid eye contact with any of those who stand from round tables and make their claim to Troi. Four men make their argument, all based on how long they knew Devlin. One man is missing an arm and wears a black eyepatch, citing losing the arm and eye when Devlin’s car exploded.
That man gets the most reaction from Troi. But the old goat keeps calling others who also revered Devlin as some holier-than-though character.
“These men are not worthy of us,” Atlas grumbles to Ares.
“Agreed.” Ares twists a napkin in his long fingers. “Are we at all positioned to completely take over by force?”
Atlas, six years younger than Ares, stares at the room full of Keller bosses like it’s a nursery school and all the kids have a cold. “When Troi drops dead? I think it’s possible.”
My heart leaps in my chest, my nails digging into Ares’ arm. I pull him toward me by his tie. “ This is what Alexander wanted. He had a plan for me to help. Let me help you,” I beg my brother.
Ares sends a condescending gaze my way.
“Shall I kick your ass in your private gym tomorrow and show you what I learned?” I challenge Ares. “Or blow you away at the range? Or drive a car two hundred miles an hour into your club and run you over with such precision that you’ll—”
“ This is no place for you! ” someone from the other side of the room shouts, cutting me off.
A man walks in and the room parts for him like he’s freaking Moses at the mouth of the Red Sea.
“Who is that?” I pull down Ares by the tie again.
“Brandon Keller,” Ambrose answers. “Troi’s bastard son.”
“Dad, there’s no need for this circus,” Brandon declares. “I am your blood just as much as Devlin was. I am now your heir.”
“Bastard!” someone yells.
“I served Mrs. Keller for twenty years as her guard,” someone else in a suit shouts. “You’re an insult.”
“Got anyone better?” Brandon yells, spinning around to face all the men who want his head. “Blood is blood.”
“Silence!” Troi says, standing up. “Brandon, I’ve given you my answer on this. Guards, remove my son. We will continue hearing petitions.”
But the room descends into chaos.
I roll my eyes and stand up, not wanting to hear any more jacked-up and exaggerated claims that probably have roots in sharing beers and women.
“Where are you going?” Ares yanks on my arm.
“Ladies room.” I push away, but Ares snaps his fingers at the guards he code-named Wrath and Envy to follow me.
In the lobby, I face Wrath and tell him to get off my ass. When I turn back, I slam right into someone and memories of running into Rand Miller on that platform make my sight go hazy and my breathing ragged.
I stagger back and take in Brandon Keller standing there holding out his hand to me. “Hello, Ava.”
Wrath yanks me behind him. “You do not touch the princess, bastard.”
Brandon’s eyes flare at the insult, his skin flushing. “As if Lucien Zervas was any more faithful to his wife than my father. I am his son, and I will claim your princess. Watch me.”
Hearing my father’s name after all these years twists my stomach. Wrath’s jaw tightens, and after he passes me to Envy, he lunges for Brandon.
I stop him with a squeeze that makes him cry out from a bite of pain. “Don’t bother. He’s not worth it.”
Brandon’s guards intervene and convince him to fall back. His dark eyes stay on me as he walks backward, and the evil there shakes me to my core.
Ares emerges from the ballroom a moment later, holding his phone. He spots me and narrows his eyes at Envy holding me.
“What happened?” he asks.
“Nothing.” I shake away from Envy. “Everyone is just on edge.”
“We’re leaving,” Ares says, taking my arm.
“Already?” I say, annoyed for being dragged out to this shitshow, and now I’m being dragged away.
I want to scream. I’m used to being in charge. This is killing me.
“Mr. Zervas,” the lawyer from before stops us again.
Ares looks ready to detonate. “I have nothing to say to anyone who is sworn to a Keller right now.”
That lawyer tents his fingers. “Please, I just need a moment of your time.”
“Is Troi seriously considering one of those pigs up in there?” Ares sneers at Kai Powers.
“I hope not.” He looks at me with a smile, then back at Ares. “Can I talk to you alone? Five minutes. I think you will find what I have to say to your liking.”
Ares scrubs a hand down his handsome face then glares at Atlas. “Put her in the car.”
“Why can’t I listen to what this lawyer has to say?” I’m praying he has some legal wrangling that will partner up the families without marriage.
“Come on cubby.” Altas steers me outside.
I pull away. “That’s not funny.”
He calls me cubby for a baby cub seal because I didn’t make the grade.
“I thought it was funny.” Altas grabs my hand like I’m a child. “Let’s go wait in the limo and arm wrestle.”
“Clearly, you have no plans to masturbate tonight.”