6. Zarina
ZARINA
A ndrea Tamayo is hotter than I expected. Much hotter. Like distractingly hot.
She pours vodka into two glasses, dressed in tailored, gray bird’s-eye slacks with a pressed, white dress shirt tucked in and left unbuttoned to just above her navel. I suck my bottom lip between my teeth, tracing the line of her suspenders from her hip up to her neckline. Her fade reveals the tattoos scrolling from behind her ear down the back of her neck to disappear under her collar.
Pat tugs on my skirt, and I release my lip from between my teeth, standing straight-backed, chin high, face blank. Mostly. Andrea turns, fully facing me for the first time since I entered her private room with the wall of mirrored windows looking down over the club and soundproofing foam muffling the club’s blaring music. Her black hair brushes her forehead, her brown eyes like palm tree bark against the sandy tan of her skin. Freckles dot her cheeks, like pebbles on the shore. Fuck.
She hands me a sweating glass of ice and vodka and whatever else she poured in there. An orange peel floats amongst the ice. I accept it, careful to avoid her finger, because I’m pretty sure if we touched, I’d drop the goddamn drink.
“Zarina Gallo.” She says my name like it’s a hard candy melting on her tongue.
Fuck . My mouth goes dry. I take a sip, wetting my throat with the lemon-orange-vodka cocktail, which is delicious. And that just makes me more annoyed. I am Zarina fucking Gallo. I make men crawl and women pant, not the other way around.
I shake out my hair to cover the deep breath I take to gather myself. “Andrea Tamayo.”
“Tamayo, please.” She sits in the only armchair in the room, ankle on her knee, relaxed as she savors her drink. The picture of a queen on her throne. She gestures to the couch, inviting me to sit, but I stay standing.
“I don’t bend the knee.” Especially not to gang leaders.
“A princess through-and-through.” She smirks. I shoot her a scowl, and she only smiles wider. “Tell me, has anyone ever bent you over their knee? Might do you some good.”
Heat pulses under my skirt, but I only allow myself a single, arched brow. “Do you wish you could?”
She runs a finger over her bottom lip then lets the hand drop. Her face remains impassive, but the brown of her eyes darkens toward black. “I don’t.”
I scoff. “And the Earth is flat.”
“I’m sure you can find a willing someone out there.” She nods toward the windows, the club beyond.
I glance over at the DJ suspended over the dance floor, the black lights painting the crowd purples and neons. I lick my lips, slow and purposeful, watching Tamayo out of the corner of my eye. “I just might.”
She tongues her cheek and squeezes her glass where it rests on her knee. “Why are you here?”
A trickle of relief rolls down my back—I haven’t lost my touch. I turn back around to face her where she sits on her veritable throne and do my absolute best not to stare at the soft skin of her cleavage.
“I’m gay,” I start.
Pat barely covers a snort-laugh behind me, and I barely hold my elbow back from jabbing their gut.
Tamayo blinks but doesn’t say anything. She should know already; it’s not a secret. Though when the fact of my sexuality is presented to men—specifically straight, cis men—it’s usually met either as a challenge to convince me I’m simply missing the right dick, which is obviously theirs, or as a promise of a future performance for them, as if lesbians are only meant for their consumption.
This is the first time those words haven’t caused a reaction.
I set my drink on the gold side table. No one else is in this room but the four of us—Pat standing behind the velvet sofa, Darius leaning against the untended bar—and yet it feels like I’m presenting to the entire club. My skin itches and my cheeks burn, but I don’t slouch. This is my one shot, and I can’t waste it. Not if I want to keep my freedom. Not if I want a chance to inherit my birthright.
“My parents have known I’m gay since I was fourteen. They accepted me, loved me, never pushed me to be anything else.” To flirt and lead on, sure. But feminine wiles are a weapon in the social arsenal, another way to get what we want and protect ourselves from what we don’t. But never before now have they asked me to change, to ignore myself so completely. “Tonight, they told me I’m to marry Marcus Accardi.”
Tamayo doesn’t move, face still curious yet impassive, but I catch the tension. Her eyes darken with something that echoes in the tightness of her jaw, gaze traveling from my face to my collarbones, to my fingers, where I play with the chain of my purse hanging at my hip.
I focus on the mole under her left eye, unable to watch her watch me. “Anyway, that can’t happen. And I need your help to make sure it doesn’t.”
“My help?” she asks.
I nod.
“What can a gang leader do for the Gallo princess that she cannot do for herself?”
I scoff. “Don’t play coy, Tamayo, it discredits you.”
She bites down on her bottom lip, the corners twitching up. “Ah-ah, remember—you’re asking me for help, princess. Whether you’re on your knees or not, you’re here to beseech me. Not the other way around.”
Pride burns through me, likely painting the skin across my chest and up my neck pink. “Fine.”
Tamayo settles further into her throne, legs wider, drink perched on her knee, smug expression on her face. “So, what help do you need that only I can provide?”
“Protection.”
She laughs without amusement. “All four Cardinal Families will be searching for you, and despite the fact we supply half of them with weapons, we cannot stand against them. Especially not for someone who isn’t ours.”
I pick up my drink again, staring at the orange cocktail and wishing I could see the future in its reflection. But it’s only booze and citrus. I knock back a gulp to wet my tongue before I finally reveal the core of why I’m here, in Tamayo’s club, and not with someone more powerful. “Then make me yours.”
Tamayo freezes in her chair, tension spreading from her fingers up to her shoulders. She stares at me so long I wonder if she feels the urge to blink, but instead her eyes move to her second, Darius, standing at the bar. They speak without words, and I wonder what they’ve said.
Tamayo licks her lips once and readjusts her seat. “Excuse me?”
“You’re right.” I hold my glass in both hands, turning to watch people exist in ways I never imagined were allowed on the club floor below. “The Cardinal Families will take me back home by force, and there’s no one, gang or politician or outsider, who can protect me without endangering themselves and their people.”
Tamayo studies me like she can’t believe the direction I’m going. Apparently, neither can Pat.
“Z, what’re you doing?” Pat mutters into my ear.
I don’t acknowledge them, instead leaving the windows behind to slink across the room toward Tamayo. Her left eyebrow hasn’t fully relaxed since I entered the room, and it makes me want to do something so surprising that the right arches up to meet it. I set my drink on her side table, leaning forward to reach it. We’re so close, I can feel the heat of her licking my bare thighs. She could run her probably calloused hand from my wrist to my collarbone and through my hair if she were so inclined.
“It doesn’t matter to the Council that I’m Zarina Gallo, sole heir of the Southern Districts, raised by one of the most powerful dons in the city.” I straighten, fingers trailing over the arm of her throne before they fall to my side. “I can’t leverage a single ounce of that power, because I’m a woman. And I can’t—no, I refuse —to marry a man and act through him.”
“What exactly are you saying?” Tamayo murmurs.
“I’m saying.” I pause to release a pent-up breath. “I’m saying that the Council sees me as an asset to be owned, whether by my parents or by Marcus Accardi. And I would like to use that against them.”
Tamayo stays silent.
I grew up a princess. Most often, I got the whimsical and spectacular things I wanted. But I’m still a don’s daughter. I learned more at his knee than he intended. And one thing he never learned himself: Power is in the wielding, not the taking or having. I’ve spent too long sitting back on my heels, waiting for permission to rise up and be the queen I’m meant to be.
Not anymore.
“You’d betray your parents, your family?” Her voice is low in her throat, both hesitant and hopeful.
For a single moment, I allow the steel of my gaze to soften and show the pain that’s taken up residence in my chest, wrapping around my heart, tickling my lungs. It’s calculated, but it’s true. At the bottom of the angry black hole inside me is the little girl it’s protecting, and for half a second, I allow Tamayo to see her. For half a second, I’m as honest with her as I can be without words.
The last exchange with my father through my bedroom door echoes in my head. Please trust us? Before tonight, I did. I trusted my parents, because they didn’t push me beyond the boundaries of myself, brought me into the discussion. But after tonight? After this? There is only one answer— I can’t .
I shutter closed again. Push it all down, past the ring of angry teeth, and focus on the present, on Andrea Tamayo and her perfectly messy black hair with her scrollwork neck tattoos and a hunger in her eyes that has nothing to do with me and everything to do with my offer. With the power she can attain through me and my power.
I meet her gaze with a hunger of my own. Will I betray my family? My parents? Yes. “They betrayed me first.”
A slow, wicked smile stretches across Tamayo’s face as she leans back on her throne, legs spread and wrists lax like she has nothing but time at her disposal. “Ask the question.”
I glare, biting down on my tongue to keep a shudder from my limbs.
She flicks her fingers to the floor. “And make sure it’s done properly.”
Kneel. The command goes unspoken, but it lands between us, flung like trash but heavy as a crown. She wants me, Gallo royalty, on my knees before a lowly gangster, begging for her help. A princess before a rogue. The fucking audacity.
But I have no choice.
I need Tamayo. And she knows it. My teeth grind, jaw pulsing with the ache, and that stupid, sexy grin on Tamayo’s face grows wider and wider. She waits, tongue-in-cheek, as I swallow down the pride, the shame, the outrage crawling over my skin and up my throat. I straighten my back, tuck my dress tight to my thighs.
And I kneel.
Pat starts forward with a growl, and I throw up my hand to stop them without looking away from Tamayo. She doesn’t mind them. As if she’s confident in my submission. I bite my tongue harder while Pat curses under their breath.
Tamayo nods for me to speak, and it colors my vision red. Like I need her permission. My hands shake at the hem of my skirt. I suck in a deep inhale, compelling my jaw to relax enough to form the words.
“Andrea Tamayo”—her name is acid in my mouth—“will you marry me?”