The Fire We Make (King Mafia Family Saga #1)

Prologue

Joy blinked slowly, mentally taking inventory of her facial expression.

She ensured her eyes were soft and pasted on a rehearsed smile, painting a picture of serenity.

Dr. James smiled softly at her. “Your notes look great, Joy, a vast improvement. It looks like you’ve been opening up more, participating in group sessions and taking your medicine without a fuss. You’ve been doing your journaling?” she asked, pushing the big round glasses up her nose.

Joy shifted in the hard metal chair, folding her hands together in her lap. “Yes,” she lied.

“Great,” Dr. James nodded. “That’s good. Do you feel in control of your emotions?”

Joy nodded.

“I need words, honey.”

“Yes, I feel in control.”

A lie.

Joy hadn’t felt in control of anything in the nine months since she’d been institutionalized.

Everything was out of her control. What she wore.

What she ate. What she did and when. Most of all, everything that happened beyond those padded walls — the business and her father’s lack of communication — was out of her control.

She was anxious to be released so she could regain it and she’d say whatever the woman before her needed to hear to ensure that happened.

“Good. Do you feel like hurting anyone?”

“No.” Another lie.

Joy wanted to hurt many people, starting with the Chapman family for putting her there and ending with Dr. James if she didn’t stop asking stupid fucking questions.

She was growing impatient, her nails digging into the skin of her palms under the table.

Fighting to remain present in her body and maintain control of her mind, Joy’s eyes darted around the room.

5 things I can see…

4 things I can touch…

3 things I can hear…

2 things I can smell…

1 thing I can taste…

“Great. I’m proud of your progress, Joy. If you commit to taking your medication and sticking to the tools you’ve learned here, I have no doubt that you can be a productive member of society. I’m going to sign off on your release.”

For the first time since she’d stepped foot in that god forsaken building, Joy smiled.

“Welcome back Miss Thibodeaux. How are you feeling?” the family driver, Darnell, said, waiting by the car as Joy approached with her belongings in a plastic bag.

His smile was warm, but his eyes were wary, watching her every movement as she came towards him.

He moved as she did, ensuring his back was never to her.

“Much better, thank you,” Joy replied with a soft smile to put him at ease.

Darnell’s face softened a fraction, but his sharp eyes still watched her closely. “Good. Good to see you.”

“Likewise,” Joy replied, pulling her Chanel sunglasses over her eyes.

Darnell returned her smile with a weak one of his own and opened the backseat of the Mercedes. She thanked him and climbed in quickly, eager to get away from the mental health inpatient treatment facility that had been her home for almost a year.

She’d been away too long and missed too much.

Too many changes and events she wasn’t privy to on the inside.

The events that led to her arrest were still a little hazy, but she remembered enough to know that her actions weren’t without consequences — not just for her, but for her organization.

The silent treatment from her father only confirmed how badly she’d fucked up.

“My father couldn’t come get me?” she asked, looking at Darnell through the rearview mirror.

Darnell avoided her eyes. “He had prior engagements, ma’am, but he said he’ll meet you at the estate once he’s finished,” he answered as they pulled onto the highway that would carry out of the middle of nowhere and back to Houston.

Joy sighed, leaning her head back against the seat. Her father was still angry with her and she understood. She was sure her episode had foiled their plans and derailed their progress, but she was back and ready to make it up to him.

“Actually, you can take me to my father,” Joy replied. As his second in command, if her father was working, then she needed to be with him.

Darnell shifted uncomfortably. “Um… ma’am, I don’t think… I was given strict instructions to?—.”

The sight of Joy’s quirked brow in the mirror halted his words. “Yes, ma’am.”

Pleased, Joy relaxed in the backseat, watching the open fields and trees transform into the Houston skyline.

Joy didn’t wait for Darnell to open the door for her when they pulled around to the back of the Thibodeaux Trucking building.

The sun was setting, but the lot bustled with activity.

All around her, men were loading and unloading boxes from trucks.

Some of them likely held construction materials or produce.

The majority, though, contained drugs and guns that would be distributed to the various crews working under the Thibodeaux family in the state of Texas.

Joy smiled. Pride bubbled in her chest watching the organization she helped build operate like a well-oiled machine.

With Darnell following closely behind, she strutted across the loading dock and through the double doors that led to the offices.

The men at the door gave her a wide berth as she breezed past them. Some nodded, welcoming her back, and others avoided eye contact altogether.

It seemed word had gotten around about the reason for her absence.

Good, she thought.

Joy didn’t mind being feared. In fact, she preferred it. Being a young woman in the underworld, sometimes fear was the only language the men around her understood, and she spoke it fluently.

She pushed through the long hall leading to her father’s office.

She rapped on the door twice. After a few moments of waiting, she knocked again, this time more forcefully and repetitively.

The door swung open and Byron Thibodeaux stood there with a scowl on his face that didn’t soften at the sight of his baby girl.

Alarm flickered in his gaze, but it was gone just as fast as it came.

“Princess,” he said, holding on to the door. “What are you doing here?”

“Hello to you too, Daddy. Long time, no see,” Joy replied.

It had been almost an entire year since they’d laid eyes on each other. The father-daughter duo stood in the doorway, assessing the other.

Joy was the spitting image of her father, inside and out. They shared the same deep walnut colored skin, chocolate brown upturned eyes, round button nose, and full lips.

They had identical ruthlessness and thirst for power, with twin tempers that were as lethal as a bullet once ignited.

She was his mini-me in every way that didn’t require testosterone.

That fact used to bring Joy comfort. Knowing that she was exactly like her hero and favorite person in the world once made her feel exceptional.

Now, with the weight of her diagnosis standing between them, Joy could see that her father no longer saw her as a perfect reflection of him but a smudge on his self-portrait.

“Can I come in or…?” Joy asked. She didn’t wait for his answer before slipping through the crack in the door. Her heels clicked against the hardwood flooring as she strolled deeper into the office.

It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the dim lighting hazy with smoke, but when they did, they immediately found Byron’s associates, all of them seated around the small conference table on the other side of the room.

“Damn, y’all couldn’t have waited an hour for me?

” she asked, as it became clear to her that she’d stumbled upon a meeting she hadn’t been privy to.

Seven sets of eyes shifted nervously amongst each other as her presence became known.

“Good afternoon,” she greeted the silent room, prompting scattered mumbled responses as she moved closer. She assessed the room with keen eyes that likened her to a shark assessing and circling its prey.

Joy’s eyes focused on the seat beside her father — her seat — occupied by Byron’s advisor, Cleve.

“Cleveland.”

He met Joy’s hard eyes with a smirk that she returned with a glower. It was no surprise he had been serving as Byron’s right hand in her absence, but Joy thought he looked way too fucking comfortable in her spot.

“Joy.”

“Why the fuck are you in my seat?”

Cleve opened his mouth to speak but was cut off by Byron, lowering back into his chair. “Princess, why don’t you go home and get settled in? We can talk when I’m done here.”

Joy turned her narrowed eyes from Cleve to her father. “Since when am I not welcome in meetings?” She gripped the only empty chair, Cleve’s seat, to the left of her father and sat down, making it clear she had no intention of leaving.

“With you being out of commission and the alliance we were building being severed thanks to your… incident, we had to make some changes.”

“What changes?” Joy asked slowly, her voice flat and hard as she narrowed her gaze on her father.

“We had to move on without you,” he answered plainly, his voice sharp.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Joy asked. Her voice rose as her irritation did.

The table shifted uncomfortably, feeling the tension and already sensing how the meeting would go.

Joy was feared before her institutionalization.

A young woman raised to be a killing machine and trained by the best criminal minds in the south was something of nightmares.

Now, with the uncertainty surrounding her mental condition and the rumors swirling about the incident, six grown men watched the 28-year-old woman warily.

In a room full of killers, she inspired fear within them all, and she’d be a liar if she said she didn’t relish it.

Cleve cleared his throat. “We voted to dismiss you from your official role.”

She folded her arms and narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me?” Surely, she’d heard wrong. She’d given her childhood to building this organization and was next in line to run it. The Thibodeaux Cartel was hers, and she couldn’t just be dismissed.

Her eyes widened when she was met with silent confirmation.