Wicked Empire: A Dark Mafia Romance

Chapter 1

Stealing is much like gambling. Just like choosing your mark, you can make the right bet and win big. Make the wrong one, and you lose it all.

I made a mistake long ago when I chose the wrong target. It cost me two years of my life. Today, I made an even bigger one.

Gavin Alexander. The billionaire I work for, owner of The Red Hotel and Casino here in Las Vegas. Charismatic, wickedly handsome and completely oblivious to my existence.

Being invisible to a man like him might have been a blow to my ego at times. He likes redheads. Tall and curvy ones. Not that he’s ever brought one to the house, but he’s been seen around town with one hanging from his arm enough times that anyone can perceive his type.

I’m not a redhead. I’m not tall or curvy. I’m reed thin, short and blonde. When I walk into a room he happens to be in, he leaves without a glance at me.

Why would he look up when the housekeeper is busily cleaning up? But I can’t say that him hanging around would make my job easier. I kind of like working alone.

Besides me, only the cook, Sue, comes in, with the occasional visit from maintenance.

I know how lucky I am to have this position, with perfect hours and pay that make it possible to take care of my daughter. Jeopardizing my job is the last thing I want to do.

But all it takes is a single moment of desperation and a split second to change your life. It’s what happened to me the last time. I swore it would never happen again.

We make plans, God laughs. Is it the bible that says that?

If it’s true, God must be practically peeing himself at my expense.

* * *

Tuesdays and Thursdays are laundry day, or as I like to call it, putting money in the savings account. It’s when I find hundreds of dollars all balled up and forgotten in one of Mr. Alexander’s pockets. Chump change to a billionaire.

For months, I’ve been putting that money in the shoebox he’s relegated to the back of his closet. He’ll never open it because it has a pair of flip-flops that cost more than my entire wardrobe, yet he doesn’t wear casual shoes.

I’ve never been tempted to take a single bill. In my mind, I plan to tell him one day. To say, “Hey, guess what, Mr. Alexander, you have thousands of dollars in that box and you don’t even miss it. Give it to someone that needs it.”

Maybe I hope he’ll give it to me, I don’t know. I just know I don’t want to steal it. That part of my life is over. The inside of a prison cell is a place I refuse to see again. If not for me, for my daughter.

I’d do anything for Lola. I have done everything for her.

For her, I cleaned up my act. I turned my life around. I’ve worked endless hours in exhausting jobs. I’ve begged and pleaded with every state and federal assistance program, saved every penny, all so that she could have a clean safe home, food, and an education.

Years of hard work, and it still hasn’t been enough.

Yesterday, I got a call from her school. She’d been in a fight. My gentle sweet girl who cares so much about everyone, who looks out for injured creatures, got in a fight. Lola was suspended the rest of the day for having defended a little girl that was being bullied over the clothes she was wearing.

I looked at my child who was dressed in hand-me-downs, who I know has been bullied herself by the same kid for not sporting the latest brands. Not once has she let it get to her until then, when someone younger than her was being tormented.

Principal Brooks didn’t scold her exactly, but she did warn her. “Protect the scholarships you have, girl,” she told her. “No one is worth losing your education for.”

“I couldn’t leave her, Momma. Kenzie was trying to take Gabby’s jacket and throw it in the garbage just because it had one tiny hole,” she said after we left the principal’s office.

Of course, I couldn’t reprimand her. If anything, I wanted to take her to dinner and get her something nice. Instead, all I could afford was a hug.

“Thank you for being you,” I told her as we slid into my old Buick. “But next time, get a teacher involved. Principal Brooks is right. Your Achieve Scholarship is everything to you. I can’t afford the things it gives you. All they ask in return is—” I stopped mid-sentence when I realized I had turned the key several times and the engine still hadn’t started.

“Is everything okay, Momma?”

I turned the key again, and all I could hear was the clicking sound of a dying battery. “Please, no. Not today!”

Fortunately, Principal Brooks was still there and jump started the car. Unfortunately, however, I had to drive us straight to purchase a battery I couldn’t afford.

Sleep was elusive that night. I turned to Lola and watched her. Her face was gently illuminated by the teal nightlight she insists we keep on. Her long lashes rested on her soft cheeks as she slumbered, completely oblivious to the tumultuous thoughts swirling in my mind.

That child is my world. My reason for being. I want nothing more than to give her everything I never had. On top of that list is a stable place to live.

Yes, I am paid a fair salary. But I still live on an extremely tight budget. With the three-hundred-dollar battery I had to purchase, that means my rent will either be short, or late. I’m not sure that the new manager will let that slide, not after she caught her boyfriend asking for my number a few weeks ago.

So, at three in the morning, as I watched the only thing in my life that matters sleep, my mind worked overtime to figure out a way to keep this place. I remembered the shoebox in Gavin Alexander’s closet, the one he doesn’t even know exists, full of money he doesn’t need.

A plan began to form.

I thought about it as I drove Lola to school and as I watched my neighbor’s son while she worked. Then I thought about it some more on the way to The Red.

It’s just three hundred dollars, I told myself. You can pay it back.

But when I opened the box that afternoon and saw the many thousands I’d actually collected over the months, and the image of Lola’s used clothes came to mind, I took a little more.

All evening I’ve carried that cash in my pocket, and with every hour that passes, it seems to grow heavier. While I envision Lola’s face when I buy her brand-new sneakers and a jacket, I also vividly remember the four walls that kept me prisoner for almost two years. Remember the scent and the feel.

Lola was born there because of the poor choices I made. Luckily, I was given a second chance and I know she was the reason.

If I’m caught and sent back, she wouldn’t be allowed with me this time. Now, she’d be taken to the foster care system while I rot away in a cell. All because of a thousand dollars.

By the time my shift is over, the stack of bills weighs so much I can barely walk to the employee break room on the first floor.

“You okay, girl?” Jessica, one of the hotel’s bartenders asks.

I nod, but the truth is I’m sick to my stomach. “Everything’s great.”

She closes her locker and places her name tag on her red shirt. “Well, guess I better get to work. You headin’ home for the night?”

“Actually… I forgot something in Mr. Alexander’s place. I have to go back.”

“Well, you better hurry. I heard he doesn’t like anyone up there after ten.” She looks at her watch. “It’s already fifteen past.”

I grab my keycard from my purse, my mind made up. “I’ll be quick. Besides, he never comes up at this hour. See you tomorrow.”

As fast as I can, I go up the employee elevator that leads to the penthouse. The doors slide open and I slip into the darkened interior. Jessica is right. One of first things I was told was that my job was from five to ten. No earlier. No later. It’s one of the things that really appealed to me, giving me the ability to take and pick up Lola from school, have breakfast with her and help her with her homework.

But today, the restriction is fucking inconvenient.

Although I’m not worried about the owner of the place to showing up— the whole reason I come in at five is that he ends his day late, therefore starts it late— I want to get this over with.

I walk through the halls carefully to avoid the security cameras. I’ve memorized their placement simply from walking by them frequently. Once I enter his bedroom and go into his closet, I relax.

Crouching low, I shove aside clothes and shoes, grabbing the box at the very back. I lift the lid as I tug the cash from my jeans’ pocket, and am about to put it back when something stops me.

It’s not the clicking sound that alerts me to the presence of someone else in the room with me. It’s the hard steel pressed to the back of my head that does.

“Don’t move.” The husky warning sends a chill up my spine. It’s Mr. Alexander. Though he’s rarely spoken to me, I’d recognize that deep gravelly voice anywhere.

Immediately, my hands go up, the money still clutched in my fist. “Please, don’t shoot.”

The wad of cash is snatched from me so fast it hurts my palm. “It’s not a good idea to steal from an employer, sweetheart. Didn’t anyone ever teach you that?”

“Please,” I plead, my throat tightening as I stand and turn to face him.

If I thought he was handsome before, now that he’s so close, dressed in a black tailored suit and the gun confidently held in his grip, he’s insanely attractive. God help me, but even in this position, where my life is literally on the line, I can’t help the flush that creeps up my neck at the sight of him.

It’s one of my many flaws, being attracted to the bad boys. The trouble makers. The dangerous ones.

“I’m so sorry,” I tell him, aware that my fate is in his hands, and he doesn’t give one shit about me. “I was desperate. Don’t call the police, I beg you. I can’t afford jail right now.”

“Then you should have thought twice before stealing from me.” The way he says it raises every red flag. There’s more than danger in his tone. There’s a deadly warning.

My heart pounds in my chest and threatens to burst through with fear, not just that he’ll send me back to that hellhole, but that he’ll kill me instead. Either way, Lola would be left without a mother

“It’s only a thousand dollars!” I cry out the obvious in a last-ditch effort to minimize the appearance of my guilt. “You have billions.”

His brows pinch together as if he’s processing what I said. For a moment, I think he’s going to buy it. Then, his blue gaze drops and roves over every part of me. Something I can’t read, a smoldering heat perhaps, crosses his features as his eyes flick back and lock with mine. “Try again.”

“I was putting it back,” I say. “I swear it.”

“You gotta do better than that.”

I bite my lower lip as I desperately try to think of a response that would satisfy him. But there’s nothing I can think of to give a man like him. “I’ll do anything if you don’t call the cops. Anything.”

And there is, it seems, something he wants from me.

That smoldering heat intensifies and he gives me the most wicked grin I’ve ever seen. “Miss Burrows, it will take more than just anything to keep you out of jail. It will take everything.”