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CHAPTER ONE
ITWASRUMOREDthat Dante Fiori could condemn a man to any level of hell he chose with the mere lift of his brow.
Powerful. Ruthless. Determined.
Dante was not a man to be trifled with or tested. He’d raised himself up from the slums with the aid of his mentor, Robert King, but then not only had he gone on to exceed the man’s expectations, he’d increased his fortune, as well.
Dante was a force in the world. A man all other men looked to—save his best friend, Maximus King, who found him overrated in the extreme and was the only person who had the nerve to say so. A man all women wanted to be with.
A king in whichever kingdom he chose to rule, whether he was a King by blood or not.
So it was shocking, then, when the world turned on its axis right in the middle of the King family’s grand living room.
Dante was in town, and he’d been invited over, as he often was, to join the family for their rather loud and raucous get-togethers. They were celebrating the launch of their oldest daughter Violet’s new makeup line, in a live video being broadcast from a nearby San Diego beach, to millions of viewers on her various media platforms.
Robert was lounging in his oversize chair, his wife, Elizabeth, sitting on the arm. Maximus was sitting back on the couch, one leg flung out in front of him, phone in one hand, a scotch in the other.
There was one family member missing. Two, actually. Minerva King, the youngest daughter and constant irritant, and her baby.
Dante had difficulty accepting the existence of the newest, smallest member of the King clan.
Min was nothing like Maximus or Violet. Maximus was a brilliant PR mind. A handler to the most difficult clients in the world. He did everything with a smile that the untrained eye might not be able to see was shot through with steel.
Violet was stunning. Keen and ambitious, she’d transformed her beauty into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. She was the driving force and face of her brand.
Then there was Min.
A little brown mouse who scurried about the grounds, always trailing about the place with animals dripping from her arms and a skinned knee. Her cheeks were always red, her hair always in a state.
And she talked. Constantly. About nothing.
She’d gone abroad to study nearly one year ago, and when she’d returned, it had been with a baby who was barely a month old. While initially shocked, over the past four months her family had accepted the existence of the little girl easily enough. The Kings weren’t old-fashioned.
The shock hadn’t come from the fact their daughter had broken with tradition and had a child out of wedlock—presumably with a foreign stranger—but that it had been Minerva and not Violet.
Dante did not feel accepting of it at all. He felt a strange burning in his chest when he looked at Min with the baby. This untamable, wild thing now tied down to earth by a child. By motherhood. She should be...out climbing trees. No matter that she was twenty-one, he couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that she was a woman now.
A mother.
The other urge he had was to find the man who had done it to her and send him back to dust.
Send him straight down to the ninth level where he could sit next to Lucifer himself.
It infuriated him perhaps because Minerva always seemed so hapless. Running around like a windmill, and falling down, often undented. Though she had been badly dented once at an event of her father’s, and he remembered it well.
Some boy she liked publicly humiliating her on the dance floor.
Robert King had nearly had a stroke, and his anger had only embarrassed Min all the more.
She’d been seventeen or so. Dante had danced with her because she’d needed a partner.
Don’t let them see you cry.
He’d said it sternly. More than he’d meant, but it had done the trick.
The idea that someone had harmed her now enraged him all over again.
He wasn’t in the habit of questioning himself. He simply acted when he felt action needed to occur. And perhaps that was the issue here. There was no action to be taken.
