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ONE
Luciana
This couldn’t be happening.
But it was, with sickening clarity. My mother was standing in front of me in the thin early morning light, just below the windows of the Boston apartment I’d called my own for the last several weeks.
Her eyebrows arched expectantly beneath the carefully sculpted waves of her dark brown hair—the same shade as my own, though mine was rumpled from sleep. I’d only given it a hasty finger-combing before I’d come down.
Her slender yet muscular body exuded the same aura of cool control it always had. She’d ordered me to come with her, and she expected me to obey without argument.
Knowing my mother, I was lucky she wasn’t making the demand at gunpoint. No doubt she had a pistol concealed in her sleek pantsuit somewhere in case I forced the issue that far.
Her voice was equally cool. “Let’s get going. The jet is waiting.”
My legs stiffened with automatic resistance. “I don’t want to go, Mom. I’m making a new life here.”
Mom’s eyebrows lifted higher. “What kind of life could you have running around this mundane city, living in a dreary building like this?” She flicked her hand toward the apartments behind me.
My heart lurched at the thought of her aiming her attention in that direction. I had no idea how much she knew about my exact living situation—or who I’d been living with. I had no idea how she’d found me in the first place, although I could make a few guesses.
Had Sheeran—the leader of the local gang that ran this territory for one of Mom’s colleagues in the Devil’s Dozen—complained to his boss after all, and the Harvester had brought my presence up with my mother? Or maybe Haggard, the lunatic who’d been stalking me for months, had tipped her off just in case our final confrontation hadn’t gone his way?
I wasn’t really the bloodlust-y type, but I wished I could drag that bastard out of whatever grave Rafael had dumped him in and kill him all over again.
As I searched for the right response to give Mom, apprehension prickled down my back. The three men I cared about more than anyone else in the world were sleeping two floors above us.
Rafael could hold his own in a fight, but Mom must have assumed he was with me. It’d have been too much of a coincidence for my bodyguard to have disappeared at the same time as I had unless we’d left together. She wouldn’t have come unprepared to deal with him.
And if Niko and Jasper caught wind that something had gone wrong and raced in to try to help me… My skater men weren’t remotely ready to face off against the Deadly Rose.
She could cut them down as easily as blinking.
I kept my voice low, afraid to make too much of a scene on the quiet street. This early in the morning, only the occasional car rumbled by.
“I can move up to better things than this. I’m just getting started. I’m making a real career for myself with my figure skating, and this is what I want to be doing. It’s not like you need me back home.”
Mom let out a light scoffing sound. “You’re my heir. Of course I need you. I have significant plans in the works, and you’re a key part of them. Be glad that I tracked you down before your absence became too noticeable, or I’d bemuchangrier than I am. The skating was always a silly dream.”
I swallowed thickly. I hadn’t really thought my argument would work, but I’d had to try. I still couldn’t give up.
My hands dug into the pockets of my hoodie, one of them curling around the knife I’d recently held to Quentin Wolfe’s chest. It was because of Jasper’s rival that I was down here way too early in the morning at all—although maybe I should thank him for that. He might have saved us a confrontation right at the apartment, where I couldn’t have kept my mother away from my men.
“It isn’t a ‘silly dream,’” I insisted. “I’m doing well enough that I’ve qualified for the biggest competition in the entire country. If I can score well there, I’ll be brought onto the national team to compete overseas.”
Mom tsked her tongue. “Whirling around on the ice like some kind of circus performer. You’ve even dyed your hair like a clown.” She wrinkled her nose as she took in the reddish coloring I’d used in the hopes of disguising my identity. “You’re meant for more than that ridiculousness, Luciana. Please don’t keep me waiting any longer.”
I stared at her, anger flaring up inside me. A dangerous emotion, but for the moment it held me steady.
“I told you, I don’t want to go. Why should I? I know you had Coach Balakin murdered to try to get me to stop skating. He didn’t deserve that, and it didn’t stop me anyway. I’m an adult—it’s my life.”
My mother leveled her coldest glare at me, her eyes like fathomless pits. “It has never been onlyyourlife from the moment you were born. You belong to the legacy of the Deadly Rose, and you will return and take your proper place. And if you don’t come along right now, your new skater friends will meet similar unfortunate fates to Balakin’s.”
Nausea unfurled in my gut. She wasn’t denying what she’d done—hell, she was doubling down, threatening to do it again.
And I knew she wasn’t bluffing.
Images flashed behind my eyes: the memories of my old coach’s bloody body, slumped on the rink in Austin—then Jasper, then Niko, chests slashed open, gore spilling out of them…
