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Prologue
Ten Years Ago
On a Mission
Jenna
I slammed on brakes at the curb, and my white Cadillac Escalade squealed to a stop. Layla, my best friend since we were eighteen, opened the door.
“Get in,” I said, glancing over to take in her daily uniform of short shorts, platform sandals, tight tee, and beaded jewelry. She was kind of hippy and kind of a model. She was also an artist and all kinds of weird. I adored her.
“What’s up?” Layla asked, buckling herself in and turning to the backseat. “Hey, Gabby,” she said.
Gabby, my colleague at Savannah State University, was a technology professor who waxed poetic about code and was currently dressed in jeans and one of her thousand Star Wars tees, this one depicting Yoda and an Ewok.
I hit the gas, and the Escalade lurched forward. Road monster that it was, traffic made way, and I gunned it through the intersection.
“We’re on a mission,” Gabby said from the back, holding on to the seat in front of her for dear life.
“Cool,” Layla agreed, totally unphased by the lunacy of my driving. “For what?” Her blonde hair flew as she whipped her head toward the back seat. “Shoe sale at Sak’s?”
I sniffed, and Layla turned toward me. “Uh-oh.”
I made the turn onto Mercy Boulevard and headed toward St. Joseph’s, the hospital where my internationally renowned neurosurgeon husband was supposedly working late.
“I found the match book from a strip club in his jacket pocket.” I sniffed again, bigger and uglier this time. “And lipstick on his collar,” I wailed.
“What a fucking stereotype,” Gabby groused from the backseat. “The least he could do is be original.”
Layla reached out, probably to pat me down with positive vibes, but I batted her hand away. “Donottry to make me feel better,” I said.
Layla pulled back. “Okay, Jenna, but should we maybe think about what we’re doing? Come up with some sort of plan?”
And that was Layla. Down for anything, no matter how out there or crazy. She’d been my maid of honor, even though she couldn’t stand my husband Edward. Not then and definitely not now. She’d been in labor and delivery with me when Cassandra was born, because Edward was called to a case in Europe. She’d held my hand through every milestone for the past thirty years. I figured she could hold my hand through divorce court too.
I slung the Escalade into the employee lot. Nope. Edward’s sporty red Porsche wasn’t there.
Twenty minutes later found us pulling into the underground parking of the Mulberry Inn off Bay Street. And there it was. Bright, shiny red. Porsche. BRN DOC on the license plate.
I wanted to be the woman who marched over and keyed that sleek paint job to hell and back. I wanted to be the woman who drove home, threw all the cheating asshole’s clothes in the front yard, lit fire to them, and maybe shot some tequila with my girls while we danced around the inferno. I also wanted to be the woman who knocked on the hotel suite door and took indisputable video footage with my cellphone to play in divorce court to a gallery full of polite society matrons.
I had been that woman once. But not anymore. Now, I was Dr. Jenna Albright, heiress, college professor, and socialite.
And as I sat in themom carSUV I hated, dressed in a Chanel suit with my hair in a conservative chignon that I also hated, with a Cartier watch at my wrist and Louboutin red bottoms on my feet (which I had to admit were sexy), I dropped my head to the steering wheel andsobbed.
*************************
Talon
Talon leaned back in his chair and eyed his brothers around the table.
He’d earned his cut and the right to sit at this table ten years ago, and over the course of those years, he’d done some crazy shit. Some scary shit. Some shit that the only reason he could sleep at night was that it was done in the name of brotherhood. But he’d never agreed to do anything like this.
The president banged his gavel.Done.
Talon’s eyes cut to his closest brother, Gate.
Gate’s expression was hard, but his eyes slid away. He knew they were walking into a cluster fuck too, but there was nothing either of them could do about it.
