Page 7 of Rubies and Revenge

I hum in agreement.

“They’ll make it right,” Darius reassures in his smooth baritone.

I take a hairpin turn and shoot him a censuring look. “We aren’t in the business of predictions.”

“Every business attempts to predict something—risk, market trends, competitors’ moves,” Angie says. And she would, being the manager of a night club.

“You know what I mean.” I press the trick stone in the wall, and the apparent dead end ahead of us opens to reveal a stairwell.

Angie’s boots clunk against the floor as Darius pulls the faux-wall closed behind us. A door opposite us leads into storage and laundry, and the stairs ahead lead to the main floor and then the private rooms and VIP box—or what Darius likes to call the throne room. I grab the railing, the bass vibrating through the building and up my arm, when Angie taps my elbow.

I pause, turning back to her.

She clears her throat with a scrunch of her nose. “There’s something else you couldn’t predict.”

I cock a brow. “Well?”

Angie straightens, smoke-lined eyes narrowed and shrewd. “Do you know Zarina Gallo?”

The name releases the inferno I had tucked away.

I keep my face relaxed, my hand loose on the stair’s railing, as the wordGalloshudders through my entire body. My knee flexes, and that twinge from kneeling at Antoni’s head and kicking his throat settles into a bone-deep ache.

Gallo.

The family that took me, one of a hundred lost kids, off the street. The family that taught me the ropes of what it meant to hold all the power of a kingdom. The family that I have done everything in my power to cripple since they left me lying cold and broken in an alley much like the one we visited tonight.

“Why?” I ask nonchalantly, as if Zarina Gallo’s name is not threatening to spark an explosion inside of me.

“She’s at the front door.” Angie studies me with a too-knowing look. I try to pull back the rage from where it simmers on my skin, over my face. It doesn’t matter as Angie grimaces. “And she’s asking—er,demanding—to see you.”

I let a nasty grin slink across my lips. “By all means, let the princess in.”

ZARINA

The Den of Inequity looks like a dump.

Black walls and black doors without a single window and a flickering neon sign with “iniquity” misspelled andleftthat way as if the Tamayo gang didn’t care to fix it. A line of people wait outside, an eclectic collection of neon hair, leather harnesses, and gender-bending outfits. No one bats an eye. No one whispers about the strangeness of it. They all laugh, shoot the shit, throw compliments at each other like they’re infinite and well-deserved.

It makes my heart clench in a weird, nauseous way that I don’t have time or space to understand. Not when this is my only small window of opportunity.

“We should go,” Pat mutters in my ear. I don’t think this is what they had in mind when we fled the house. They scan the sidewalk, the street with parked cars lining the curb, the heavy traffic of the main road a couple blocks up. I know they’re waiting for the moment a Gallo car pulls up and spots us. The two people corralled to the side and separated from the pack. Easy pickings.

But I came here for a reason.

“Not yet.” I flick my hair behind my shoulder and match one of the bouncers—a bulky woman with a fade wearing a leather vest like she’s in a motorcycle club—glare for glare. “Not until we’re kicked out.”

“You’re not even in,” she mutters.

I bare my teeth, ready to hiss insults, when a much taller, bulkier, figure ducks through the club’s front door. The woman from before, short and petite with harsh, painted angles and a mouth that lacks laugh lines, slips out from behind the man and leads him right over to us.

“Zarina Gallo.” She says my name like she’s announcing an execution.

The man looks me up and down without a hint of attraction. It throws me off-balance. Almost every man I’ve ever met—except for my father—has looked at me like they want me, like they wished they could peek under my skirt and run their hands over my skin. And every single time, it makes me swallow a gag and grit my teeth.

Not this man.

I blink once, twice, and pull the mask of the mobster’s daughter over my face, because I don’t know how else to act. “Well?” I snip. “Take us to Tamayo.”

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