Page 102 of Axel

“Oh, but he can’t. He likes her.” Delphine rests on Grant’s chest, smiling. “He came home from your mission and told me how you found your true queen. You just need to stop playing games with her.”

In her French accent, Delphine makes it sound torrid and teasing. She can’t help it. But I’m not fucking around about Ruby. I’m serious and taking my time.

“Do my sons care to tell me who, or must I smack your thick skulls together?”

Mom never beat us. She didn’t need to. She’d playfully smack the back of our heads or tug our earlobes until we whined and obeyed.

But with anyone else? My mother rules with an iron fist, a hellcat pistol, and a calculating mind that’s a hundred stepsahead, anticipating your next moves—a skill only a survivor acquires.

She doesn’t need to kill you, though she will. Wait a month, and you’ll find your life in ashes and my mom smiling with a hot, gold lighter in her hand.

“Aleksi.” My mother rarely says my birth name. We never speak Russian. We’ve perfected our American accents, some of us sounding Southern, too. We blend in. We survive. We thrive, though occasionally, my mother reminds me that though I’m King, she’s The Queen. “Who is she?”

In an ivory Chanel bouclé dress and her long dark hair in an elegant twist, my mother sits in the chair beside me, demanding, expecting. She looks like royalty, because she is.

The daughter of a wealthy oligarch, a descendant of the last Tsar of Russia, she became the stolen princess, the young queen to the evilest man. No matter how my father made her bleed, blue blood thunders in her veins.

She raised us with the same nobility.

“You’ve met her,” I confess.

Do I keep things from my mom? Sure. I’m a grown-ass man into kinky shit.

But lie to her face? Never.

She arches a groomed brow while Grant stirs the pot. “She’s beautiful. All fiery hair, fearless and feisty, and she doesn’t put up with his shit. He can’t bat his baby blues at her and make her swoon. She’s a badass.”

Oh, but I can spank her ass and make her obey.

I smirk at the memory stirring my cock.

“I’ve met this woman?” my mother asks.

“The cowgirl at the club.” Finally telling her about Ruby does something to my chest. It’s warm. It’s promising. “She was the one, wearing a blonde wig, who you tried to help that night.”

“The luxe night?” Mom nods, remembering, “But she was upset. Was it with you?”

Oh shit. Don’t let my mom find out we’ve wronged a woman.

“No, Ruby wasn’t mad at me. She was stalking me.” Mom smiles, impressed. “Because I was stalking her. She works for me and knows about us. And now, I’m trying to protect her and go slow, but diarrhea-of-the-mouth over there is talking shit, so … so much for that.”

Delphine giggles and Grant beams likeAin’t love grand.

“Where is she?” Instantly, my mom worries. “We have that sex-trafficking psycho on the loose now. He tried to shoot my little baby,” she points at Grant, ignoring that he’s six-foot-five, “and now he can go after everyone we love.” She points at me. “Everyoneyoulove.”

“She’s secure. She’s with Nick and Zar.” I love that my mom immediately protects whoever we love. “She’s on vacation in Greece with them. Turner can’t get her there.”

“I want Turner’s blood,” my mother seethes. “I want him chained and bleeding. And I want every man who’s ever bought from him. They’ll suffer like they’ve made so many suffer and?—”

“Yes, my Queen.”

I understand.

My mother never got justice. She got freedom. She got us, but she lost the love of her life doing it. Still, she fights for others trafficked as she was.

The phone in my pocket chimes. It’s Nash calling.TWOreads across my screen and I answer, “Yeah?”

“We’ll stay at the marina until this system passes.” Nash updates me on his status, hiding out on his boat in stormy weather with Vale Monroe. They’re the ones exposed to Turner. Turner knows their identities, not ours.

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