Page 1 of The Queen's Game (Ruthless Games 1)

ONE

REBECCA

I gripped the armrestof the limousine, my nails digging into the hammered leather as we swerved from lane to lane. “What the hell is going on?” I banged on the dividing partition to get the driver’s attention.

Outside the limo, horns honked and tires screeched as I waited for someone’s front end to slice our car in half. My heart thumped with every swerve.

“We’re being followed.” My father slapped his bodyguard sitting next to him. “Get this guy off our tail once and for all, will ya?”

“Got it, boss.” Kato, dressed in all black, reached into his coat pocket, presumably to grab that Sig Sauer pistol he never left home without.

With every sharp cut to the right, then left, the satin gown Dad forced me to wear made my ass slip along the leather bench seat. I pressed down on my sequin clutch purse and the metal outline of my Ruger reminded me trouble always followed a Domenico.

“Slow down so I can talk to this jackass with a death wish behind us,” Kato roared to the limo driver as he raised his gun.

“Don’t slow down, we’re on the FDR.” I eyed all the cars around us on the three-lane highway that ran along the east side of Manhattan. “Do you want us killed? Like this?” Gripping the seat, I clawed my way to the back bench. “Get out of my way, Kato so I can see who’s behind us.” I couldn’t see anything with that fat Italian ass of his in my way.

“You heard her,” my father snapped. “Get off the seat, Kato.”

The guard slid away, grumbling as I peered out the back window to get a better look. A black sedan hovered behind us, but when I squinted, the face registered immediately.

“That’s Julian Russo,” I said to my father. “I went to St. Mary’s with him.” I left off the last detail I’d heard about Julian being accepted to Quantico.

“Kato, note the plate just in case.” Dad started coughing. “Jesus Christ, I can’t breathe. Those chemo treatments have me sweating like a pig.” He yanked on his collar exposing red, raw skin that looked dry as hell.

“Now your bowtie is crooked.” I reached up to fix it. I’d seen him in that tux plenty of times, but he’d lost so much weight, it hung off him. Despite his expensive cologne, all I smelled was the lingering hospital disinfectant where doctors had filled his body with toxic chemicals.

“Don’t bother,” he said, as his hands closed around mine and squeezed as if he knew nothing would turn back the clock and make him the handsome titan of his youth.

After placing my hand back in my lap like I was still a little girl and not his twenty-eight-year-old Yale-educated CFO, Dad yelled to the driver, “Just get us to the hotel already.”

“Yes, sir.”

We swung off the Murray Hill exit and after a few turns and a couple of really long lights, we rode up Park Avenue. The trees in the center median sparkled with clear bulbs all year now, instead of just for the holidays.

My father’s interest dropped to his phone, the screen bathing his aged face in a faint blue light. “What in goddamn hell?” he seethed. “We have to call your brother.”

It never ended with my father and Nate these days. “When?”

“Now.”

“You want to speak to Nate right now? We’re a block away from the Warwick hotel, Dad.” I called him Babbo as a little girl, but I was grown up now and worked for him. “What’s so urgent at this hour on a Saturday night?”

With a face flushed with anger, he showed me his phone. “He needs to explain that.”

“Explain, wha—” The words died in my throat looking at a photo posted on Instagram of my brother, the famous musician.

He was on stage with his fiancé, Lacey Wilde. But another man with dark hair was kissing and feeling her up. My father already hated that Nate chose music over our family business. Seeing the woman who would one day be the matriarch of our family acting this way must have hit my father in the chest like a branding iron.

Nate, what’s going on?

“I’ll call him, but Dad, we’re about to go into the hotel. Can’t it wait?”

“Do it!”

I froze and waited for him to look at me. When he did, he lowered his eyes clouded from the cancer ravaging his body and the treatments that made it worse. “I’m sorry, Rebecca,” he said quietly because Giovanni Domenico never apologized. To anyone.

He’d reluctantly let my brother live his dream of making music, hoping Nate would eventually burn out and come home to work for the family. That photo of Nate acting reckless reminded my father Nate had no intention of ever taking over and becoming the king of Domenico Holdings.

Our limo coasted into a line of chauffeured cars waiting to drop us into the spotlight of the awaiting media. I adjusted my dress, hating that I looked like a precious doll people stared at and no one dared to touch.

My father’s red-rimmed eyes faced the window. “Fucking cameras. Pull up. Pull up. I’m not walking a damn red carpet for a goddamn fundraiser.” His irritation wasn’t anything new, but now he had about six months to live, something only a handful of people realized.

His New York City real estate kingdom needed someone else on the throne soon. I’d shown my usual loyalty when Dad brought up Nate at his meetings, stating his crown prince would eventually assume more and more control of the business.

The only person taking more control was me while I too waited for my brother. Not to come work for us. But to tell my father to fuck off once and for all.

Then Dad would have to face reality.

And hand his kingdom over to me.

It was meant to be mine. My two older sisters were married and living in Connecticut with men my father chose for them. Men who had nothing to do with our business, but came from wealthy families in New England. With Nate skidding on thin ice, I deserved to take over the company, even if that included the seedy underworld my father ruled.

The limo stopped at the north end of the block, and I gave my father back his phone. “Once we’re inside, we’ll call from a private lounge. On my phone.” Because I knew Nate wouldn’t pick up a call from my father.

The car door opened and to my surprise, Sebastien Daria stood there in an onyx tux that looked like it’d been painted on him. His height still took my breath away. He’d been the tallest boy at St. Mary’s Prep.

In the ten years since we graduated, he’d grown wider in the shoulders and his cheeks were now sculpted like Michelangelo himself had done the honors. With his golden skin, square jaw, and weathered laugh lines, Sebastien looked rugged and not like the pretty boy he once was. Now he had the face of a lethal lover.

Just not mine anymore.

“Thank you.” I couldn’t bring myself to call him Bastien. In school, he’d gone by Seb, the name I’d cried out when he made me come.

Since getting his law degree and working for his father, he’d developed quite the reputation in the illegal gambling world for being ruthless. No one fucked with Bastien the Bastard.

“I saw your car pull up.” His voice stayed even, never dropping a hint of whether he still cared about me. The pain in his dark eyes told a different story. One I didn’t understand.

I had no choice but to ignore the tension that often thickened between us since he ended our relationship five years ago. Broke my damn heart. But his father did business with mine, so he’d always be in my life. It took so much energy every time I saw him to mask my hurt.

“Dad’s on the rampage,” I muttered to Sebastien as Kato helped my father out of the limo, his foot wobbling to find the curb. “I have to make a phone call before I go into the ballroom.”

“Nate?”

My head snapped up. “How did you know?”

“I have Instagram.”

“You follow my brother?”

“He’s a really good singer.” Sebastien stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged, looking so damn handsome I could weep. Don’t even get me started on how good he smelled.

We’d been so happy at one time for a couple of twenty-somethings living in Manhattan. I went to work for my dad while he rocketed to the first in his class at Columbia Law School before joining Daria Inc. He was my best friend at one time. The only person in the world I felt really knew me.

“Let’s find a private suite.” My father’s fingers closed around my upper arm.

“Giovanni...” Sebastien acknowledged my father, whose eyes went narrow and cold, sending my ex several feet in the opposite direction.

Shaking my head, I said, “Dad, I can walk. You don’t have to drag me inside. And yes, let’s get this phone call over with so we can enjoy the fundraiser.”

A late March breeze sailed past my legs, billowing through my gown’s thigh-high slit. I pushed my skirt down, finding Sebastien’s velvety sable eyes still on me. I didn’t mind wearing a gown if it kept his gaze on me all night.

Just smile at me like you used to...

Instead, he turned away, pushing a brawny hand through a mess of silky chocolate curls. I looked away too and caught the paparazzi’s flashing lights when Anthony Messina, in a charcoal tux, got out of his limo. Looking like a movie star with jet-black close-cropped hair and perfect olive skin, he waved to onlookers with one hand and helped his mother safely to the curb with the other. Anthony Sr. got out next and looked as frail as my dad. Only my father had cancer. Anthony’s father was just old. Ancient by today’s standard of ‘old.’

With only his guard hovering behind him, Sebastien made his way up the donor’s red carpet. He stopped when Anthony glared at him. The two men exchanged a curt nod, and then Sebastien disappeared inside. They had a love/hate relationship going back to high school when Anthony would refuse to go for a walk while Seb and I made out in the backseat of his car. Anthony often planted himself in the front seat smoking a cigarette. Sebastien and I had also done more than make out in that car.

We weren’t kids anymore. And no one’s touched me since Sebastien.

With my hand tucked into my father’s elbow, he steered me to a private entrance on the side of the Warwick hotel that Kato had secured for us. Dad didn’t need to wave to any cameras. On the outside, my father was a legitimate, shiny real estate mogul. For the most part, that was true, but Dad always had his hand in something unsavory. His cohorts, Anthony Sr., Sebastien’s dad Richard Daria, and Patrick Byrne were hounds who’d followed my alpha father down all kinds of bad-news paths over the last thirty years. Always chomping for more control of New York City. Typical for our world, smaller players fighting for a clear lane to move ahead.

If they knew my father, the king, was sick, I suspected a war would break out. The Messinas, the Darias, and the Byrnes would certainly do battle to topple the silent control Domenico Holdings had on this city.

As soon as Dad and I reached the grand lobby with high ceilings and painted arched panels, I snapped my fingers to get the attention of the concierge manager, who wisely came jogging over. “Yes, Miss Domenico?”

“We need to make a phone call,” my father blurted, then coughed.

I stepped forward, blocking the king who was unable to breathe. “We need a private meeting room right now.”

“Right this way. Can I get you a drink, Mr. Domenico?”

“Macallan,” Dad demanded on a strained breath. He wasn’t supposed to drink while receiving chemo, but who was I to deny a dying man his favorite scotch?

“Yes, sir. And for you, Miss Domenico?”

“I’ll take care of it, Taylor.” Giancarlo Byrne came strutting over. “Mr. Domenico. Rebecca.”

Giancarlo’s fair, but rosy skin, reddish-blond hair, and green eyes came from his father’s Irish roots. His husky build was all Italian from his mother’s side of the Bianco family, the previous kings of New York, reminding me that even the strongest of dynasties could be overthrown.

As the next generation, Giancarlo, Sebastien, Anthony, and I had been groomed to be allies, just like our fathers. Giancarlo grew up in Boston though and moved to New York when his father took control of the Bianco businesses.

“Where is this meeting room already, Byrne?” My father straightened his back, addressing someone he felt was his underling.

“We need to make a phone call.” I squeezed Dad’s arm. “It’s urgent.”

“Use my personal office behind the check-in desk.” Giancarlo held his hand out toward a beige and amber speckled granite countertop under cobalt blue pendant lights.

The Byrne Group had a stake in nearly every five-star hotel in the city. And like Gian’s best friends, Sebastien and Anthony, he too vied to gain favor with my father.

Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and steal the heart of any man who wants your father’s business.

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