Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

ALYSSA

P ulling up to the pinned location, I look around as I crawl my car toward the gate, where a man is holding his hand in the air for me to stop. I do so, pushing the window button down to open it.

“Hi,” I say awkwardly.

“You need to turn around and go back to the highway.” He points to where I’d just come from. “This road is private,” he adds.

A private road? What the hell?

It’s not too private; Brynne got here somehow.

“Uh, well, I can’t do that. See my friend called me and told me to meet her here. She said it was urgent, so I have to get past this gate.”

He leans down, his smug lips curling into something I’m sure he thinks is a grin, but it has my stomach balling up at the sight. My palms on the wheel sweat, but I keep my sassy exterior collected.

“Listen, princess, you need to return to whatever prissy part of town you came from. Get your nails done or something, hm? There’s nothing or no one behind that gate for the likes of you. Move along before I’m forced to do something more drastic. Not that I wouldn’t enjoy it.”

He rakes his dark brown eyes up my body, and I shift uncomfortably in the seat.

“Oh, you’d enjoy it,” I flirt, to which he rolls his eyes. My usual charms aren’t going to get me through this, that’s clear.

I look ahead at the wrought iron gate, wondering if my BMW could get through it if I rammed it from a good distance away.

The thought of beating the shit out of my precious Bernice, however, makes me feel a bit sick.

“Not going to work on me, princess. This is your last warning.”

A radio sounds from inside the small guard shack behind the man standing between me and Brynne, and I point at it. “You gonna get that?”

“I have more pressing matters before me,” he says.

I gasp, feigning shock. “Me? Pressing? I don’t think I’ve ever been called that before. I don’t know if I like it.”

He opens his mouth to reply, but his walkie sounds again. “John! Come in!”

“Goddamnit, they can’t do shit without radioing me every fucking second of the day,” he mumbles, trekking back over to a small, metal building and snatching the walkie off his desk.

“What?!”

“The boss is expecting someone. Alyssa Roebach. Let her through when she gets here.”

The guard eyes me narrowly. “Name?”

I grin. “Alyssa Roebach.”

“Too convenient, princess. Give me some I.D.”

“Seriously?” I grumble as I grab my Michael Kors off the seat beside me and rummage through the mess of cards in my wallet that I can’t be bothered to put away. Ever.

Finally, I find my license and hand it over to Mr. Dickhead.

He nods, speaking into the walkie-talkie as he hands my ID back to me. “She’s on her way to you,” he says.

“Ten-four,” comes the reply.

He puts the walkie back and stomps to my car in three giant steps, leaning back into my window.

“You’re going to follow the drive about half a mile, and don’t stray from it. We know how long it takes you to get to the door. Another guard will meet you when you arrive.”

“Alright, thank you. Pleasure doing business with you,” I tell him curtly, ignoring his overwhelming presence and closing my window, not giving him enough time to get out of it as it goes up.

A loud beep sounds as he hits a button from his shack of power, and the gate slides to the left.

Where the fuck am I, and what has Brynne gotten herself into?

True to Mr. Dickhead’s word, there’s another guard at the entrance, shifting from heel to toe in his boots as he waits for me to park and get out.

I toss my bag over my shoulder, lock my car with the fob, and march to him.

My heels click on the cobblestone drive, and I try to keep out of the grouted cracks.

“I’m here to see Brynne Howard,” I tell the man, and his answering smirk has meaning buried in it, but I can’t figure out what the hell it could be.

“Right this way, Ms. Roebach.”

“Ms. Roebach? I like that,” I tease, but he doesn’t break character.

Tough crowd.

The man leads me inside the massive mansion, and I take in everything I can as he opens a door beside the base of the giant stairs, standing aside so I can go in.

I’m still trying to figure out what the fuck is going on when I spot Brynne pacing before a massive desk that looks like it costs as much as Bernice had.

She turns toward me as I open my mouth to overload her with questions, and my eyes rake over her appearance.

She looks dirty and tired. Purple rings her eyes. The most alarming thing, however, is the blood spotting her face.

I drop my bag and rush her, ghosting my hands over her face as I don’t want to smudge whatever evidence is fresh on her skin.

“What happened? You killed someone? Do we need to bury a body? How many men saw what happened? Where is the boss? The man at the gate said the boss wanted to see me, and I don’t have much on me, but I have pepper spray. We can fuck someone up with that, right? They do it on television all the time,” I prattle off, anxious energy moving through me like the cleansing wind after a hurricane.

She laughs, and there’s a hysterical edge to it. “You’re speaking to the boss, Lyss.”

I open my mouth and then shut it again.

Well, this is a first.

“Explain. Now.”

“Sit down.”

Brynne spares no detail about who Slate Ricci is—the head of the Ricci Crime Family—and how her dad has been watching her. Her very not dead dad like we thought all these years.

How he’d been the one who sent the men she killed, and how he was the head of one of the five families who dominate New York City.

She goes on to explain how she was taken and held in his basement and how she’d killed him when she found out he’d been dabbling in sex trafficking in the city.

Her father’s blood is what’s splattered on her face, and I’m shocked to my soul at the news.

“I…” I trail off, trying and failing to find the words to give her. “Are you alright, first off?”

She’s shaking.

I stand and pull her into me, feeling her tremors like they’re my own.

“I killed my dad.”

“You killed a fucking monster,” I tell her, not trying to make light of taking a life, but after everything he did to her, after everything he’s done to countless women, he had to be stopped.

He’s the reason she killed men who came for Slate while on that godforsaken island. The very reason she has blood on her hands.

Guilt stretches in my chest, reminding me I was the one who pushed for her to sign up for that fucking television show in the first place, and I breathe past it, feeling the burn etch into my ribs like a deep tattoo.

“Lyss, I’m the boss,” she says, and another wave of shock flutters in my veins.

It’s the second time she’s reminded me she’s the one the men spoke of into their walkie-talkies.

“I know. You told me.”

She nods, rounding the desk and dropping into the chair that was occupied by her father only hours before.

There’s something dark and grim about looking at her as she leans over the desk and lets her head rest in her hands.

“What do I do?” I ask her. “What do you need me to do?” My problem-solving mode is activated. This is what I’m good at: crisis.

“I know this is a big ask, Alyssa, I do, but I need you to be my right hand. I don’t trust any of these men. Sure, there’s a blood loyalty, and I’m their boss by default, but if the mafia is anything like it is on TV…”

“It’s cutthroat,” I finish her thought.

She nods. “I’m going to need people I trust. I know you have a life. You can absolutely say no. I’ll completely understand.”

I shake my head, dropping into the chair in front of the desk, reaching for her hands across the nameplate with her father's name etched into it. “I’ve got you. And let’s be honest, nothing I’ve got going on is groundbreaking.”

“Being a mafia boss isn’t groundbreaking,” she replies, sniffling as more tears fall easily down her cheeks.

“Uhh, I think it is.”

She laughs through her tears, breaking her hands from mine to wipe at them.

“I can’t help but feel this is all my fucking fault.”

It’s not fair to drop my shit on her now, but I couldn’t help but get my admission out.

“Oh, Lyss. This isn’t your fault. You were only trying to help me escape my mess.”

I nod. “Still, I’m sorry for my part in it. I’ll be beside you for as long as you want me to be, Brynne. I’ve got your back. Always.”

She smiles warmly. “Thank you, Lyss.”

I sit back in the chair, both of us looking at one another and letting comfortable silence grow between us.

“Besides,” she says finally, and my eyes come back into focus on her, “you technically did help me get out of my money rut. I’m a millionaire now. Might even be a billionaire.”

I laugh—an absurd noise with all that’s going on. “I’ll be the judge of that when I see the books,” I toss back, and she laughs, scrubbing her face.

“Well, we’d better get to work, then,” she says

“First order of business?” I ask her.

“I need a meeting with Ardesia Ricci. He and I have some business to handle. Oh, and make sure they’re getting rid of whoever is locked in my basement currently.”

I bristle only slightly as I stand and give her a salute. “On it, Boss.”

“This is fucking weird,” she says.

I shrug. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Will we, Lyss? Will we figure out mafia life?”

I grin. “Oh, we’ll figure it out and have them bowing to us by the end of the fucking week, girl. I do not doubt our abilities.”

Her laugh this time is a little lighter, and I feel something unwinding in my chest, even though the world we’re both about to step into is uncharted and a lot darker than we’re used to.

At least we’re together.