“What’s going on? Is it something to do with Reyes?” she asked worriedly. The two men got along well enough, but there was still some tension. They were both leaders, both loners. It was always a possibility that they could clash. But the past few days seemed to dispel some of that tension. They were far from friends, but for their wives sakes, they had become friendly. Vee didn’t know what she would do if they went to war.
Sotza stopped walking. He looked down at her. His expression was grim. Her heart thumped hard in her chest and she knew without words that something terrible had happened.
“Raina?” she asked, a chill crawling across her, leaving goosebumps in its wake.
He nodded.
Vee let out a desperate sound. She couldn’t help it. Raina was her only vulnerability. The one thing that could destroy her. She clutched Sotza tight, burying her head against his chest and gasping hard to swallow the tears. “J-just tell me.”
“She’s alive,” he said, his voice quiet. “But she’s been shot. Mateo is with her.”
Vee struggled to bring herself under control. Sotza kneeled with her, holding her cradled against him until she managed to leash her emotions. She leaned back in his arms. Eyes glittering like blue diamonds. “Do you remember when you told me if you loved me I should ask for the world and see what happened?”
“Si, mi amor, I forget nothing we have said to each other.”
“I want it,” she said, her voice husky. “I want my daughter to come home and I want the people responsible. I want the world to burn until I get those things.”
He watched her, dark eyes glowing with love and vengeance. “Consider it done.”
THE END
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Acknowledgments
Thank you so much dear readers for taking the time to read Queen’s Move. Scarred Queen was a tough act to follow, but I absolutely loved writing this book. Vee was the same age as me when I started writing and I really enjoyed stepping into her character. The subject of adoption is close to my heart as my son is adopted. Many of the scenes between Vee and her daughter were emotional to write. I can’t wait to explore Raina’s character further in her book, Born a Queen.
I want to say a special thank you to my mom. She’s been a rock in my life when I most needed one. She never judges and she supports me in everything. She checks on me, we talk, we laugh. She reads my books and loves them. She is an empowering person and I love her for it.
Thank you to Jen for being the woman that talks me on and off ledges. For teaching me that kidnapping isn’t a crime unless you get caught. This is the woman you need if ever you find yourself in a bar fight, she has a girl’s back no matter what (side note: she probably caused the fight).
Thank you to everyone in my circle that helps me create the magic: my wonderful editor, my cover artist, my author friends (special thank you to DD Prince for taking on the majority of my crazy), Sansa, Kimberly, Barbie, Kristi, and many more. Thank you to my rocking PA, Alicia. She always has my back even when she’s threatening to spank me for forgetting to tell her about my promos and releases (I plead artist brain!).
Again, thank you for reading! It’s always a pleasure to hear from my readers so please check out my social media links and drop in for a chat.
Love,
Nikita
Sneak peek: Excerpt from Born a Queen: The Queens Series
It was Raina’s twenty-first birthday. She wanted to go out and party, dance all night, make friends, flirt, maybe take a guy home if she really felt like it. She’d never done that. Never taken a guy home before. In fact, she’d never even had sex. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to. She really, really did. But life had thrown a major curveball at her two years ago and she’d been running ever since. This time, it appeared she was running into a dead end.
Raina didn’t think she was going to get to party for her birthday. No, she was pretty sure she was going to die. She peered out into the dark night from the window of her rented room. She was on the fourth floor of a very old building. One that was sinking. But then, all the buildings were sinking in Venice.
Italy was her ninth country in two years. When she left Venezuela, leaving the mother she just met behind, she went on the run. She had to assume there were people after her, or watching. And she knew she was right. Sometimes she would come home from an evening out and she would have that eerie feeling that someone had been in her apartment. She suspected dear old stepdad, Sotza, the Venezuelan mafia boss, had people keeping an eye on her. He probably knew from the moment she left his estate where to find her.
But did his second-in-command? Her mind flashed back to her time in Venezuela. The brief month before her mother ushered her out of the country in a daring escape. Mateo Gutierrez. Cartel to the marrow of his bones. Sotza’s right hand man. And her constant shadow while she was in Sotza’s care. Mateo was everything she hated in a man, arrogant, dangerous, rude. But he was also indecently attractive. And for some reason he’d wanted her. She wondered if the two years since she last saw him had dimmed his regard. Somehow she doubted it. Even in her brief time observing the mafia, guys like them didn’t just let things go. They held on to their grudges, their obsessions. Those qualities were what made the men of the mafia so hard, and so successful.
Raina flitted around her apartment, shoving her possessions into a small suitcase. She didn’t have much. She travelled light because she never knew when she’d have to pick up and run. She had done it before, but never in this much of a hurry. That was because she’d done something stupid. She crossed the wrong people. And it was only a matter of time before they found out and came after her. She suspected sooner rather than later.
And she was right. Seconds after that thought entered her head, as she was reaching for her purse preparing to leave her tiny apartment for good, the door crashed open. The only thing that saved her from being shot in the heart as she stood gaping at the man that kicked the door in, was the fact that he kicked the door so hard it rebounded off the wall and slammed shut again. The bullet meant for her thudded into the heavy wooden door.
Raina dropped her purse and ran for the only place in her apartment with a door that would close and lock. Her bathroom. As she ran, reaching for the frame, her front door was flung open again and the room sprayed in bullets. She felt a tearing, hot pain hit her in the back. The force of the bullet flung her into the bathroom. She landed hard on her knees. She didn’t have time to assess herself. She rolled onto her back and kicked the door shut, reaching up to lock it. Thank god these old Italian buildings had thick doors. Bullets thunked into the wood as she crawled toward the bathtub and dragged herself inside.
“Fuck!” she snarled, reaching behind her to touch the spot on her back. Her hand came away covered in blood. She really hoped they hadn’t taken out her only good kidney. Even if they hadn’t, the blood loss for someone like her could be catastrophic.
She had to get out before they got in. She’d picked this place because it had a window in the washroom with a fire escape. She was going to have to get out of the bathtub though, since the window was over the toilet. She took a deep breath, eyed the bathroom door, which was still in one piece and flung herself out of the tub. As she was kneeling on the toilet reaching for the latch she realized there was no more sounds hitting the door. Had they given up on coming after her?
That didn’t make sense. The front door was thicker than the bathroom door and they’d had no problem breaking through that one. She stopped, her hands hovering against the window, and listened. At first there was nothing, and then she heard muffled thumping sounds. A man shouted, but it was cut off. What were they doing out there, killing each other?
Rain
a wasn’t going to wait around to find out. Whatever was happening it couldn’t be good. And she needed medical attention right away.
She turned back to the window. A scream leapt from her throat and she fell off the toilet as bullets crashed through the window. A man had come up the fire escape to cover the window and she’d come face to face with him. She huddled on the floor as small as she could get and covered her arms with her head.
She knew she was dead when she finally heard the sound she’d been expecting. The bathroom door crashed open, smashing against the bath tub. She tensed, waiting for that awful hot tearing sensation to rip through her again as she was shot full of holes. Instead, she heard two muffled shots and a shout from the balcony.
When three seconds passed and she was still alive she chanced a peek through her arms. Mateo Guiterrez was standing over top of her, tall, scowling, eyes and gun trained on the window.
“Mateo!” she gasped.
“Raina,” he acknowledged grimly and looked down at her, satisfied that he’d gotten the guy on the fire escape. He reached for her, dragging her off the floor.
She groaned in pain but was forced to follow as he pulled her out of the bathroom and into the main room. She gaped at the two dead men decorating her place. They probably hadn’t stood a chance. Probably thought they were going to kill a helpless woman. They would have no idea that she had an entire cartel at her back and, apparently, at her disposal.
“Jacket, shoes, purse. Hurry up,” he barked at her.
Raina didn’t pause. Her only chance of survival was with this man. She dragged a leather coat on, flinching in pain as it stuck to her back. She bent over to tie up her running shoes, but as she straightened, dizziness engulfed her. Mateo caught her before she hit the floor, grabbing the part of her back that had been shot. She cried out, clutching his arm to shove him away.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded.
“Shot,” she muttered.
He turned her around and lifted her jacket and shirt. He muttered something she suspected was a nasty swear word in Spanish.
“Is it bad?” she asked, peeking at him over her shoulder.
“No,” he growled, and then picked her up in his arms.
This was the second time he’d done this. The first time he’d been kidnapping her from her University campus. This time? She didn’t know. He was definitely saving her life, but she suspected there was more to him being here. The timing was too convenient.
“Mateo?” she whispered as he glanced into the hallway before striding out her door.
“Si, Raina?” He took the stairs down two at a time, careful to hold her tight against his chest so he wouldn’t jar her wound.
“Thanks for coming for me.” She had to say the words just in case she didn’t get another chance.
He paused for a moment on the second-floor landing and looked down at her, his dark eyes hot with anger, possession and longing. “I will follow you into hell, chica.”
“Let’s hope not,” she sighed right before passing out.
* * *
Release date for Born a Queen TBA
Bonus: Excerpt from Scarred Queen: The Queens Series
Ignacio Hernandez had never before brought a woman to a meet. Then, they’d never met at a club before. The entire scene was unprecedented. Reyes didn’t do unprecedented, but he was willing to make an exception because he was curious. He could sever the Miami connection if he had to. It would cause some shockwaves, but it wasn’t out of the question. Ignacio was beginning to annoy him anyway. His poor decisions were beginning to affect the Bolivian. Such as bringing a woman like her to a meet with a man like him. Something that was meant to show off Ignacio’s power and wealth would become a big mistake.
His gaze flickered over the woman, calmly drinking her champagne and orange juice as though she weren’t sitting at a table with four of the most dangerous men on the continental East coast. Two kingpins and their right hands. Only Reyes didn’t think she was as calm as she appeared. Her wrist trembled slightly, giving her away. She had enough presence to make sure that tiny shake ceased by the time it got to her slim fingers where they clenched the crystal of her glass. It wasn’t the fingers or her ability to remain coolly poised while the men around her talked business that captured his curiosity. It was the mark on the back of her delicate hand, permanent slash lines, viciously marring her porcelain skin.
Anger burned deep in his gut, surprising him. Reyes rarely felt anything. Ever. Certainly not for a woman. This was how he made effective decisions. How he moved trade across borders with ease and cool logic. Emotion had been removed from him. First by a ruthless father, then by a vicious military stint in his home country and finally by an unrelenting, merciless prison sentence that had systematically broken him before he had, in turn, broken down the prison itself and owned it from the inside out. By the time he was released it was into a world of his own making; a world shaped by him on the inside and ruled by him on the outside.
Yet the sight of this cool, blond beauty, so broken yet utterly resilient was doing something to him, forcing him to feel. He shifted in his seat, sliding his arm across the back of the leather, his eyes never leaving her while he listened to the other men speak. Negotiate terms. He didn’t need to add his voice. Alejandro, his right hand, knew the terms. Knew not to fuck up while in pursuit of new deals for the boss.
Reyes wanted her. The electrifying anger he felt when his eyes caressed that mark assured him he would take the woman and make her his. Not because it infuriated him that she had been abused. No, he was not a good enough man to care about that. He was under no illusions he would treat her any better than Ignacio. Hell, he’d probably treat her much worse. Because Ignacio undoubtedly set her up like a trophy in his great mausoleum of a house and then ignored the unapproachable beauty.
Reyes had no intention of ignoring her. He was going to take her and fuck every inch of her, just the way he wanted. Hard, brutal, mean. Exactly how he was. Exactly how this world had shaped him. Because he could. She was about to become spoils of war.
No, he wasn’t angry about the mark on her hand at all. He was pissed that the mark was twisted into the shape of an “H” and not an “R.” He wanted her to belong to him, to the King. When he got his hands on the woman, that would be the first thing he changed.
Finally, after nearly an hour of sitting in the booth together, his eyes rarely leaving her face, she lifted hers to meet his uncompromising gaze. And for the first time in his life, he felt his heart stop in his chest. He was unprepared for the impact. Her eyes – one startling green and the other amber brown – were vivid, stunning and unrelenting. Though her expression didn’t flicker once from the blank mask of icy beauty, he saw the burning disdain, the heated fury buried deep within those fiery orbs for the men that surrounded her. She despised all of them.
His lip lifted in an answering sneer. She refused to drop her eyes from his challenge, despite her husband sitting at the same table. He wanted nothing more, in that moment, than to take this scarred Queen from her throne and tame her. He vowed, then and there, that he would eventually have her.
* * *
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Bonus: Excerpt from Alejandro’s Prey: The Queens Series
“I had so much fun!” Gina exclaimed, pulling her headset off and grinning at Miguel who was doing the same on the other side of her. “It was so refreshing getting out of the valley for a few hours.”
He nodded and smiled back, his eyes warm and his expression kind. “I agree. I had a wonderful time, Gina. Hopefully we can do it again soon.”
She averted her face feeling slightly guilty, knowing he felt more for her than she did for him. In a way, she’d used him and his feelings for her to get out of the damn mountains for the day. But she’d needed to get out from under a certain dictator’s thumb. And she wasn’t talking about the boss, Reyes. She meant his oppressive second-in-command. The man that stalked her every step, watching an
d waiting as though readying himself to pounce… but then nothing. The tension was driving her crazy.
And his insane rules! What was wrong with the man?
Alejandro made it his business to get in her business everywhere she went, tossing out arbitrary rules that made no sense to her. She couldn’t eat or spend time alone with anyone except the immediate family unless he was present. If one of his men so much as spoke to her, even to ask about her day, he’d be lucky if scrubbing toilets for a month was his only punishment. She wasn’t allowed to communicate with the outside world unless Alejandro approved her phone calls and emails. He even opened and read her incoming and outgoing mail, and not discreetly!
When she balked at his many edicts he simply added more rules and enforced them either physically, by locking her in her bedroom or by cutting off her communication to the outside world altogether. And though she’d wanted to throw a temper tantrum worthy of her dear cousin, Casey, she was terrified of the big man and his psychotic boss. So she’d quietly acquiesced, occasionally finding ways to break the rules with Casey’s help. Thankfully Alejandro never seemed to find out about her small rebellions.
“Me too,” she said enthusiastically. “But I don’t know when we’ll get the helicopter again. I think Casey had to pull some strings with Reyes to get us this trip. I’m surprised he even said yes.”
Miguel got out of the helicopter first and reached a hand in to help her out. She never got a chance to take it. He was wrenched away from the opening with such force that she was left stunned. She rushed to the door when she heard flesh hitting flesh and saw Miguel on the ground with a bloody face, Alejandro standing over top of him. Gina shrieked and scrambled from the helicopter.
Queen’s Move: Book Two of The Queens Page 27
