by An Latro
Black Collar Queen
Book 2 in the Black Collar Syndicate
AN Latro
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author makes no claims to, but instead acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of any wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction including brands or products.
Copyright © 2015 by Nazarea Andrews.
Black Collar Empire by AN Latro
All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by Crabby Books.
Summary: Seth and Emma Morgan have claimed the Morgan syndicate, but face threats from broken alliances and secrets from their past.
1. Mafia. 2. Adult. 3. Romance.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
For information, address 14207 Ridge Court Upatoi GA 31829. www.nazareaandrews.com
Edited by Brianna Shrum
Cover design by The Illustrated Author
Cover art copyright©: Crabby Books
Ebook Formatting by A & A Literary
For my partner in crime.
Prologue. Mt Zion Hospital. September 21st.
He’s Slumped Against the wall of the waiting room, waiting for Gabe to get off the phone. Heels click along the tile and he looks up. The woman coming down the hall makes him straighten. She looks disheveled, her hair pulled back quick and messy, wearing a loose summer dress. She is still gorgeous, and there is worry and sadness in her eyes when she sees him.
Miriam hugs him quickly, and he lets his arms slip around his sister-in-law’s thin waist, clinging to her for a long moment.
Behind her, Tinney approaches, carrying two paper bags and a cardboard tray of drinks. He stops and Emilio detaches himself from Miriam. She gestures weakly. “The boys were hungry, and Mikie has been with Beth for hours—I thought everyone could use some food.”
Emilio nods, registering the absent Morgan son. “Where is Isaac?”
“He went to smoke,” Gabriel says. “Do you want to take him to see Emma?”
Miriam’s eyes soften at the name, and Emilio shakes his head. “No. She can’t be around that shit—even on his clothes. It’s her lungs—they aren’t fully developed.” He fills them in quickly. Gabe pulls Miriam into his side when she makes a small distressed noise.
“Her doctor says she’s got a good chance. She’s a fighter.”
Approval glints in Gabe’s eyes. “She’s a Morgan.”
“I want to see her.”
It’s a clear young voice, and they turn to see Caleb. His blue eyes are narrowed in concentration, his eight year old body primed for a fight, and Miriram crouches next to him.
“She’s sick, sweetheart.”
“No,” Emilio says, cutting her off. “Come up. He should meet her.” His gaze goes to Gabe. “You all should. She’s a Morgan—she should see more than just me.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrow, but he nods. “Come on, boys.”
Seth stands from where he has been on the floor, watching. His normally rambunctious enthusiasm is missing, and he walks somberly, clutching Miriam’s hand as Emilio leads them upstairs.
The same nurse is on shift, and Emilio faces her as she moves to intercept them.
“Immediate family only,” she snaps. “You were told—“
“This is my daughter’s immediate family. And they will be meeting her,” he says, and the nurse goes still, her eyes wide and staring. There is unmistakable violence in his voice. It startles him a little when Caleb presses into his side. The little boy glares fiercely at the nurse, and her eyes widen a little more. Then she nods, and scurries to one side.
Caleb squeezes Emilio’s hand, his face still solemn, and then he darts ahead, to the door marked Morgan. He presses his face against the window, Seth plastered to it at his side. For a long moment, all of them stare at the little girl, sleeping fitfully in her incubator.
Then, doubtfully, Caleb says, “She doesn’t look like much of a Morgan.”
Miriam laughs, a quick startled burst that she silences almost as quickly. Gabe gives her a quick look and then crouches between his sons. “Because she is so little. But that’s why we’re here. To protect her. She’s a Morgan—one of our own. You must always protect her, just like you protect each other. Do you understand?”
Seth stares in and nods, slowly. Caleb frowns, and Gabriel squeezes his shoulder briefly as he straightens.
They stand there for a long time, until Seth gets fidgety, stealing a toy from Caleb and Caleb pushes him, and Miriam pulls them, fighting, away. Gabriel rubs his face, his shoulders stooped and face lined with exhaustion. “Sorry,” he mutters. Tinney shifts at their side and Emilio smiles, some of the tension easing in his shoulders. The exasperation in his friend’s voice is familiar and telling—the same exasperation he’s heard more and more as the princes get older. Gruff and warm with love and edged with impatience.
He wonders if he will sound that way about Emma one day. “Take them home, Gabe. There’s nothing to be done—not right now. I’m with her and we’re waiting.”
Gabe nods and Tinney shifts, coming off the wall. “I’ll stay.”
Emilio sighs but doesn’t argue—truthfully, he’s glad someone else will be protecting the infant for the moment. Gabriel hugs him quickly and mutters, “Fix that shit with my sister.”
He doesn’t say that some things can’t be fixed. That he will never love Beth—or that she will always hate him. Instead he nods, and Gabriel strides away. The Morgan king pauses at the door, and flashes a grin back at the Marzetti prince. “Congrats, Emilio. Em is perfect.”
Chapter 1. Private Residence. Santa Lucia. September 25th
She Ignores The Phone Ringing, the electronic sound, foreign on this beach. Her eyes are obscured by a large floppy hat hiding most of her face, even though it's dark. At her side, he shifts miserably, his shoulder banging against the wooden Adirondack chair. He hasn't been comfortable in a long and hot month. It's been nearly that long since he put on a shirt.
“You would think,” Emma Morgan says, a smile in her voice, “that you would eventually get better at moving with that sling.”
Seth gives her a dour look, but it holds no heat. He reclines against the chair, digging his toes into the warm sand as vacant eyes roam down to the phone in the cup holder of her chair.
She shrugs, shoulders turned golden brown from weeks in the sun.
“Rama,” she says without inflection.
Seth watches her ignore him for a moment, perhaps expecting more, maybe an explanation as to why she's ignoring her lover. He looks away without pressing, and takes a hit off the joint in his right hand. Emma relaxes a little more at the motion of his smoking, declines to scold him yet again for using his hand. He has taken to good weed much more these days, hasn't even wanted cocaine.
It’s been a long month. A private residence on a deserted shore of Santa Lucia. The beach is nice, but hiding is hiding, no matter where they are.
It had been her idea—something she’d insisted on. With a shoulder in ruins from being shot, and his right arm broken below the elbow, Seth had been too vulnerable. Tinney had agreed—she’d met with the board, ordered everyone to business as usual, and they’d vanished.
No one, not even Rama, knows where the Morgan king is. Tinney and Rama stayed behind to keep things in check, but the majo
rity of the Morgans' business has slowed to a painfully sluggish minimum. The remaining board members are getting impatient.
The ocean whispers softly from the darkness, lulling thoughts of business. The tide is low, and the distant waves toy with his memories. If he listens hard enough, he swears he can hear a raucous party, and a soft voice uttering the words, “Some day you will thank me,” in a thick accent. He takes a long breath, he lets his eyes close, and he drifts along on his high.
A fire crackles in a sand pit to his left. Beyond it sits Emma. The distance is unusual in her, but she’s been pulling away from him since he said they were going home. They still have yet to discuss the night that led them here. The dead princess, Mikie—Bethania’s defection— none of it has been mentioned, even in passing. She has been so quiet on this last night in Santa Lucia, and he can feel her attention on him now. In all the time they’ve spent together on this beach, she hasn’t seen him this centered or relaxed before now. He remembers another fire from years before, one that burned along with his stinging flesh. In order to be honest with her, he has to be honest with himself.
“Sometimes,” he says without opening his eyes, “I do miss it.”
The ocean breeze kisses his bare chest, and with it, he hears her tiny gasp – so tiny he knows she tries to stop it, but can't quite manage. Never mind that he lied to her once, told her he didn't miss his tenure in Cuba. He's never talked to anyone about those two years. It's the only thing she has ever asked of him that he could never give. He could never put it into perspective before now.
“Remi once told me that my dad was too easy on me.” He feels her objection gathering by the tense way she shifts against her chair. She hates when people speak ill of him. Still, he doesn't look at her, and he doesn't give her time to speak. “He was right. And you were right. If we hadn't been easy on you, things would be very different.”
He opens his eyes and pauses, retrieves his rum on the rocks, and takes a healthy sip. He knows she is hanging on his every word, and that she is startled at this sudden rush of honesty. So he makes her suffer the anticipation—a lesson in court. He takes another drink so she's absolutely sure he means to make her wait.
Then he says, “In Cuba, I was nobody. I was a cocky, green-bellied kid with no street cred to back my reputation, and I was a foreigner with a name that didn't mean shit to anyone. They made me earn every step up the ladder, just like they all had to do. I had to make risky runs to store fronts. I had to work guard duty. I caught flack for being the rich, white boy. I had to put a gun between the eyes of complete stranger, and pull the trigger.”
Another small intake of breath from her. Is he destroying her shining image of him? Good; she needs to know what he is capable of. She needs to know where the steel in his blood comes from. He swirls the ice cubes around in his drink and finally tears his eyes from the black ocean to watch the amber liquid. He pointedly denies her eye contact. He's not ready to give away all his secrets. “I was given the name Morgan at birth. I had everything I could ever want given to me. But it took me nearly two years to earn this mark on my flesh. And I learned what I never could have here.” His smile fades, and his eyes are drawn back to velvet waves and darkness, like an embrace. “The night I finally got to meet the kingpin, I was terrified. When he kissed me, and my lips were numb from his top grade blow, I was so scared I wasn't breathing. I lived the entire time I was gone in fear of that fantastical godfather. But it was those hands that put the glowing metal to my skin, those hands that granted me a place in his kingdom.”
He sets down his drink, and his right hand absently travels to brush the bandages on his left shoulder, the reminder he must always carry of the night his education began. He took one bullet for his dad, but it didn't stop the other six that riddled the man's body, and the one that lodged in his lung and slowly drowned him in his own blood. That was the night that Seth's— and Caleb's—world started to violently shake. For the first time, Seth wonders how much of the change in his brother after that night came from guilt, shame that he wasn't there to protect their dad, too.
He winces, well aware that he is laying his pain in the open for Emma to see. She can't know the specific details of his thoughts, but she doesn't need to just to help him shoulder his burden. She's so enrapt with the glimpse of his inner sanctuary that she won't press him for details. He retrieves his drink and takes another swallow, this one having nothing to do with show.
He says, “Caleb was different. He wanted to earn his name. His standards were always higher than mine, and I've never been able to figure out why. The thing is, he lived up to all of them. But even I betrayed him in the end. I left his back open. I think he and I took two extremely different roads to come to the same fucking conclusion. It took being separated from family to realize just how much we had in each other, and to realize that separation was the last thing in the world that we needed. But because we—I—forced us to learn the hard way, we became strangers.”
Emma sniffs. He hates her tears, every goddamned time she cries, but this lesson is one she needs to understand. He digs his feet into the cool sand, just for somewhere to send the disquiet that threatens the edges of his nerves.
He splashes a little rum on the ground, for his brother and best friend, and says, “Now, you and I have earned our name more than anyone else who bears it, and we owe it to Caleb to take our place. But greatness isn't something that comes at once. We'll be tested from every side. The truth is, Em, that we won't maintain our rule if we act like we have before.”
Now he levels his attention on her. Of course she is gaping at him, eyes so wide and the tears are just trails on her cheeks. Her mouth is open slightly, in surprise. From his calm rises his ferocity, and he claims that awe with which she regards him.
“We have to act as one, which means we make decisions together. A kingdom divided always falls in the end. I can promise you no more secrets. Can you do the same for me?”
The softness drains from her eyes. There, that which she has demanded of him so many times, finally he can offer to her. He has demolished the wall between them so quickly and easily and suddenly that she has no time to veil her reaction. It's everything she's wanted, but done for the sake of the empire, not for her. He brazenly and intently watches her, and she knows he can read every sliver of emotion that grips her: relief, fear, the bitterness of sacrificing her emotions for the benefit of her people. It's a cold place—to be a ruler, where your personal feelings take backseat to the good of the syndicate. Can she make the same sacrifice? He's waiting to find out.
“You say that now,” she says, expression going hard. “But what happens when we go back? Will you shove me away again?”
Seth tilts his head in her direction. She’s wearing a bikini—a red top that cups and lifts her breasts, thin straps and an oversized bow in the center that makes him smile. A tiny pair of shorts, with white bows at the hem of each leg. It’s sexy, flirty, and the first time she put it on, his mouth went dry.
Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that Emma is a Morgan, with all the charm and careless sexuality that is her birthright. In a tiny bikini with a temper brewing on a beach in the tropics? It is impossible.
He doesn’t argue with her, tell her she’s being ridiculous. He can’t. “We’re going back to a war, Emma. You know that.”
“I know, but you’ve been almost happy here. It’s been nice, hasn’t it? ”
His heart twists at the vulnerability in her question—the silent plea for reassurance that they will be okay. He offers the joint to her, but she shakes her head. He has noticed that for all the tension that has eased from him over this escape from reality, she has gathered it to herself.
“We can't stay here forever, Em.” His voice is gentle. She doesn’t look at him right away—instead she stares out at the quiet ocean, her face blank and repote.
She’s grown up so fast. There is no hint of the shy, insecure girl who sat next to him at Caleb’s funeral. It feels like lifetimes si
nce that day, but it’s only been nine months. How can the world have changed so much, in just nine months?
“Emma,” he says again, harder. Her gaze darts to him, and he sits forward. “What are you afraid of?”
“Losing you.”
He jerks as though she slapped him. In a way, she had.
“You’ve kept me out for so long—and were gone before that. I didn’t realize how much until we were here, and you couldn’t hide from me. I’m afraid when we go back you’ll do it again. Exclude me to keep me safe.”
She stands up, walking to the water’s edge and letting it lap over her feet. Seth leaves her to it, gives her the space for which she vies. Pressuring her won't help. She's got a lot on her plate, and she needs to figure out for herself how to deal with it.
“I can’t handle you pushing me away again, Seth. We are going back to a war. But I’m at your side, because that’s where you want me and where I belong. You have to be honest with me.”
“I am being honest!” he cries, all his hard-earned calm shattering against her stubbornness and fear. “Are you sure you're being honest with yourself?”
She jerks around, furious suddenly. “None of this,” she snaps, “would have happened if you and Caleb had quit worrying about keeping me safe and started treating me like a Morgan. If both of you had trusted me.”
She stares at him for a loaded second, then stalks away toward the house. He lets her leave. She is angry—and she will need that anger. He wonders, vaguely, if it’s true. If he and Caleb had trusted her from the beginning, if they had not protected her so much—would it have come down to the bloody end? And if he had just trusted Caleb to be the big brother rather than doubting his every move, would his big brother still be here?
He shakes his head, hard. He can’t think like that. Caleb is dead and avenged. There is no use looking back. Not when it can’t be changed, and the one family left to him is furious. He huffs an aggravated sigh, and drops the joint into the sand—an offering to the old god of his exile, the same ocean that kept his heart for so long.
