The Favorite: A Dark Enemies To Lovers Mafia Romance (The Syndicate's Revenge Book 2)

by Mara McQueen

  Her nails tugged on the one loose thread she'd sewn into it herself—living in the mountains meant she'd learned how to mend clothes before she'd hit puberty.

  She pulled on the thread, unraveling it. The pocket she'd stitched inside opened. The cold handle of her trusty switchblade glided into her palm.

  Ella was right. No weapons were allowed today—but Ava hadn't planned on jetting off to her wedding night unarmed.

  She had been protected from mafia and Clans her entire life, but Syndicate blood ran through her veins.

  Ava grinned, for the first time in a year.

  Before Darius could draw one more breath, she flicked her switchblade open and impaled it into his hand.

  Darius roared, flinching back. Who needed an orchestra when Ava could hear such sweet music as his whimpers?

  Darius fell onto his knees. Ava ripped her veil off and spit at his feet; he didn't even deserve that, the bastard.

  The Prince took another menacing step. Ella turned to grab Ava's hand.

  The vase next to the altar shattered.

  Bullets started raining down onto the wedding—and they didn't care whose flesh they pierced.

  They hit anyone in sight. Syndicate, Brotherhood, Serpents.

  They were all targets.

  The sleepy garden erupted in chaos. People ran away, screamed, pleaded, fell to the ground, never to rise again.

  Ella ducked away as another vase shattered. She grabbed Ava's shoulders, eyes wild.

  "Get away from here! Don't look back!"

  "I'm not leaving without—"

  The rest of Ava's words died on her lips as her face and Ella's were splattered with blood. The priest's blood. From a gunshot straight through his head.

  His body slumped between them, breaking them apart.

  "A weapon," Ella whispered, horrified. "I need a weapon. Uncle Rossi must have stashed a bazooka here somewhere."

  More people clambered between them, desperate to find cover from the bullets tearing through everything. In the frenzy, Ella vanished. No sign of Ava's other cousins, Enzo, Nat, and Toni, or her uncle Victor, who ruled the Syndicate Clan.

  Ava wasn't waiting around to get slaughtered. She hicked up her ridiculous skirt and ran down the altar steps as fast as her high heels allowed.

  A bullet hissed past her ear.

  Ava whirled around. Darius, hand bloodied, face contorted with pain, had his gun trained on her. He'd almost shot her. Again.

  Ava hoped he'd die in the fieriest pits of hell.

  "Not so fast, you—"

  Whatever Darius had wanted to say—and from the way his top lip curled, it wasn't anything good—he never got to finish and he never would.

  The Prince appeared behind him, sword raised high. The blade cut clean through Darius, bones and flesh and ligaments. The sword split his body into halves, starting from his skull. They crumbled to the ground with a sickening splat, gushing blood and whatever that brown liquid was.

  Ava heaved. Her knees shook. She stumbled to the closest tree, leaning her hand against it to find her breath again.

  What the fuck had just happened?

  Your fiancé was murdered, that's what happened. And he'd deserved it.

  The Prince stepped over what remained of Darius, his dark figure spearing the sea of desperate people running around him. They might've been scared witless, but they instinctively shied away from him. He had that unavoidable presence that warned the senses he was dangerous.

  He stopped in front of Ava, his gaze scanning her face. Shit, he was tall. His shadow loomed over her. "I'm sorry you had to see that," he said.

  Ava's mouth hung open. That's what he was sorry for? Not for threatening her family of killing Darius, but that she'd seen it?

  "Do you know who I am?" he asked, voice low and raspy. As if they weren't in the middle of a massacre.

  Ava nodded. Words weren't her friends today.

  "Do you know why I'm here?"

  Vaguely. Ava had the barest grasp of Underworld rules and hierarchies. But even she knew a Clan as powerful as the Brotherhood didn't attack without a very good motive—if the code was broken.

  Ava's parents had broken that code when they'd whisked her away from the Syndicate First Family and the danger of marrying the Prince.

  "For me," she said, hating the way her voice shook.

  "Good. You have two options, Evana." His right, unbloodied hand rose to her face. Ava was too shocked to flinch away. He wiped her tears away, gentle touch ghosting over her skin. "You can come with me and be protected for the rest of your life or stay here and take your chances with your own Clan."

  Her Clan? The one her parents had tried to protect her from? The one whose members had dragged her back kicking and screaming to marry her off to Darius? Who'd threatened to murder what was left of her family if she didn't play along?

  "But," the Prince went on, his hand falling back to his side. "If you choose to stay, I can't promise you will be safe."

  A laugh ripped from her throat. It sounded like another sob. "Not much of a choice, is it?"

  "Ava!" her cousin Enzo roared. He was gripping a broken chair leg, blood trickling down his forehead. "What are you doing? Get away from him!"

  Enzo looked like he'd rip her away from the Prince himself, but as he rushed toward them, a Brotherhood woman jumped on his back.

  "Get off, you she-beast!"

  "Don't worry, she's not going to hurt him," the Prince said. "Much."

  Ava couldn't catch a fucking break, could she? She'd gotten rid of Darius, now she had to deal with his murderer.

  Suddenly, the Prince grabbed her waist and rolled them to the other side of the massive tree. A breath later, a bullet bit into the tree trunk, right where they'd been standing. The bark fizzled and hissed. What damn bullet could do that?

  "Interesting. Poisoned, too." The Prince hummed low in his throat, as if he hadn't almost gotten his head blown off. He towered over Ava, trapping her between his strong body and the tree. "Time's ticking."

  "What happens if I come with you?"

  His eyes darkened even more. "We'll get married, as we'd promised all along, and when I'll finally take the crown, you will become the Brotherhood Queen."

  Ava had never promised anything, least of all to become the enemy Clan's Queen.

  A sickly green mist began slithering through the garden.

  Ava's insides shriveled. "Will my cousins be safe if I come with you?"

  "If they survive today? Safer." He watched her like a hawk. "Coming or staying, Evana?"

  The screams in the garden grew louder. The bullets came down faster. The mist flowed through what was left of her wedding ceremony. So much blood. So many bodies on the ground.

  Ava hated this. Hated the Underworld. Violence and death at every turn. She had to escape it. She wanted out. Out.

  But she couldn't, could she? She was powerless in the world of the powerful.

  Maybe she didn't have to keep being that, though.

  Ava looked up at the Prince. At this dangerous man who'd crashed her wedding and killed her fiancé. He was dangerous. He was a murderer. He was the enemy.

  But for her family, Ava would sacrifice anything. She'd already agreed to marry a man she hated today. Who cared who that man was as long as her cousins were safe?

  Instead of recoiling from him and his bloody sword, Ava's lips slashed into a grin as vicious as this violent life she'd been born into.

  She couldn't outrun the Underworld—but maybe she could bend it to her will. "Call me Ava."

  Chapter Three

  RAIDEN

  "She was supposed to say no." Raiden seethed, staring daggers at the weapons lining the long Brotherhood Council table. The mission had been completed, the weapons needed to be displayed. His Clan had been built and thrived on traditions and rules. "What the hell is wrong with her?"

  Hadn't he played the part of the vicious Brotherhood Crown Prince well enough?

  Crashing her wedding
with a small army of the most feared assassins? Check.

  Promising death with a grin on his face? That part, he'd actually enjoyed. The Syndicate had been getting cocky for years and needed to learn its place.

  Threatening a soon-to-be father his wife might have a miscarriage? Double-check.

  He'd threatened Ava's cousins. Her family. Her entire Clan. For heavens' sake, he'd cut her fiancé in two.

  He'd made two of the most important mafia Clans in the world cower just by walking.

  Why the fuck had Ava agreed to come with him? Now she'd doomed both of them.

  An ugly silence settled over the Council room. Only five people sat at the long dark table. Raiden's best and closest Brothers and a very pissed-off Sister.

  Raiden trusted the rest of the Brotherhood Elite with his life. He trusted Axton, Patrice, Logan, and Mason with his secrets.

  He'd dismissed the rest of the Elite—the fiercest assassins in the world, and nobody outside the Underworld knew they existed—after they'd hashed out the repercussions from that wretched wedding. Ambush. Massacre.

  Whatever they wanted to call it, it had been a shitshow. Now the Underworld code—the same one that demanded Raiden go to that wedding in the first place—was forcing the Brotherhood to pay for it. Dearly.

  Victor Caputo, the Syndicate leader, had been killed. Everyone suspected Raiden's Clan.

  His men and women wouldn't have dared kill an enemy Clan leader without him giving the order. It hadn't been one of those errant bullets either—all of them had been laced with an unknown toxin that turned its targets' blood black. They'd almost lost Mason because of a knick to his shin.

  Even after Patrice had tended to the wound, Mason was left pale, shaking, and furious.

  No wonder. That wedding was about to wreck all of their lives.

  "Perhaps we've been misinformed," Logan said in that detached, icy voice of his. Brain like a computer, that one. He remembered every scrap of information he'd ever read, in the blink of an eye. "Her parents could have trained her as an assassin while they were in hiding. Maybe she's The Phantom spy. That would explain a lot."

  "I doubt it." Raiden sighed.

  The Phantom was more rumor than human. The greatest spy and nobody knew what he looked like, let alone his name. Nobody even knew which Clan he belonged to. That took cunning. Viciousness. Scheming.

  Meanwhile, Ava had almost thrown up after Raiden had killed Darius. Her soft cheeks had been stained with an entire day's worth of tears, and her wide green eyes had looked up at him lost and terrified.

  But she'd agreed to marry Raiden. On the spot. Ava must have been hiding something sinister under her beautiful, innocent face.

  "Maybe she's used to death." Patrice sipped from her dainty teacup, cherub cheeks bunching up. She looked like a living doll, but she hid a vicious soul inside. She could take the entire world out with a strong huff of whatever toxins she concocted in that secret lab of hers. "She's lived in the mountains all her life, she probably skinned a deer or two."

  "Unless she’s skinned humans, that doesn't explain her decision," Raiden said.

  Sure, Ava had stabbed Darius, but everyone in that garden had wanted to do that. He'd been a piss-poor excuse of a human and an even lousier Clan heir. But what had sealed his fate had been, unsurprisingly, greed.

  Dear Darius had been on the verge of starting a trafficking ring. Not with drugs or guns—which only the bottom of the barrel families bothered with anyway—but with people.

  The Underworld couldn't have that. The best Clans in the world dealt in influence. Information. Power. Changing civilian regimes with one phone call and taking out politicians with a bullet or a pill. Building shadowy, multibillion companies out of nothing but a PO Box and an email address. Their existence needed to remain a secret from the rest of the world. A conspiracy theory at best.

  Darius had been stupidly close to destroying hundreds of years of covert operations, rules, and codes. He'd shot to the top of the Brotherhood's hit list and nobody would mourn his death, least of all Raiden.

  "She might have a plan," Axton, Raiden's second-in-command said. The best assassin in the world. The one they called The Shadow. The Gunman. The Brotherhood Commander. Loved, feared, and respected. When he talked, people listened. "She might be part of a plan."

  Raiden clenched his jaw. That would explain why she'd abandon her precious Clan for the Brotherhood. He doubted it, but he wouldn't put anything past the Syndicate, even with a quarter of its members now bleeding in hospital beds or on their way to a funeral home.

  What had happened today hadn't been normal. The Brotherhood had known they were probably walking into a trap—an anonymous tip about a secret Clan wedding they needed to crash to uphold the code? The Underworld didn't have good Samaritans.

  Raiden and the Brotherhood Elite had been prepared to be the targets of a nasty surprise, survive it, then take their revenge in blood. A normal day in Clan life.

  But the bullets had come down onto the Syndicate first.

  Nobody could have planned for that.

  Nobody knew who was responsible. Yet.

  Raiden grit his teeth. He should have scorched the entire island and be done with it.

  "Until we discover who wanted all of us dead, we trust no one outside this room," he said, watching Mr. Oscar, Patrice's cat, saunter across the table toward him. The beast had gotten tired of looking at the golden chandelier's reflection on the black walls and was in the mood for snuggles.

  It nudged Raiden's hand, looking up at him with those expectant yellow eyes, as if it hadn't tried to tear through Logan's pants just one hour ago.

  Raiden petted its head distractedly. He might've been called The Dragon, but he'd always had a soft spot for felines. They were stubborn. He liked that.

  "Agreed." Mason winced, readjusting his wounded leg. "Especially none of those Syndicate brats we have to deal with from now."

  Raiden sighed again. The blasted Underworld code demanded retribution for Victor Caputo's death. The only other option was an all-out Clan war.

  The Syndicate was still strong. The Brotherhood was stronger, but Raiden wasn't risking his entire Clan and countless lives to prove that.

  He'd sworn to uphold the code. He'd been born a Prince and had never shied away from the responsibilities of his status, no matter how soul-crushing.

  But he'd never wanted to drag his Brothers and Sister down with him. Now all five of them had to form marriage alliances. With the bloody Syndicate.

  "I regret that today turned out like this. The Brotherhood won't forget your sacrifice," he said.

  Patrice waved him off. "We've all bled for the Clan. An alliance is nothing compared to being tortured for two months in some grimy basement up North."

  "It's not a total loss." Logan's fingers drummed up a storm on the table. "The Brotherhood and Syndicate have been enemies for centuries. We might finally have peace now."

  The Underworld despised peace. It had been built on chaos and thrived on it.

  "We've survived worse." Axton looked at Raiden pointedly. "You just make sure you're careful around Evana."

  Raiden's lips slashed into a grin. He had big plans for Ava. The woman who'd agreed to spend the rest of her life with her fiancé’s murderer needed to be careful around him.

  Chapter Four

  AVA

  "What have you gotten yourself into, Evana?"

  Ava's question echoed around her on a loop, fading until it sounded like a million voices demanding an answer.

  She had none. She had nobody to turn to. She had nothing but her switchblade and her wedding dress, still stained with Darius' and the priest's blood.

  As soon as she'd stepped onto the plane to jet off toward her new, frightening life, Ava had fallen asleep, right there in the posh leather seat, with a half dozen Brotherhood eyes staring at her.

  She'd woken up in this great big rectangle of a room, alone and dizzy. The decor wasn’t making things better.

&nb
sp; Half the walls were mirrors. The other half had thick, red and gold columns stretching between them and dwarfing Ava. She only had a low wooden table and a small velvet couch to keep her company. She'd had more furniture back in the cabin.

  Grandpa Baron would be furious if he saw her right now. During the few years they'd had, he'd done his best to instill some traces of leadership in her.

  "And what do you tell those Brotherhood scum if any of them dare say you don't belong on their throne?" Grandpa Baron used to ask her.

  Ava had given him a toothy grin. "That they shouldn't make me mad because my grandpa's going to kick their asses."

  Grandpa Baron had laughed hard enough that his fearsome mustache had trembled.

  "Yes, I will. But after I'm gone…" He'd groaned as he'd gotten down on one knee, to Ava's level. "You don't say anything to them. You show them you're the best leader they could have dreamed of. Words are meaningless if they're not backed up by actions. Do you understand?"

  Ava had nodded, even though she hadn't understood much of anything back then.

  "Great. Now let's get you some ice cream." He'd gotten back up with a sigh and took her small hand in his. "And don't tell your Mum I taught you to say asses, or I'll never hear the end of it."

  But now Ava was in the Brotherhood Capital, frighteningly close to that throne, and she didn't feel like she could show anyone anything. She felt small.

  Come to think of it, she'd always had. Kind of. Living for almost two decades locked away with nobody but her father Cyprian, the great First Son of the Syndicate, and her mother Julia, the best getaway driver the Clan had seen, hadn't done wonders for Ava's confidence.

  They'd done their best to raise her to be kind and honest, the exact opposite of the Underworld they'd cursed every day. They'd also tried to instill fear of the outside world in her and demanded obedience sometimes masquerading as respect.

  After spending the first few years of her life carried around on grandpa Baron's shoulders and being called his precious princess, the shift to reading by candlelight, sweeping the porch every morning, and being homeschooled by two parents who did not have the patience for her childish questions hadn't gone well for Ava.