Royally Ruined (Bad Boy Royals Book 2)

by Nora Flite

  In life, there are those who cool the flames.

  And unfortunately . . . there are those who light the fires.

  “Hey, assholes!” Donnie growled. “She’s playing you. The instant you let Costello Badd leave, he’ll round up his family and murder all of us. The only way out is to pop him in the skull, so do it already! Do it! Do it do it do it!”

  He began to scream a constant stream of demands. The hairs on my neck went up; death was coming for me. For all of us. Maybe the Deep Shots weren’t sure about the power the Valentines would give them, but they were certainly sure that the Badds would kill them for endangering their oldest son.

  Costello pushed Donnie down against the counter, so hard the noise resonated through the condo. It shut up his shouting, but that didn’t smother the fight-or-flight response rolling through the Deep Shots.

  Something pinged sharply off the marble—close to Donnie, closer to Costello. “Look out!” I screamed. The bullet had missed, but no one could be lucky enough to dodge so many from multiple guns.

  Bodies swarmed around; I tried to focus on Costello. He was the only solid shape to me in the blur of motion. Flashes of color lit him up; his speed stirred his hair. And through it all, he kept a neutral expression on his face.

  He fired back twice. Just like at the fair, he hit each of his targets. Two men fell to the floor, wailing in pain. “Scotch!” Gina cried out. Baffled, I looked up and saw that she was waving at me from the elevator. Had she escaped, or had her captor released her?

  Rush was bearing down on his gang mate, and with rising excitement I realized we were winning. Donnie was being pulled behind the counter by someone, and the others still standing were facing off with one another. The Deep Shots were warring among themselves, right here, right now.

  “Go!” Rush shouted, throwing a beefy shoulder into the chest of his assailant. “Get out of here, this is under control!”

  I didn’t think it was, but I ran anyway. Gina motioned for me, Costello beating me into the elevator with enough speed to slam his palm on the buttons and shut the doors behind us. The ding as we descended away from the firefight above us was unsettling.

  All three of us were breathing heavily. “Gina,” I said, jumping into her arms. She squeezed me back, patting my shoulder with a light laugh.

  “What?” she asked. “Were you worried about me? Didn’t you see I was just having a little party?”

  “How did they find you?” I asked, listening as the bullets faded away.

  Her eyes turned down at the corners. “They were waiting here.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense, why would—”

  “They were waiting for me,” Costello said. He was leaning on the wall with his arms folded, gun still tight in his fist. “Gina showing up was a happy accident for them.”

  Letting my friend go, I crossed the short distance between me and Costello. I pulled up short, sensing the animal rage still wafting off him. We’d fled the fight, but whatever made him capable of such coolness in the heat of battle hadn’t gone back to sleep.

  I thought about what he’d told me, about his father and his training. Costello looked down on me silently; his skin was vibrating. It made the air around him shiver. It made me shiver, because seeing him in the wild . . . fighting for our lives . . . it hadn’t just been exciting, it had been scary.

  He thinks I’m terrified of him. He wasn’t surprised I hadn’t hugged him. He’d been waiting for me to see this side of him. Costello’s body language screamed, “Don’t touch me, you don’t want to get close to a monster.”

  Gritting my teeth, I dove forward and curled my body around his. The elevator dinged once more as we reached street level. “This isn’t your fault,” I said into his ear. He tensed in my arms, the gun hard against my ribs. It should have reminded me of Darien, but it didn’t. Costello was nothing like that man. “You couldn’t have known they’d come here.”

  He was a knot of cemented muscles. “I should have. If I’d been more aware . . . thought about it harder, longer. I—”

  “You would have done exactly what you did up there,” I said fiercely. Again I hugged him, and this time, he relaxed—just a hair, but I felt it. “You’d have kept me safe. Costello, you protected all of us. We’re alive thanks to you.”

  His arms went limp. Then, in a furious motion, he caught me up and embraced me hard enough to drive all the air from my lungs. Behind me I heard Gina gasp. Costello whispered, “I’ll never let anyone hurt you. Ever.”

  He held me at a distance, our eyes focusing and fully seeing each other’s. He wasn’t calm and collected as he had been before. Deep in his pupils, something had gone fragile, wavy.

  Gina said, “I hate to interrupt, but we need to go.”

  “She’s right,” he said. “Rush can’t keep this quiet; everyone will know I’m behind this now. We’re going to be hunted by everyone.”

  By his own father, I thought with a tremor.

  Costello released me. I snatched my phone up from the floor where I’d dropped it earlier, then followed Gina and him out of the building. He looked from side to side as we entered the quiet street. He mumbled, “I need to think . . . Fuck, where can we go where they won’t find us? If we could get somewhere safe, just for a bit, I could figure something out. I know it.”

  Somewhere safe. Ice bit into my throat when I swallowed a gulp of clean air. Squeezing his hand, I started to walk ahead of him toward the car. “I know where we can go.”

  I’d been avoiding it from the start. I’d had to. Costello would never forgive me for what I was about to put him through. But there was no choice.

  It was time to go home.

  - CHAPTER SEVENTEEN -

  COSTELLO

  “Is this maple syrup?” Gina gasped as we climbed out of the white Charger.

  “Oh, that’s yours, yeah.” Scotch said it distantly, and I attributed her mood to what we’d just been through. Nearly dying would traumatize anyone.

  “Thank you!” she gushed. “Do you think your mom’ll have any of those bear claws hanging around? I always loved those with maple syrup.”

  Scotch shot her a look . . . then me. “Maybe. We’ll see.”

  Together we stepped through the powdery snow toward the front door. I didn’t think going to Scotch’s mother’s house was the best idea. However . . . I didn’t have a better solution.

  Scotch had broken it down convincingly enough: No one knew who she was, no one would know to follow us here. We could recover and make a plan without being hunted. Considering I was sure my father was about to turn on me when he heard what I’d done . . . we really needed a base to work from.

  On the doorknob hung a red ribbon. A gigantic wreath covered most of the stained glass window. The house was quaint and warm looking, even from where we stood in the freshly falling snow. It had been coming down since we left my condo, and though we hadn’t driven long, the ground was coated with icy whiteness.

  Clearing her throat, Scotch let us in without knocking. The smell of powdered sugar invaded my nose. Around the edges was that heavy fried smell that comes from fast food. There were white boxes piled around the doorway, and on the coat hooks were several aprons in various pastel colors.

  “Her mom’s a baker,” Gina said, kicking snow off her boots. “Best doughnuts in town.”

  “The best?” I mused, looking down at the blank boxes. The best doughnuts are supposed to come from Sweet Staples. I’d never been; it was a known cop hangout. The exact kind of place I avoided.

  Scotch made a tiny noise beside me. “Costello, maybe I should tell you something.”

  “Jimmy?” a feminine voice called. “That you?”

  “No, it’s us!” Gina shouted back.

  All three of us were squished in the tiny hallway, so when the tall woman—who was clearly the source of Scotch’s height—came around the corner, we had nowhere to go. “Honey bun!” she squealed, rushing forward to grab Scotch in a hug. “I haven’t heard from you
in a while! What’s been going on?”

  “Mom,” Scotch laughed, blushing as she disengaged. “It’s only been what, five days?”

  “More like three weeks!” Her kind brown eyes drifted to Gina, then to me. “Oh. Who’s this strapping young man?”

  Gina giggled while Scotch went ever redder. “Mom, this is Costello. My . . .” I saw her gears working. “Boyfriend.”

  Well, it’s only fair. She’d pretended to be dating me before. Fake or not, it gave me a thrill. “Hello there,” I said, offering my hand. “Pleasure to meet you.”

  “Costello?” the woman asked, blinking. Squeezing between the girls, she grabbed me in a tight hug. The same sugary smell permeated her—this was definitely the mystery scent on Scotch. “Call me Margie. It’s great to meet you! You’re just in time for dinner, come sit down. Heather’s uncle and father should arrive soon.”

  Scotch turned pale. “Are they both coming over?”

  “Of course, of course. Come,” Margie said, waving us into a kitchen that tested the limits of bird-covered wallpaper. A round table was set up with three place mats. “I’ll go and get more plates, hang on.”

  Sitting down, I studied the room. There were porcelain cows and roosters all over, magnets covering every inch of the fridge. Photos of Scotch were in abundance—alone or with Gina. There were also a massive number of Margie with some man I assumed was her husband.

  Everything about this place screamed warm and welcoming . . . so why couldn’t I shake the bristling part of my brain that said something was wrong? Scotch kept giving me wary looks she thought I didn’t notice. That had to be the source of my unease. Something had her nerves going haywire.

  “Sorry I’m late!” a coarse, familiar voice called from down the hall. “Got a call about gunshots downtown. Some guys shot up a place, but no bodies reported, so I let the boys handle it. Smells like tomatoes in here. You making spaghetti again, Margie?”

  No, I thought, even as the man I’d never expected to see rounded the corner. He was more mustache than chin, a big man made bigger by a heavy winter jacket. His laughter died in his throat the second he spotted me sitting at the kitchen table.

  Detective Stapler. A member of the local PD and very familiar with me and my family.

  “You,” he choked, backing into the coffeepot on the counter. “What the hell are you doing in my sister’s house?”

  Ever so slowly I looked over at Scotch. She was sitting straight as a razor, her hands clasped together on the table. Her smile was huge and fake. “Uh,” she said, clearing her throat. “Costello, this is my uncle Jimmy. Uncle . . . this is Costello Badd—”

  “I know who he is!” the detective interrupted.

  “My boyfriend,” she finished.

  Watching the cop turn purple took the edge off my anger. Not enough of it, though. “Boyfriend!” he gasped, clutching his chest. “Heather, what—You know who this man is! I know you know! How could you possibly date him?”

  Margie swung back into the room, her round cheeks glowing with joy. “Jimmy, you’re here. I was just getting more plates when I realized I needed more dessert for everyone, too, so I went to grab cupcakes from out in the van and that snow is really . . . Jimmy, why do you look like you’ve got the flu?”

  Gina’s eyes were darting all over like Ping-Pong balls. She’d known from the start that I wouldn’t appreciate this; so had the woman beside me.

  “Scotch,” I said politely, “can we talk outside for a second?”

  Her teeth could have cracked with how tight her smile went. “Why, no, because my sweet mother is about to bring us dinner, and it’d break her heart to have it go cold.”

  Stapler was still leaning on the counter. “Margie . . . did you know your daughter was dating the oldest son of the Badds?”

  All color drained from the larger woman’s face. “So that’s why his name was familiar. I thought . . . with that scar, but . . . but there’s no way . . .” She bit her lip. “Your father is going to kill you, honey bun.”

  “Her dad’s an ex-cop,” Gina explained helpfully.

  Everyone was staring at Scotch. One by one she met their gazes; then, breathing through her nose, she rose to her feet. “I’d love to explain myself,” she said, “but Costello mentioned something about stepping outside, so . . . I’ll just go do that.”

  It took all of my control to rise up and follow her. Stapler had his eyes fixed on me the whole time.

  - CHAPTER EIGHTEEN -

  SCOTCH

  I pushed the back door open, leading him into the chilly, snow-covered yard. There was a huge tree nearby, a busted wooden fence that was mostly hidden by white frost, and a doghouse that had stood empty for years.

  We moved deep into the yard, having silently agreed to keep away from the windows so no one could spy on us. “How could you do this to me?” he snapped.

  “Do what?”

  “This!” He threw his arm out at the side of my mother’s house. “You brought me right into a den of filthy cops!”

  Clenching my fists at my hips, I said, “Those filthy cops are my family.”

  Costello came at me, a wolf ready to tear me to shreds. It took all I had not to shrink away. “Exactly. Why didn’t you tell me you were . . . were . . .”

  “What? A cop’s niece? An ex-cop’s daughter?” My eyes tracked to his scar, my voice softening. “Because you told me so many times you didn’t trust the police. I stayed quiet at first because it wasn’t important. By the time it mattered, you . . . I couldn’t handle the idea of you hating me the way you hate them.”

  I dropped my eyes to the snow. For a heavy minute we were both quiet. Costello’s shoes entered my vision; I was determined not to look at his face. But when he tilted my chin up, I forgot why. “You’re not a cop. I couldn’t ever hate you.”

  Sourness entered my veins. It came out in my response. “So that’s the catch. As long as I’m not one of them, I’m okay.” His eyebrows slid into crinkled shapes. “I’ll tell you something you might find funny. Growing up, I admired my uncle. He told me I had a natural gift for solving mysteries. I had every intention of joining the force like him.”

  Costello released me, his hand drifting to his side.

  “Yeah,” I chuckled bitterly. “Nothing to say to that, huh? You don’t even want to touch me now.” I turned and headed for the back door. The snow made me slower; I didn’t get far.

  “Wait.”

  I shot a withering glare over my shoulder. “Why, so you can tell me some more about how awful my family is? People who were willing to feed you, people you barely know?”

  His shadow was long across the white ground. It mixed with the one cast by the giant oak tree that I’d spent so many summers climbing. “You said you were going to become a cop.”

  “That’s right.”

  Costello lifted his eyes, freezing me in place. “Why didn’t you?”

  I faltered, turning around so quickly that snow tumbled into my shoes. It chilled me through my socks.

  He took another step. “I saw how good you were with a gun. Your senses are in tune to danger, too. You’ve got so much potential. What stopped you? No . . . who?”

  Old memories twisted up inside me. I was worried he’d read them through my skull and misinterpret all of it. “It’s not like that.” My lips were chapped, no matter how much I tried to wet them. “She didn’t mean to stop me, she didn’t even know she was.”

  He’d gotten too close; I hadn’t realized until he was just a foot away. “Gina,” he whispered, and he did it with so much certainty. Was I that transparent? “There were photos of you two all over that house,” he said, nodding at it. “You’ve been friends a long time.”

  Burying my hands in my jeans pockets, I wished I had my coat. My jaw ached from my teeth chattering. Kicking the loose snow away from me, I made a deep, curling shape with the toe of my shoe. “She’s my best friend. I had to make sure nothing happened to her.”

  His breath was steam in the
air. “She doesn’t know you stayed with her in the club just to watch over her, does she?”

  “Stop that,” I snapped. “Stop guessing at everything. You don’t know my past, Costello. You barely know me.”

  He cringed; it was brief, but I saw it. “That’s not true. I know plenty about you.”

  “Like what?” I laughed, waving my arms in the air. “That I’m an idiot for ever thinking you’d be okay with my family?”

  Firm hands grabbed my shoulders. I tried to back away; his touch was unbreakable. “I know your favorite color is pink. Not just pink, but rose pink. I know flying makes you nervous; I could see your hands trembling on the flight, and it wasn’t because you were angry with me. I know you asked me to dance at the wedding not because of my mother watching us, but because you secretly wanted to.” He was already holding me; somehow he pressed even closer. “I know you’ll do anything to help the people close to you. That you believe in what’s right.” He filled his lungs. “And I know you love roller coasters.”

  Our breaths mixed in the winter chill. His escaped him in short bursts, like his heart was rapidly firing. Mine sure was. I searched his eyes, trying to find any hint that he was playing me. But if he was . . . why? He had nothing to gain by doing so. Flaring my nostrils, I dug deep until I had enough courage to ask what I really wanted to. “Tell me why you hate cops. Exactly why.”

  His silence hung like raindrops from a rusty pipe. I kept waiting for him to speak, and the longer he didn’t, the more my heart deflated. This was it. My final push to understand Costello had failed.

  Ice crunched under his heel. “Are you sure?” he asked, glancing at the house behind me. Whatever he was about to say, he seemed worried that my family would overhear. Or was it possible he was concerned that he’d create a divide between myself and them?

  The idea had me quaking, but still I said, “I’m sure. I need to understand you, Costello.”

  Pain. That was the only word for the emotion on his placid face.

  Then he opened his mouth . . .

  And he told me his story.