Queenpin (Syndicate Book 1)

by Eden Rose

  “I figured you were like that.”

  How else was I supposed to answer that? Seriously… how else am I supposed to say I want to fall to my knees in front of her and let her boss me around? I want to have this woman own me.

  A few awkward moments later, food that we didn’t order, appears in front of us. Lucian looks at the food then to the waitress who drops it off. The waitress takes a bite of the food first before nodding. After the nod, she leaves us alone.

  “You have a food tester?” I quip.

  “Tell me about yourself,” she replies with little acknowledgment of what I just asked.

  I will take that as a yes.

  “What do you want to know?”

  I take a couple of seconds to cut up my steak then put a piece in my mouth. Oh, holy shit. This steak is amazing.

  I hate it. I love it. I want more. I want to burn this place to the ground at the same time.

  The steak’s quality overshadows the fact a club owner has a food taster. I stop paying attention to that part and savor the food.

  “Where did you grow up?”

  I choke on my food. Out of all the questions, this is what she asks?

  “I grew up in town. I’m working as an intern until I can get more of a portfolio to be a professional chef.”

  She nods but doesn’t eat any of the food in front of her.

  “You don’t like it?” I ask.

  “I do.”

  I shake my head. “Okay. Where did you grow up?”

  She groans a little in the back of her throat. “A lot differently than you did. Let’s leave it at that. How do you feel about working for me?”

  “As a chef… or… you know?” I question hesitantly.

  Lucian holds up her wine glass to the light, peering at the contents of the wine carefully. It’s like she’s looking for a secret message in it. It’s the oddest thing I have ever seen.

  She puts it down quickly.

  “As my submissive.”

  “Can I be honest?” I blurt without realizing I said it.

  “Yes.”

  “I feel weird. I’m used to be in power.”

  She leans over the table giving me a shot of cleavage. “It’s okay to give me your power. Mason, it takes a strong man to know what he wants and to take what he wants.”

  “How did you become a domanatrix?”

  “That’s a story… not for dinner time.”

  Chapter 19

  Lucian

  I’m surprised at how easy going our dinner is. Well that’s until I see one of the fuckers who owes me money. I excuse myself from the table and walk over to the busboy who’s trying to avoid eye contact with me.

  “Where’s my money?” I question.

  The little wannabe gangster jumps in his skin. “I don’t have any money!”

  Then he looks over at me with wide eyes. “It’s been you this whole time? You’ve been hiding behind a mask and you’ve been a woman? Are you fucking kidding me?”

  I get up to his face with my switch blade in my hand. It’s heavy but quick. It’s the perfect blade to get the job done without having too many people see what I’m doing.

  “Yeah, I’m a woman. I have a pussy; tits and I make men beg for a taste. What do you have to say about that?” I retort.

  “I’m not afraid of some chick!”

  I’m quick with my knife, stabbing him right in the neck. He falls down with a thud. I yank the knife out, dripping with blood. The wannabe gangster’s eyes are open as he gasps for air, reaching up to his bloody throat. There’s no saving himself. He’s going to die and I’m going to wait for him to die.

  “Too bad I’m going to use you as a message on what happens when people fuck with Lucian McGrace!” I’m standing over the body as he has the aftershock of death.

  Once he stops twitching, I turn on my feet and go back to my date.

  “Are you ready to go?” I ask him.

  He’s finished his food, eyeing my steak. Like hell I would eat in front of him. I wouldn’t allow him to know any of my weaknesses.

  “Yes,” Mason answers as he reaches into his pocket to pull out money.

  I hold my hand up. “I own this place. Do you honestly think I have to pay for dinner?”

  His eyes are wide. “Okay.”

  ***

  I’m somewhere between sleeping and being awake. Right on the cusp but there’s banging on my door that wakes me up fully. Before I can get out of bed, I hear my front door open and then crash into the wall.

  I reach under my pillow and grab my gun. It’s cocked and ready to go before whoever broke into my place, comes crashing into my room. “Lucian! Where the fuck is the money that is due?” I hear the cruel voice that used to haunt me for all of those years. I have grown up and realized that monsters didn’t hide under the bed. Monsters lurk around in real life and are disguised as normal people.

  “Paul, you got your money this week. I am not giving you anymore,” I calmly state and then point the gun at his head. “This has got to stop, or I am going to shoot you.”

  My finger presses against the trigger in an attempt to remind me that I have this under control this time. Paul doesn’t get to make the decisions anymore. This is all my show and he’s one of my fucking players.

  “You can’t shoot me, Luca. Think about all of the things that I have on you that will come up if you do that…” Paul says cockily. His face is tilted to the side and even though it’s still dark in my room, I can see the outline of his body.

  Even though he’s my brother, we have never been close. My first memory of him is the time where he pushed me into a pool before I could swim. Obviously, I lived but I almost died. Paul is a disgrace to the family name because he’s the one that got us all into some major trouble by getting our parents killed. He’s the reason why I ended up on the streets.

  It’s a tough fucking thing to come to terms with. If he wouldn’t have been such a dick, I wouldn’t have made it to where I am now.

  ***

  The air is thick with tension and I feel it sizzle against my overheated skin. I’m hiding underneath my bed when the door to the front of the small house that I live in with my parents crashes against the wall.

  “Where is that fucker at?” A menacing voice shouts through the house.

  I cower deeper into the blankets that I have myself cocooned in, hoping that they won’t come in here.

  “I don’t know what you are talking about!” My father shouts. His voice is still thick with his Cuban descent, but his English is better than my mother’s.

  There’s a loud bang a thud that makes me shiver. “I know that he’s here! Where is that asshole?” The man shouts again.

  My father screams and I can hear him crying. “You shot her!”

  Did the man shoot my mother? Holy hell. I want to run out from my hiding place but at the same time, I know I’m safe here. Oh my god. What if my mother has been killed? I don’t know what I would do without my mother.

  “I’m going to shoot you, too, if you don’t tell me where Ghost is!”

  Ghost? Who is Ghost?

  “Dios! I don’t know who Ghost is! Please. My wife needs help. She’s bleeding. Can we take her to the emergency room? Please!” My father never begs and it’s weird to him doing so.

  Tears fall from my eyes unchecked and I know that things are about to get really bad. It was then that I remembered that my brother, Paul, has a nick name.

  Ghost is Paul.

  Why is Paul hanging around these people that are threatening to kill our parents? Oh no! I heard about this kind of stuff. They must be after something or Paul must have promised them something.

  Since he has been back from jail this last time, I have noticed many things that are different with him. Let’s just skip over the current situation and dive into the fact that he disappears for weeks on end and I’m not too naive to know what he does while he’s gone.

  He has been acting very sketchy lately since he came back from jail
. One time, he didn’t come home for a long time and when he did, he had these weird black marks on his arms. My mom and dad kept trying to get him to go to a hospital, but he didn’t want to go.

  “Dios! Please, my wife needs help! She can’t die! We have a-”

  Bang!

  There’s a loud bang that shakes the whole house and has me covering my mouth to prevent my scream of surprise. I know that someone had fired a gun, and I’m hoping that my parents are all right.

  “Where is Ghost?” The man yells and I hear gurgling of something in someone’s mouth.

  I don’t know what’s scarier, not knowing or my imagination. What if my family dies? What if they die and…?

  “What the fuck, homie?” Paul yells and I hear him throw something against the wall. Normally, when he comes back from his weekend trips, he’s angry and constantly throwing things across the room. One time, he threw a dining room table chair across the kitchen and it splintered into millions of pieces. It was terrible.

  Without thinking, I crawl out from under the bed in hopes that my big brother would save me from whatever is happening. Once I’m behind the door, I peek through the open crack and see something that nightmares can’t even think of.

  My family is dead, and Paul is in the middle of a group of thugs and they are clapping backs. “Ghost, we have been waiting for you!” A man that is about my brother’s height says and he’s facing my way. I see that he’s Mexican or maybe even Cuban with his dark features, but the tattoos are something that stick out to me the most.

  I live in a predominately gang affiliated area and we have been taught since I was young to pay attention to those tattoos and markers to identify. The Metro Detroit Police Department have instilled those things in our minds to help us know who to talk to and who not to.

  There is a big tattoo of 13 on the man’s cheek and his knuckles of his hands have something scrawled across them. It was then that I noticed that Paul has the same thing.

  “Who’s that?” The man with the 13 asks and points directly at me.

  With a new fear, I begin to push myself further against the wall in hopes that it will help hide me from Paul and his friends.

  “No one, man. I don’t know who it is.”

  13 Man comes towards me and when he gets closer to me, I notice that his face is covered in tattoos. His neck is as well. There is not a visible inch of his body that is not covered in ink and it’s intimidating as all get out. My tears fall faster and harder and are making my cheeks sting from it.

  He places his hand out to me and I can see the splatter of blood on them. My tears fall harder and faster, and I can’t help but wheeze while doing it. Oh my god! He’s covered in blood!

  I look past his hand and to Paul who nods his head for me to take it. Once I place my trembling hand in his, he pulls me up gently. “You have been holding out on me, homie. Why didn’t you tell me that you had a little senorita at home like this? You tappin’ her?”

  I scrunch my face up in disgust and try to remove my hand. This causes the mystery man to squeeze tighter. “Nuh-uh-uh, mi corazon. You are staying right here.”

  Paul pushes in between us and shoves me away from his friend. My back hits the wall and my brother reaches into his pocket. When the 13 Man comes back to his senses, Paul punches him in the face, and I hear a crunch. The other man falls back into the wall and my brother comes up to me carefully.

  While he digs into his wallet, he yanks hundreds out of his wallet. “Take this and get out. Don’t come back. Do you hear me, Luca?”

  I nod but then I start to breathe shallower and I begin to panic. Am I going to die? I feel like I’m about to die. This is horrible.

  “But-” I begin, Paul cuts me off with a sharp shake of his head.

  “No questions. Get the fuck out of here and don’t come back.”

  I grab Paul’s face and hold on tightly. “Come with me. Don’t stay with him. Please, don’t. Come with me.”

  The light must have gotten brighter, or I have finally opened my swollen eyes. No wonder he has been turning me down on my begging him to leave with me. He has a 13 tattooed right on his neck and it’s huge. I know what that means. That means that he can’t come with me.

  Blood in blood out.

  Chapter 20

  Mason

  The walk home is short and not very sweet. I begin to go over everything that has happened at Lucian’s. Could I really be her love slave or whatever it is called? How the fuck can I be close to her without being able to sleep with her? That part makes less sense than anything else.

  And another thing, there is no way in hell that I could be her bitch. It’s not going to work. I’m so used to being in charge of everything that this would drive me insane to have to listen to her and not be able to actually do what I want.

  It’s like telling me that the day is actually night and the night is actually day.

  She’s out of her damn mind if she thinks that is going to happen. If I’m getting naked with her, I expect her to get naked with me as well so I can dive deep into her.

  Maybe that is what she needs…some good dick. Maybe that will loosen her up a bit and make her life a little bit better.

  “Yo! You got rent this month?” Andrew yells from his spot on the broken-down couch. Everything in the apartment is second hand or broken down and/ or about to fall apart. We both can’t afford to update it and that’s just the way it needs to be right now. Plus, we are men, it doesn’t even matter really.

  I pull out the money that I have in my pocket and count out two thousand dollars of my hush money and throw it at Andrew. Not going to lie to you, it sure felt fucking great to hand off that money to him in order to get him to shut the fuck up about how he’s the one paying all of the bills.

  “You still working for 3-1-3?”

  I roll my eyes. “Dude, I’m not a gangbanger or some bull shit that you watch on your gang shows. I’m making some extra money.”

  Andrew shakes his head. “I’m sure that’s what they all thought before going behind bars or ending up in caskets.”

  “What the fuck is your problem?” I blurt. I’m pissed as fuck things with Lucian didn’t work out the way I wanted them to, now Andrew is going to give me bull shit? I feel the rage building and boiling in my blood.

  Andrew stumbles off the couch and walks over to me with anger in his eyes. “Look, little bro. This is the type of shit I warned you about before you started up with McGrace. Once you get involved, you don’t get the fuck out of the crew. Do you understand that?”

  Am I going to end up in prison or dead?

  I have no idea.

  I don’t think I want to know what’s going to happen to me. Whatever it is, I’m fucked. Lucian has me tied up in knots and I want her more and more with each passing second that I am in her presence.

  I want to run back to her and tell her I’m sorry for being a little bitch. I want to tell her that I will do whatever she wants.

  “What happened to you, man?” My brother croaks out with disappointment in his eyes.

  “I needed the money. I got the money.”

  He shakes his head. “Yeah, you got money with blood on it. Good luck, little bro. I don’t want that shit in this apartment.”

  “Are you kicking me out?” I ask. If he’s kicking me out, I’m keeping that money I gave him. There’s no way in hell he’s going to do this to me.

  “Not yet. Don’t bring that shit in here, though. 3-1-3 kills and ruins everything and everyone they touch.”

  We look similar in the sense that we both have dark blond hair and light features. Andrew gets more girls because he has the bad boy thing going on that most girls will drop their panties for. I’m more reserved than that… in the sense that if I’m not drunk… I don’t want a quick fuck.

  Which makes what is going on with Lucian even more challenging. Since this is something that I’m not really into.

  Hell, aren’t I the one that is supposed to be encouraging this?
r />   “Mason, did you rob a fuckin’ bank?” Andrew asks and counts out the money that is in a hundred-dollar bills.

  I shrug and walk over to the kitchen. Once in there, I grab a beer out of the fridge and stalk off to my room. Dealing with my brother’s shit is something that I’m not interested in right now.

  I want to think about what the fuck Lucian is talking about. I also want to criticize myself for acting like a complete little bitch right now. Fuck. I’m so mixed up.

  Nut up!

  “No, I didn’t rob a fuckin’ bank. I got a job. You know, the thing that you have been begging me to get?” I’m being an asshole to my own brother, but I really don’t care.

  Dingdong.

  He pauses whatever he’s watching on television and then calls out to me, “Hey, dick licker. Get the damn door.”

  “Go fuck yourself!” I call but check the door anyways. “Hello?” I call through the door but there is no answer. “Hello?” I call again and there is still no answer. When I look through the peep-hole, I see a note on the ground.

  Opening the door, I bend over at the waist to look at the note. It’s on a thick piece of stock paper that is white, and the writing is hard since I can see the indentations on the outside of the paper.

  When the note is in my hand, I get back to my full height and close the door. Inside, I open the note and look at the careful and nondescript writing.

  Mason, she’s poisonous. Everything she touches, ends up in ruins.

  Holding the note, I look at the writing and try to think of who would know that I even saw Lucian today. Does this have anything to do with her? Why the fuck would anyone care if I’m hanging around her?

  Ignoring Andrew, I stroll to my room and close the door.

  Something that is really fucking bothering me is the fact that whomever wrote me this note thinks I’m weak. I’m not weak. Just because I don’t know what the fuck is going on with Lucian doesn’t mean I’m some little bitch or something.

  Is this what my life is going to be like if I continue doing whatever this is with her? The woman’s hot, don’t get me wrong. I love how commanding she is. I’ve never been one to hand over control like this before, but I love it.