Chapter One
Present
“This meeting will be quick, I promise you, sweetheart,” her father commented.
Yasmin glanced at his trembling hands on the steering wheel and let out a sigh. He deserved another tongue-lashing, but starting an argument now wouldn’t help either of them. She bit her lip and stared out the windows, her stomach knotting. She wiped her sweaty palms over her dress.
When she moved in back with him a month ago, what did she expect? That he’d change after all this time? Once an addict, always an addict. Yasmin had been helping him pay off his gambling debts since high school. No surprise he’d managed to dig himself another hole so soon.
“Don’t you have work today?” he asked.
Larry was extra chatty today. For conversation’s sake maybe, but it was a laughable attempt. He’d never been around when she needed him.
“I got laid off my job, remember?” Yasmin didn’t add she’d lost her job at the diner thanks to him.
Larry knew she had a hard-ass boss who didn’t tolerate any of his staff being late, but he’d use his one phone call from the local jail, begging her to bail him out. Again. When she moved out to a different city with her then-boyfriend, she’d thought the days of getting Larry out of jail were over. In the end, she returned full circle, back to the crappy apartment she grew up with, jobless and still nursing a broken heart. I can do better than a fat bitch like you, were the hurtful words her ex hurled at her. Even now, they still stung. She’d spent her entire life feeling uncomfortable with her body shape. Brad had told her he didn't care, but that just proved what a slick liar he was.
“Ah. Right. I could use a drink right now. Hand me that bottle inside the compartment in front of you.”
Yasmin stared at him in disbelief, then pursed her lips. “No. We both need to be sober, alert. Jesus. Do you have any idea how much trouble we’re in? We can’t call the police because we’re meeting the friggin’ kingpin who has them in his pockets.”
She practically yelled out the last words. Her heart beat so fast, it threatened to burst out of her chest. Whoever said keeping emotions inside was helpful? Yasmin thought if she could go in with a cool head, a plan, then they might just sort out this mess in a logical manner. She was wrong. It took all of her self-control not to puke in the car.
She dug her nails into her palms. The pain helped her think. Yasmin breathed in and out.
“You’re putting me on edge,” he grumbled. “No one asked you to go with me.”
“You did, last night,” she told him dryly. “You were probably too drunk to remember.”
She reached out for the faded photograph on the car dashboard, lost in a sea of old burger wrappers and empty cigarette boxers. Yasmin fingered the edge. Stains covered the picture, but she could still make out three smiling strangers. A happy family looked back at her, before things turned for the worse.
I’m sorry, Mom, I can’t keep my promise. It’s too hard watching over Dad when he’s hellbent on a path to self-destruction. When you passed away, he died, too, and a stranger took his place.
Yasmin tucked the photo inside her handbag. Larry didn’t seem to notice. When, she wondered, had she started calling him by his first name? When he stopped giving a fuck about her life and decided he was done being a dad?
“Fine. Stop the car. I’ll get off and you can deal with Anatoli and his guys,” she said in a hard voice she hardly recognized.
Silence. Yasmin waited for it, for his tune to change. Larry didn’t slow down the car.
“Please, sweetheart. Don’t be like that. You know sometimes I say shit I don’t mean. I could really use the emotional support, you know?”
She crossed her arms across her chest. Outside the car window, she spotted boarded windows, graffiti sprayed over old and abandoned apartment buildings. If Yasmin looked closer, she might even see sharp little eyes, hungry opportunists with quick hands and sharp knives. And she’d thought their old neighborhood was rough.
“Are you sure this is the right address?” she asked instead.
Larry didn’t need to act in front of her. She knew his moods. He could turn nasty and vindictive one moment and a pathetic and pleading mess the next.
“Yup, Anatoli gave clear instructions. You know what to say, right?”
“Let’s go over this again. We only have a fourth of what they’re asking. We’ll negotiate for more time. We’ll both find a way out of this mess.”
Yasmin thought saying those words repeatedly would give her strength, some reassurance, but she felt all hollowed out. Despair festered inside of her like a poison, working its way from her innards to the rest of her. Yasmin knew even if Anatoli and the damn crime boss he worked for gave them a chance, Larry wouldn’t do a thing.
Yasmin knew what would happen again. She’d still be the one working her fingers to the bone. Larry would promise to keep away from the gambling dens and casinos, for a few days anyway, before giving in. An endless cycle.
“We’re here.”
She jerked in her seat, staring at the empty parking lot of the strip club. The afternoon sun felt hot on her face. It would still be a few hours before the strippers and customers would arrive. For a second, her chest tightened, and it hurt to breathe. Yasmin grabbed the handle and got out on unsteady legs. Her entire life it felt like she’d been drowning, running a rat race with no finish line.
Why couldn’t she just walk away from her father?
****
“These figures are next month’s financial projections for the Aurora,” Benny said, sliding a tablet across the table.
Carver finished his beer and nodded, listening with half an ear as Benny droned on about numbers. Fuck, but he was bored out of his mind. Benny had been working for him for five years, and he didn’t hire just anyone to handle the Family’s finances. Besides, anyone in his employ knew what would happen to those who betrayed him. Mercy and forgiveness weren’t in Carver Edward’s dictionary.
From the corner of his eye, he noticed Anatoli walking in the club, hands shoved in the pockets of his trousers, lazy smile on his face. Carver recognized that look. Anatoli had that smug look when he smelled blood in the water.
Two other suits strolled in, followed by two figures with slumped shoulders and defeated expressions on their faces.
Under the club’s dim lights, Carver couldn’t make out their features and didn’t give a damn. Benny mentioned Anatoli would be bringing over some poor sucker whose debt to the Family was due. Most of the time, Carver let Anatoli run their money-lending business. Ruthless and efficient, Anatoli also possessed a surprising head for numbers. Anatoli knew his shit.
When Carver had washed the streets with blood and crowned himself as the new kingpin of the city, he’d carefully picked the men he wanted by his side. Usually, he trusted Anatoli’s judgment—until he saw her.
Carver gripped the beer bottle in his hand so hard that cracks appeared across the amber-colored glass. Benny paused, looked up from the tablet, and followed his gaze. Carter first turned his attention to the sloppy old bastard with the unkempt hair and nervous hands. He looked ready to bolt, gaze repeatedly shifting between the two suits who blocked the way to the entrance. The old man only seemed concerned about saving his ass.
Yasmin though, she stood with her chin raised, her back straight. Her heels made a clicking noise on the slick floors.
Ten years ago, Carver had been a nobody, a speck of dirt easily crushed under the expensive Italian shoes of a second-rate mobster like Gunn and Sal. A decade could turn an opportunist to the most powerful man in the city, with the right motivation. To reach the top, he’d climbed over a hundred corpses, but Carver never forgot the girl who saved an up-and-coming monster and offered him kindness. All the money she’d given him added up to twenty bucks, enough for his ride to the hospital, but if she hadn’t offered him everything she had, he probably wouldn't be where he was today.
A decade. Most people said it was an impossible task, but he proved them all wrong.
She didn’t know she’d damned herself in the process. Yasmin might have forgotten all about him, but the memory of her remained seared in his mind.
Like him, Yasmin McDowell had changed over the years, turning into a woman with steel in her blue eyes. Fuck, but the matching blue sundress she wore highlighted her tempting curves. Possessiveness surged through him. Red haze covered his vision. Seeing the way Anatoli and the two other suits eyed her like a piece of meat, he cracked his inked knuckles.
Anatoli was useful, an essential cog in the well-oiled machine of the Family’s many operations, but if Anatoli made the mistake of going near, let alone touching his angel, Carver would lose it. A beast lived inside his skin, one that howled out one word ever since he spotted Yasmin. Mine.
Carver reeled in his control. His vision cleared. He unclenched his fists, but a tic still rode his cheek. Anatoli and the others didn’t know Yasmin was his and therefore untouchable, but soon they would.
Carver had been keeping track of her movements without her knowledge. With his connections, it was easy. Carver knew she’d moved out of her old house after graduating from college, that she’d tried to put new roots in another city.
He told himself an angel like her didn’t deserve to be tied down by a monster like him. When he heard she was back, Carver knew deep in his bones she was meant to become his woman. He intended to wait, to come up with a strategy to win her over, to convince her that since that day he’d never looked at another woman again. When she’d lived a thousand miles away, it was easy to keep his distance.
Too late for that now.
Seeing her in the flesh was so much different than looking at the photographs taken of her by the PI he hired. So much better.
Carver bet she would taste so fucking sweet, better than honey. She would feel so soft under his rough and callused hands. Pliant. His dick thickened in his trousers. How many times had he lain in his big ass bed, imagining it was her soft curves underneath him? Those big blue innocent eyes looking up at him, her lips parted with need.
Carver didn’t believe in a higher power. Men and women carved out their own paths, but for some reason, fate landed Yasmin here. That couldn’t be sheer coincidence.
“Sit,” Anatoli was saying, gesturing to the two empty seats on a table far away from him. Anatoli knew Carver didn’t like to be disturbed.
He buttoned up his suit and rose to his feet.
“Boss?” Benny asked, and Carver realized that was the third time Benny called out to him.
“We’ll continue this meeting another time. I have another matter to attend to.”
Carver ignored the silent question in Benny’s eyes. He nodded to the two other men standing guard near his table and made his way to Anatoli. Ten years he’d waited patiently in the shadows, convincing himself that the only woman he wanted, yearned to own, was beyond his reach. Starting today, his luck was about to change.