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Does a dominatrix crack a whip?
The queens have identified every player being extorted by Halstead, the vile rental owner. Nash is watching Halstead’s accounts and tracing the deposits back to the parties being bribed. And one by one, Ruby makes contact with them, inviting them to join the movement being led by Nick and backed by us.
They even meet about it. The queens, including Ruby, walk right past me, standing at the bar in my mother’s club, and go upstairs into my mother’s office to hold their weekly strategy meetings.
Are the kings involved?
Nick is.
The rest of us? We’re on the sidelines.
We tossed the body of the sex trafficker who was chasing Nash and Vale into the Atlantic. It’s my favorite graveyard.
But The Queen still doesn’t know who betrayed us, and I still don’t know who sold me and my son out. Though I’ve got eyes and ears on Lev now.
Roman’s mother and grandmother, my father’s terrorized staff, are on my payroll, too. They’re sending me pictures and videos of him. They’re the sweetest torture. Ruby was right; Lev looks just like me. So I’m getting maps of my father’s newcompound. Schedules of their movements. All the intel I’ll need to get my son soon.
In the meantime, my mom ices me out of her meetings with the queens.
Why?
Because my mom can sense a woman’s pain a mile away, and she knows I hurt Ruby.
To Ruby’s credit. To her soul-crushing loyalty and heartbreaking love, she hasn’t told my mom what I did.
She hasn’t told anyone.
Ironically, she’s protecting me.
And it’s killing me.
Ruby’s professionalism is regal. She doesn’t bitch or fight. She still works on my staff. For safety reasons, she agrees with me—all work remotely, while none of them have any idea that she lives with me in my hideout by the river.
Her loyalty to my family is noble. She’s grown so close to the queens and The Queen. She loves helping Nick and Zar, and now the kings adore her too.
And me?
I love her too much.
It kills me when I see the paparazzi photos of Ruby “dating” Colton Hawke.
Nick can insist it’s fake. That her double dates with Colton, accompanying Blair Monroe with Beau Bronson, the NFL’s number one quarterback, are really a disguise for Colton’s relationship with Blair and Beau … but you can’t convince my heart.
Those pictures of Ruby with Colton? The man is a hot, inked mountain of NFL muscle. And the way he hugged Ruby, protecting her, shielding her from the throngs of paparazzi cameras waiting outside an Atlanta restaurant?
It broke something inside me.
Something that probably feels almost as broken as what I did to Ruby.
I deserve it.
It’s my karma.
“Come on, man.” Grant nudges my shoe. “It’s lady ballsy as fuck what Ruby’s doing for us. So, when are you gonna make her our queen?”
“You can’t force a queen to be ready.” Jace jumps in. “Sometimes, all you can do is wait for her.”
Curious glances dart, including mine. All of the kings wonder who Jace is talking about.