Two months ago, I was at the prime of my success. I didn't care about angering the Wolves because I was planning the biggest job of my life without their involvement.
I didn't care when the Wolves decided to let me go, because I knew everything I had put in place to secure mine and my crew's future was going to go perfectly fine. With three of my most trusted soldiers, closest friends, I robbed ten million dollars from the Bank of Silver Falls. And we fucking got away with it.
There was no reason for us not to because I planned it all myself.
But there was one thing I didn't calculate.
My lifelong enemy, Emma Scott, the head of NSC, waiting at the place where we would hide the money with three of her guys, guns ready.
They took it all. Ten fucking million dollars. My future, my safety net, my pride. All gone in a matter of minutes. While Emma had spent months securing a deal with a new family from the Cosa Nostra, while she planned to rob me, I was being careless and throwing my relationship with the Wolves away.
Now I have nothing. No big organization backing me. No money. No new plan.
And she has all the leverage she needs against me.
I've been driving myself crazy thinking over and over again how the bitch found out about my heist.
She's tough, street smart, an opportunist. She grew up on the North Shore, in the family that built NSC. Emma Scott knows an opportunity to take power when she sees one. But she's not intelligent. At least not like me.
She's a follower, still taking advice from her dad when it comes to leading NSC.
I'm a leader. I would sacrifice myself time and time again for my crew. I quite literally threw myself at the Wolves to secure our future. I would risk anything to keep us in power.
She and I aren't the same, plain and simple.
And she had the occasion to threaten me with some secrets I kept from the Wolves. Things she should have never known in the first place, like the fact that one of our girls was hiding with us while someone from the Wolves was looking for her.
Someone who has paid a lot of money to have her. When Emma stole my money right after the robbery, I knew something was off.
Someone has been tipping Emma off about my plans, my struggles, everything about the Kings. I just don't know who.
I turn the water off, stepping out of the shower and grabbing my towel.
I can't get it out of my head. Who the fuck is close enough to me to be able to give an advantage to Emma?
Who the fuck would dare betray me?
The bathroom door bursts open.
"Calling your mom without your phone, then?" Ivan shoves my phone against my chest. "It won't stop ringing."
Elliot is written on the screen, and I pick up right away.
"Good morning, sunshine." His cheery voice already pisses me off, but he is my best man, and I wouldn't be where I am today without him.
"Why the hell are you calling me at seven a.m.?" I grunt.
"Trust me, I wish I had gotten more sleep too. Bennett turned up at my door this morning. Shot."
"Shot?"
"There was a late night…" He looks for the right word to control the damage—"Commotion. Bennett and a few friends ran into some NSC guys on their way back from a house party."
I take a deep breath as I walk back to my bedroom. I need to get dressed. "Which territories?"
"Ours. NSC is feeling invincible since Emma stole our money, and our guys aren't exactly the tamest people I know."
I put the phone on speaker as I slip on a pair of jeans and a sweater. "So it was a bloodbath."
"We killed two of them. They killed two of ours."
I take a step back from the phone. My hand automatically coming to my face, I rub my lower lip with my thumb.
"Fuck." I say it levelly, but Elliot knows me well enough to guess it doesn't mean I'm not pissed the hell off.
Death is not a daily occurrence on the North Shore. Despite the war going on, we have rules in place. Rules that keep us all alive. Respect the crew in power. Don't wander in territories that don't belong to you. Don't start useless drama.
But the tables are turning, the power balance tipping, and our crews are becoming restless. Four deaths in one night prove that.
My phone beeps. Another call. Ashley is written on the screen. She owns a garage in our territories. She's one of ours, but she never calls me.
"Hold on, Elliot. Ashley is calling me."
People don't call unless it's an emergency. Over time, my phone has become a bad news line. Cries for help, threats, death announcements. That's all it's about.
All day. Every fucking day.
I don't say hello when I pick up the phone anymore. I say, "What's wrong?"
"Kay." Her panicked voice kicks my fight-or-flight response into gear. I'm already pacing the bedroom. "They destroyed everything! Fuck," she pants down the line. "The repair shop…it's all fucked."
Instead of letting fear take over, I feel my heart harden. Another layer of concrete surrounds my already tense organ. Ashley was keeping stuff for me in there. Emergency kind of stuff.
"The powder," I say, trying to sound calm.
There's a pause that already tells me everything I need to know. "They took it all."
The fucking assholes.
I keep emergency coke there for this exact case. If I don't have money, if I don't have the Wolves, then at least I have enough kilos to sell and survive until I find a solution.
"I'm so sorry," she whispers. That's when I hear the pain in her voice.
"Are you okay?"
"They knocked me out good," she rasps.
The fuckers didn't even break in overnight. They waited for her to show up so they could hurt her in the process.
"Your brothers," I add in a hurry. "Where are they?"
"They…" I hear her gulp even over the phone. "They went after them."
"Call them back right the fuck now." My order is stern, and she's already apologizing again.
"I'm so sorry. They were fuming. I told them to wait for me to call you and see what you say."
"Ashley," I hiss into the phone. "If your brothers kill them, I swear to fucking God, I'm going to shove my gun up their asses. Call them. Get them back. No more deaths. Especially not on our side."
I hang up on her, back to calling Elliot right away. I don't even wait for him to say hello.
"Emma Scott is out of her fucking mind. She's become the kind of bold that either means she's got everything in place to take over us, or that she's suicidal. I'm going to go with the former." My teeth could break with how hard my jaw tightens.
"We're not ready for a war. We're so fucking far from ready we would get annihilated."
"What happened?"
"We've got no fucking money, no suppliers, and they just stole the emergency bricks of white I was keeping at Ashley's."
There's a pause while Elliot swallows the shock. "The bitch is weakening us before they attack."
"They're going for a full-on war," I confirm.
I run my thumb back and forth over my lower lip as I flip through options in my head, and in none of them do the Kings come out on top.
I can hear my dad from beyond the grave.
I told you, you weren't fit to run this crew.
"That's when you come up with a genius plan, Kayla," Elliot says, in a way that shows he's counting on me. That I'm the one who always comes up with solutions.
"I will," I say simply. Anxiety bubbles in my stomach, but I refuse to let it win. There's a solution.
There is always a solution.
"Now would be a great time for you to spit it out. A plan, Kay. Any plan."
"I will," I grit out. "Give me a fucking minute, will you? I'll come to yours. I'll have something by the time I get there."
I hang up immediately, ready to start a day that already feels too long.
Ivan is dressed, ready to go. "Let's get this sorted."
I sigh when he wraps his arms around my waist.
His soul is too pure for the things we do. My heart pinches. Guilt. It mixes with the unease of the uncertain future that awaits me.
"I'm here, babe. No matter what happens. I promise you, I'll be by your side."
"You're a good man, Ivan."
He chuckles. "Or maybe I'm just trying to show you there is some good in our broken world. Even for a guy like me, who is the product of the worst crime that can be committed."
I guess we have that in common.
I turn around in his arms, looking into his ice-blue eyes as I bring a hand to his soft, blond hair. "You're beautiful," I murmur.
It's true. He's a handsome man who, despite his good heart, has a tough look from the Russian blood in his veins. He's a kind man to me because he loves me, but he will easily crush a life in his hands.
He's been raised and trained by the Wolves, after all. He might not have a cunning mind, but he is as tough as they come.
Tipping his head down, he brushes his lips against mine. "We're going to go to Elliot's, sort this out, and then I want you to come home with me and let me make you feel good."
His words are like a cold shower. I turn my head to the side. "Ivan," I huff.
His hands grip my waist tighter. "I know how you feel. I know the reason you hate having sex with me. Because you think I'm weak. That I can't give you what you want."
He pulls me closer against him. There's a violence in his gesture that cuts off my breath in the best way.
"Just because I'm nice to you doesn't mean I'm a nice guy."
"You have no fucking idea what you're talking about," I snap back.
I don't know why it angers me when he shows he knows me. Like the answers to my problems are so evident to him.
"I respect you, Kay. I respect that you're a self-made woman who knows what she wants in life and isn't afraid to get it. But I can show you what it's like when I don't. I can show you what I'd do to you if you were just another bitch the Wolves have power over."
My face must show how I'm suddenly turned on by the man who's had no effect on me for about two years because he chuckles.
"It's okay to like it the way you do, Kay. Let me give it to you." What he doesn't understand is how hard it is for a woman like me to let him give it to me. It would be so much easier if he didn't give me the choice to agree. Because how can someone who has built an empire on being the strongest out there admit that she wants a man to dominate her? To not give her a choice? To make her shut up and take it?
I wish Ivan hadn't cared about my gun in his face this morning. I wish he'd taken it from my hands, pointed it at my head, and told me to lay back down and be quiet while he uses my body.
But I'm Kayla King. I would never admit this to anyone.
Shaking my head, I shrug out of his hold and turn back to the bed to grab my phone. "Let's just go."
"You were wet, you know?"
I look behind my shoulder, eyebrow cocked at him. "Excuse me?"
"You were wet when I started touching you this morning. You might have been half-asleep, but your body liked that I didn't give you a choice in it."
I was wet because I was dreaming of the night Nathan White didn't give me a choice. I was wet because I was dreaming of the last man in my life who gave me an orgasm.
I turn around and pin him with a death stare. "Well, I guess you're fucking right, then, aren't you? I'm a weirdo in bed. Bite me."
I don't even care to carry on the conversation.
Ivan told the Wolves he didn't want to work with them anymore when they dropped me. His only current goal in life is to be by my side. His worries are to make sure our relationship is fine and that it's going to last. My worries are to keep my crew in power. We don't have the same priorities and probably never will. I don't give a shit about my sex life when I wake up every day
wondering if the North Shore still belongs to me.
Emma Scott is trying to ruin my fucking life and I'm not going to stand back and wonder if my boyfriend is happy enough with my sexual prowess.
I have a town to rule.
A war to win.