“Hey.” Bee nudged me. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Every day in the mirror, Bee, every day.”
“What?” Her smile fell.
I forced my own. “Nothing, let’s go pick out shoes.”
“Awesome!”
Bang Bang
PROLOGUE
Amy
“AX?” I KNOCKED on his bedroom window and waited.
Nothing.
Fear gave into panic as I knocked harder this time. The sound of glass breaking made my palms sweat. I could still hear my parents fighting. It was always the same with them, my father wanted to be more than just an associate… A made man, that was his dream. A made man for the De Lange family. One of the worst families in the American mafia. They didn’t play by the rules anymore and my dad wanted to be a part of their game, rules or no rules.
I knocked harder. “Ax, please, it’s Amy.”
The screaming got louder. I fought the urge to cover my ears as I glanced back at the house. Slinking further into the shadows I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered. I hated Chicago. As soon as I was eighteen I was going to move. I wanted to be warm, just once in my life, I wanted to be warm.
The chill of fear and death surrounded me—choked me from birth until now. I was seventeen. I only had one more year, one more year and I was running away. Ax said he’d help me, though I wasn’t sure what he could do since he was nothing but a mechanic.
Teeth chattering, I knocked one last time and prayed he was home. I’d already tried his cell but it had gone straight to voicemail.
Finally, I saw a shadow move in the window.
And then I saw his face.
It was always like the first time with Ax. He had sharp defined cheekbones, a strong jaw, full lips meant for kissing, though it’s not like I would know, I was his friend, nothing more. He was beautiful. Like the prince from a story book. I’d always thought of him as my own personal prince and he’d laughed it off saying princes in the stories never worked on cars and had grease on their faces.
“Amy?” He jerked open the window, his shirtless body stole my breath away as his muscles flexed to push the last part of the window up. “What’s wrong? Are you okay? Why the hell do you have a bruise on your cheek?”
“Too many questions.” I forced a watery smile, “Can I stay here tonight?”
He sighed, his shoulders slumping over with sadness, guilt, pity? Who knew. “Amy, this has to stop, why don’t you just move in?”
“Right.” I laughed, “Move in next door with the enemy.”
He rolled his eyes, “Just because I’m related to the Abandonato family does not make me the enemy, I’m not in the business, neither is pops, you know that.”
“Help?” I held up my arms.
Laughing, he reached over the ledge and hauled me into his room. His warm chest was all I needed, he was all I needed.
“Same fight?” He released me onto my feet, I fought the urge to sway into his arms, to lie and say I tripped. Just being in his embrace made me forget about the pain on my cheek… and the accompanied pain in my chest at the fact that my dad had hit me, again.
Ax steadied my shoulders with his hands, then softly grazed his fingers tips over my face as he reached up and touched the bruise. “I’ll kill him.”
“With a wrench?” I teased pulling away from Ax even though it was the exact opposite of what I wanted.
“Ames…” Ax swore and ran his fingers through his messy dark brown hair, “Hitting you is not okay, it’s never okay for a man to touch you in a violent way. I don’t care if you yell in hise face, I don’t care if you kick him in the junk and pull a freaking gun on him—it’s never okay for a father to touch his daughter in a way that isn’t an expression of pure love and devotion.”
“Nice words…” I bit down on my lip to keep myself from bursting into tears, “They sound pretty… a little too pretty for someone like me.”
“Amy,” Ax gripped my chin with his hand, “You deserve more than nights crawling into a losers house just because you have to escape your dad.”
I jerked away, “You’re not a loser.”
“I’m not exactly a winner either.” He smirked, “But I’m glad I’d get your vote for Homecoming King if it came down to it.”
I rolled my eyes. “Hows work?”
“It’s work.” He said in a serious tone, something flashed in his eyes before he looked away and pointed to the bed, “Right or left?”
“Middle?”
Rolling his eyes he asked again, “Right or left?”
“Middle.”
“I can do this all night, Ames.”
“Funny, me too.” I crossed my arms and smirked.
He burst out laughing, “Fine, you can have part of the middle and I”ll just try not to fall on the floor, but no promises.”
I moved towards the bed, “If I hear a loud thunk I promise not to scream.”
“Right, it’s just my head shaking hands with the nighstand, no big.” He winked and pulled the covers back. “Need something to sleep in?”
“Uh, yeah.” I looked down at my jeans and white t-shirt. Self consciously pulling it over my stomach. My dad yelled at me for wearing skanky clothes but it wasn’t for lack of trying to wear normal clothes. We had no money, and I didn’t exactly have funds to keep shopping. How was it my fault I hit a growth spurt?
I hoped Ax didn’t notice the blush on my face. I was ashamed that I couldn’t even afford to go to Wal Mart.
I was even more ashamed that my father blamed me for his inability to stop gambling.
“He a made man yet.” Ax asked once we were settled into bed.
“No.” I wrapped my arm around his chest, my usual position when I spent the night. “And it’s not like things would get better even if he was, but you aren’t supposed to know any of that. It’s not like the mafia smiles on people who know their business.”
He snorted, his body tensed. “Right.”
“I mean it, Ax. I can’t lose you.”
“I’m a mechanic, hardly a threat.” He kissed the top of my head, “Now try to sleep.”
I closed my eyes and took a relaxing breath just as a loud gunshot rang my ears, jolting me awake.
“Stay down.” Ax pushed me against the bed, his body hovering over mine. His entire face changed from calm to rage in that instant. His muscles flexed as he reached into the nightstand and pulled out a .45.
“Ax?” I whispered, “Why do you have a gun?”
“Shh.” He held the gun to his lips. “I need you to be quiet.”
I nodded. Tears already pooling in my eyes.
Another gun shot rang out and then his bedroom door flew open. It was his older brother Sergio. “Time to go, covers blown.”
The door slammed shut behind him.
I stared at Ax.
He stared right back.
More gun shots.
More bursts of light.
And then Sergio was back in our room, slamming the door behind him. “So we have to go to plan B, they’re pissed we’ve been spying on them, we have to go, now!”
Cursing, Ax flew off of me grabbed another gun out of his nightstand and started packing stuff into a duffle bag.
“She comes with us.” Ax barked.
“She’s a De Lange.” Sergio spat, “She sure as hell is not coming with us.”
“She’s not like them…” He argued, “He hits her, she needs to come.”
The sound of male voices yelling had me running into Ax’s arms. He kissed my forehead just as I was jerked away from his arms.
“No.” Sergio said in a stern voice.
“Yes!” Ax pulled me back, “We’re not leaving here. She stays I stay.”
The bedroom door burst open and everything happened in slow motion as a man held up a gun and pointed it towards Ax.
“Bang.” The gunshot rang out.
Ax stumbled, “Take her Sergio, protect her, I’ll cover you, just take her.”
r />
With a curse Sergio pushed me out of the window then followed.
“Ax!” I screamed, but Sergio covered my mouth.
Just as another bang rang out, lighting up the once dark bedroom.
Sergio pulled out his cell, “Pick up at The Spot, thanks Nixon… I owe you.”
“What about Ax?” I tried to fight against Sergio.
“Either he’s dead or he’s going to be.” Sergio pushed me down the alleyway, keeping to the shadows, “And it’s your fault. Never forget, it’s your fault my brother’s dead. But what should I expect from the De Lange blood line? You were born to kill… born to die.”
My world shattered that day.
I lost my best friend.
I lost my heart.
My shield.
My soul.
And buried it right along with his body. The boy who wasn’t who he said he was — the boy who protected me from my own family.
The boy who took two bullets for me and paid with his life.
Bang, Bang. Was the new soundtrack to my life.
Welcome to the Mafia.
Elite
Eagle Elite Book 1
from Forever Romance
PROLOGUE
WHOEVER TOLD ME life was easy—lied. It’s hard. It sucks. The crazy thing is—nobody has the guts to admit the truth. Everyone, and I mean everyone, has a secret. Everyone has a story that needs to be told. Hurt is everywhere; as humans we practically drown in its essence, yet we all pretend like it doesn’t exist. We make believe that everything is fine, when really, everything within us screams in outrage. Our soul pleads for us to be honest at least once in our lives. It begs of us to tell one person. It forces us to become vulnerable to that one person, and the very second that we do, everything seems better.
For a moment, life isn’t as hard as it seems. Effortless. It’s effortless, and then the gauntlet falls.
When I met Nixon I had no idea what life had in store for me. In my wildest dreams, I could have never imagined this.
“Everything…” He swallowed and looked away for a brief second before grabbing my hand and kissing it. “Everything is about to change.”
CHAPTER ONE
“I CAN FEEL YOU breathing down my neck, Trace.” Grandpa gripped the steering wheel and gave me a weak smile before he reached back and patted my hand.
Yup, patted my hand.
As if that’s going to make me feel any less nervous.
I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths, trying to concentrate on the excitement of my situation, not the fear. I refused to be scared just because it was new.
I mean, sure, I’d never ridden in an airplane before last night, but it wasn’t as if I was freaking out…yet.
I missed my dogs and everything about our ranch in Wyoming. When my ailing grandma suggested I enter the contest, I obeyed to make her happy—anything to distract me from her illness. Besides, it’s everyone’s dream to go to Eagle Elite, but your chances of getting in are slim to none. One company did a study and said your chances were only slightly higher than that of your body morphing into the body of a whale.
Guess that made me a big, giant, fat whale, because I got in. I’m pretty sure the company did it as a joke, but still.
Out of millions of applicants, they drew my number, my name. So fear… it really wasn’t an option at this point. Going to Eagle for my freshman year of college meant that I was basically set for life. I would be placed in a career, provided for in every way possible. Given opportunities people dreamt of.
Sadly, in this world, it’s all about who you know, and my grandpa, bless his heart—all he knows is the ranch and being a good grandpa. So I’m doing this. I’m doing it for me and I’m doing it for him.
“Is that it?” Grandpa pointed, snapping me out of my internal pep talk. I rolled down my window and peered out.
“It…uh, it says E.E. on the gate,” I mumbled, knowing full well that I was staring at a steel gate that would have made any prison proud. A man stepped out of the small booth near the entrance and waved us down. As he leaned over the car I noticed a gun hidden under his jacket. Why did they need guns?
“Name,” he demanded.
Grandpa smiled. He would smile. I shook my head as he proceeded to give the guard the speech, the same one he’d been giving all our neighbors for the past few months. “You see my granddaughter, Trace.” He pointed at me. I bit my lip to keep myself from smiling. “She got into this fancy school, won the annual Elite lottery! Can you believe it? So I’m here to drop her off.” How did Grandpa always stay so completely at ease all the time? Maybe it was because he was always packing a gun, too, but still. He and Grandma were the coolest grandparents a girl could ask for.
I swallowed the tears burning at the back of my throat. It should have been him and Grandma here with me, but she died of cancer about six months ago, a week after I found out about the school.
They were my world, Grandpa and Grandma. Being raised by your grandparents isn’t all that bad, not when you have or had grandparents like mine. Grandpa taught me how to ride horses and milk cows, and Grandma could bake the best apple pie in the state. She won at every state fair using the exact same recipe.
My parents died in a car crash when I was really young. I don’t remember much except that the night they died was also the night I met my grandparents for the first time. I was six. Grandpa was dressed in a suit. He knelt down and said something in Italian, and he and Grandma took me away in their black Mercedes. They moved their whole lives for me, saying it wasn’t good for a little girl to live in the city. Chicago hadn’t seemed that bad to me, at least from what I remember. Which wasn’t much.
I gave Grandpa a watery smile as he reached across the console and grasped my hand within his large worn one. He’d sacrificed everything for me, so I was going to do this for him, for Grandma. It may sound silly, but as an only child I felt this immense need to take care of him now that Grandma was gone, and the only way I could see myself doing that was getting a good job and making him proud. I wasn’t sure about his retirement, or about anything, and I wanted to be. I wanted to take care of him, like he took care of me. He was my rock, and now it was my turn to be his.
Grandpa winked and squeezed my hand again. He was always so perceptive. I could tell he knew I was thinking about Grandma because he nodded his head and pointed at his own heart, and then pointed at mine as if to say, She’s in your heart. She’s in mine. We’ll be okay.
“You aren’t from around here, are you?” The man interrupted our exchange and directed the question at me.
“No, sir.”
He laughed. “‘Sir’? Hmm… I have to say I like the sound of that. All right, you check out. Drive straight down the road for one-point-five miles. Parking is on the right and the dorms will be directly in front of the parking lot. You can drop her off there.”
He slapped the top of the car and the gate suddenly opened in front of us.
My heart was in my throat. Large trees lined the driveway as Grandpa drove the rental toward the dorms.
Nothing in my life had prepared me for what I was seeing. The buildings were huge. Everything was built in old stone and brick. I mean, I’d seen pictures, but they did not even come close to reality. The dorms looked like ritzy hotels.
Another security guard approached the car and motioned for Grandpa to turn it off. My mouth gaped open as I stepped out of the car and leaned my head way back so I could look up at the twelve-story building.
“New girl’s here,” came a voice from behind me. I flipped around and my mouth dropped open again.
“So squeaky clean and innocent. Like a little lamb. Right, Chase?” The guy tilted his head. Dark wavy hair fell across his forehead; he had a lip piercing and he was dressed in ripped jeans and a tight t-shirt.
I backed away, like the little lamb/whale that I was.
My grandpa stepped forward protectively, reaching inside his jacket, probably for the gun that was usually prese
nt. I’m sure he was just trying to freak the guys out. “A welcoming committee? This place sure is nice.” Anyone could see the guys standing in front of us were not here to welcome us and certainly weren’t part of any committee, but Grandpa was making a point, marking me as his to protect. I stepped behind him and swallowed at the dryness in my throat.
“Is there a problem?” Grandpa asked, rolling back his sleeves. Whoa. Was my seventy-two-year-old grandpa going to get in a rumble or something?
The guy with the lip ring stepped forward and then squinted his eyes in Grandpa’s direction. “Do I know you?”
Grandpa laughed. “Know many farmers out in Wyoming?”
The guy scratched his head, giving me a lovely view of his golden tanned abs as his hand reached above his head. I swallowed and grabbed my grandpa’s arm.
The guy named Chase smirked and hit the other guy on the back. He glared in my direction and then stepped right up to me, reaching out to lift my chin, closing my gaping mouth.
“Much better,” he whispered. “We’d hate for our charity case to choke on an insect on her first day.” His eyes flicked to Grandpa’s and then back to mine before he walked away.
His friend joined him and they disappeared behind the dorm. I could feel my face was heated with embarrassment. I didn’t have much experience with guys. Okay, it was safe to say my first and only kiss had been with Chad Thomson and it had been awful. But still: something about those guys warned me they weren’t good news.
“I don’t like those boys. They remind me of… Well, that doesn’t matter.” Grandpa scratched his head then went to the trunk of the car to pull out my few things. I was still trying to get over the fact that I had embarrassed myself when someone walked up to us with a clipboard.
“No parents allowed in the dorms. Sorry. Rules.” She popped her gum and winked at my grandpa. Was she flirting with him? What the hell kind of school was this? The guys had piercings and treated people like dirt, and the girls flirted with old men?
My grandpa shot me a concerned look and sighed, placing his hands against the rental car as if trying to brace himself for the emotional turmoil of the day. “You sure you’ll be okay here?”