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PROLOGUE
In the center of a hot, dusty arena under a blazing midday sun, I’m panting hard. Crouched low. My red dress and cape are torn and they drag around me.
Prowling the high circular wall around the perimeter are three snorting bulls.
A huge crowd of people all lean forward, craning their necks, holding a tense, heavy silence. They lick their lips. Eager and impatient.
Everybody knows what’s coming, just as well as I do, and they want it. Now.
The biggest of the bulls lowers his head slowly as he scrapes his hoof in the dust and fixes my eyes with his.
I know him.
And he knows me. We have both known this scene would come.
All three bulls snort and grunt as they space themselves out, three points of an equal triangle. My head whips around and I’m looking for a way out. The spaces between them are huge, but so are they. And there’s no break in the wall. Nowhere to go.
I have nothing, no weapon, nothing I can use to defend myself. Nothing but the cloak and the dress.
CHAPTER ONE
The four of us, together, the Fortunas, we are the F-word.
Even as the Donna, running a mafia family has not been what you’d call plain sailing for me. Mafia families tend to be more conservative. Traditional, you might say. Which I’m very much not.
Not while I rule with my three mafia princes.
So building a new house for me and my three hot and delicious crime lords was always going to be a challenge. For one thing, I have to supervise the work, at the same time as I run one of the top mafia families in Seattle.
Blackridge, the house, is high up on the mountain, with beautiful views and walks, great green space all around. Wonderful, airy rooms. Space for us to grow our family. That’s what I want most of all. that and to get all of us out of that old horror-show of a black castle.
The construction is taking too long and eating up too much of my time, though. Worse, it’s making me spend too many days and nights apart from my three men. What I need most is for the house to be a place where the four of us can be together. A new,. modern base for our empire, as well as somewhere to raise kids.
We’re living most of the time in different places at the moment, though and that’s a real strain. Alessio, Bruno, and Carlo all are still living in the big old Dracula’s castle that has been the Fortuna family home. They come to the new House and they stay over, at least a few nights every week, not always all together.
I’m aching badly for those nights of all four of us.
Carlo and Bruno are in town tonight, meeting with members of the Twelve Tribes Elders Council. The new resort and casino development that we are partnering in will be a major step up for the Fortuna family.
Alessio is off the radar, somewhere.
As well as the issues about the house, we have another problem in the Fortuna empire.
Shipments have gone missing. Warehouses and clubs have been raided. Too many trucks have been hijacked for it to be a coincidence. Somebody with inside knowledge is working hard against us.
That’s the reason I’m out tonight and I’m hunting.
CHAPTER TWO
My body is alight. Under the silk blouse and a dark navy tailored skirt and coat, my nerves buzz and sing in anticipation. I have a hot tang like iron in my mouth.
After I’m done with the hunt, I want all three of my mafia princes, back with me in our beautiful new house tonight.
The ache that I have deep down makes me burn for the dark scent of Alessio and the hard, hypnotic animal magnetism in eyes. I need to feel the irresistible crush of his hips against my melting softness. Being without him is too much.
I’m missing Bruno’s lips, the tang of testosterone on his breath. That fluttering moment as his mouth hovers over mine and pauses, just before he takes me.
And I can’t go too many more hours without feeling Carlo’s ruthless fingers and his sinuous body, the hot spice of his urgent, hardening pulse.
