Velvet Cruelty

Velvet Cruelty

Eve Dangerfield

For my Zias.

Blood is blood.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Epilogue

About Midnight Dynasty

About Eve Dangerfield

Copyright

Prologue

Adriano Rossi

A girl barely old enough to be called a woman is sitting on a bench two hundred feet below me. She’s laughing, a cutesy box of cupcakes on her knees. I adjust my lens scope and her face comes into focus. Green eyes, pale skin, and a wide, soft mouth with lips as red as blood—a color I’ve seen more of than most. She picks up a cupcake and holds it away from herself, as though afraid to taste it. Knowing her stepmother, she probably is.

Parker says something and she laughs, her long ebony black hair catching the light. People stare as they walk past, their mouths falling open. The girl’s always been pretty but since she turned eighteen, no one can take their eyes off her. I move my scope half an inch to the left and find Parker. Clean-shaven with a hint of baby fat around the cheeks and chin. He looks younger than thirty-eight. And soft. The kind of guy you’d size up if you were looking to jump someone at a train station.

My finger brushes the rifle trigger. One squeeze, the whisper-jerk of a bullet, and he’d be gone. But a quick death is better than Zachery Parker deserves.

He can’t take his eyes off the girl either. From forty stories away I can tell he wants to grab her hair and pull her mouth onto his cock. He won’t, though. Two benches away, not bothering to look like anything but muscle, are her bodyguards. Kurt Cooper and Theodore Murphy. Their Rugers are in full view at their sides as they chat and eye up female joggers. I could be killing John F Kennedy behind them, and they wouldn’t notice. They’re there to stop Parker from grabbing teenage tits and that’s all.

I’ll see Cooper and Murphy soon. Show them exactly how bad they are at their jobs.

The girl stops laughing and brings the pink cupcake to her lips. Her small tongue flicks at the frosting and Parker almost nuts in his jeans.

She’s not teasing him. She’s just fucking clueless. A doe-eyed little girl. Never been on a date. Never had a friend sleep over. Her mom dresses her in shirts that puritanical grandmas wouldn’t be caught dead in. Whenever anyone talks to her, those big green eyes glaze over. Bobby says she’s pretending to be clueless, Doc and I think she’s the real deal. If she had a different last name, she’d have flunked out of high school. But when you know you’ll be married before you can buy beer, why bother learning?