Black Sheep Read online

  BLACK SHEEP

  ZARA COX

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Piatkus

  ISBN: 978-0-3494-1478-2

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Zara Cox

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Excerpt from Beautiful Liar copyright © 2016 by Zara Cox

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Piatkus

  Little, Brown Book Group

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DZ

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  PART ONE: AXEL Chapter One: Fuck Bygones

  Chapter Two: Crime and Punishment

  Chapter Three: Gunpowder and Lead

  Chapter Four: Major Salvo

  Chapter Five: Saber-Rattling

  Chapter Six: Rules of Engagement

  Chapter Seven: First Contact

  Chapter Eight: Call of Extra Duty

  Chapter Nine: Counter Punch

  Chapter Ten: Game On

  PART TWO: CLEO Chapter Eleven: Front-Row Seats

  Chapter Twelve: The Deal

  Chapter Thirteen: Special Delivery…or Not

  Chapter Fourteen: Lewd Conduct

  Chapter Fifteen: P or A

  Chapter Sixteen: Another Woman’s Shoes

  Chapter Seventeen: Battle Stations

  Chapter Eighteen: Total Recall

  Chapter Nineteen: Fade to Black

  PART THREE: US Chapter Twenty: It Happened on a Rainy Night

  Chapter Twenty-One: Impasse

  Chapter Twenty-Two: The Inquisition

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Confessor, My Confessor

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Atonement: Part One

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Rum and Perspective

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Atonement: Part Two

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Possession Is Nine-tenths of the Law

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Full Disclosure: Part One

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Axle Shift

  Chapter Thirty: Quantum Leap

  Chapter Thirty-One: It Beats. It Bleeds.

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Pitter Patter

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Penance. Together. Forever.

  Did you miss Quinn and Lucky’s story?

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Zara Cox

  PART ONE

  AXEL

  Chapter One

  FUCK BYGONES

  Axel

  Childhood sweethearts.

  Even way back then, I despised the term. There was nothing childlike about what I felt for her. Even less was the implied sweetness of our connection. But we let them smile and label us as they pleased. All the while knowing and relishing our truth. She was pure sin, and I was the devil intent on gorging myself on her iniquities.

  I lived for it. For her. The sexy, hint-of-sandpaper voice that could bring me to my knees. The limpid blue eyes that paralyzed me. The killer curves that made me want to kill every other boy or man who dared to look at her sixteen-year-old body.

  At nineteen, I was fully cognizant of my obsession, was aware that it was a live grenade destined to blow me apart one day. But I was ready to die the first time I looked into her eyes. As long as I died in her arms.

  I should have known my end was near the day she called me by her special name.

  My Romeo.

  She called me that the day I took her virginity beneath the stars on the beach of our families’ adjoining Connecticut properties.

  My Romeo. As if she knew we were doomed. Perhaps she knew I was. Perhaps she’d known of the plan all along. Or she hatched it the day my father enrolled me at West Point. The day he embraced his grand and greedy plan to fatten his bank balance from war instead of just from common mafia mongering.

  The irony was that I was the only fool in the piece. I may have accepted my role as Romeo, but her name wasn’t Juliet.

  No, the devil’s siren went by the name of Cleopatra McCarthy.

  And when it came right down to it, Cleopatra McCarthy was only too happy to watch me burn in the flames of my obsession. Happy to watch me die.

  Childhood sweethearts. Fuck that.

  Whatever we felt for each other was as old as dirt, filthy as sin. What I feel for her now is…too fucked up to name.

  So now I watch her. She watches me.

  Strangers. Enemies. Our hate sparks between us like forked lightning. Bitter, twisted. Alive.

  There may be a wide dance floor between us and the sound of jazz funk blaring through the speakers inside the walls of XYNYC, my New York nightclub, but we may as well be cocooned in a little bubble of our own, merrily breathing in the fumes of our hate.

  Eight years is a long time to drip-feed yourself poisonous might-have-beens. But I’m more than comfortable in my role of rabid obsessor.

  I lean back, elbows on the bar, ignoring all around me except the woman tucked away in my roped-off VIP lounge. The elevated lounges offer a clear view without obstruction. The short black dress clings to her hips and upper thighs leaving her legs bare, the halter neckline and her caught-up hair displaying lightly tanned shoulders and arms.

  The glass of vintage Dom Pérignon champagne in her hand hasn’t been touched. Not a single inch of her voluptuous body has moved in time to the music, even though music is…was a great love, once upon a time. Even after all these years, I retain residual resentment that I had to share her with Axl Rose and Dave Grohl, watch her body twist in ecstasy that wasn’t induced by me.

  A waiter offers her a platter of food. She shakes her head and takes a step toward the black velvet rope that blocks the lounge. My bouncer steps in front of her.

  She glares at him.

  Without glancing my way, she reaches into her tiny purse for her phone. She sets her glass down, and her fingers fly over the screen.

  My own phone buzzes in my pocket. I’m not surprised she has my number. Any member of my family could have obtained it by illegal means and given it to her. I take a beat before I pull it out and read the message. “I’ve been coming here almost every night for two weeks. You have to talk to me sometime.”

  I glance up, make her wait for a full minute before I reply. “Do I?”

  Her nostrils flare lightly. “He wants an answer.”

  My mouth twists, and I swear the impossible happens, and I hate her even more than I did one second ago. “What are you now, his messenger?”

  Her gaze flicks up to me before she shrugs, her bare, slender shoulder gleaming under the pulsing lights. “You’ve ignored all his emails and your brothers’ calls.”

  “They’re spineless assholes.”

  “Are you going to talk to me?”

  “No.”

  “Then why keep me here?”

  “I told you the terms of admittance. You come of your own free will; you don’t get to leave until the club closes. That’s in two hours.”

  “This is ridiculous, Axel.”

  My stomach knots just from seeing her type my name. “Then don’t come again.”

  She looks up. Our eyes meet across the dance floor. Her hatred washes over me in filthy waves. I want to roll around in it. She holds my stare defiantly for
a minute before she lowers her head to her phone again.

  “It’s not that simple. Please hear me out.”

  Again my stomach clenches, but this time it’s accompanied by a crude little jerk in my pants that grabs my attention. “Please? You begging now?”

  Annoyance flickers across her features. Her thumb hovers over the screen for the longest time. Then my phone buzzes. “Yes.”

  I didn’t expect that. The Cleo I knew never begged unless it was to plead for my cock inside her. My mind circles around why she would do so now, and my erection hardens. A few crazed seconds later, I decide it’s safer for my sanity not to know, and I settle back into sublime hate. “Too bad the first time I hear you beg has to be via text. Answer’s still no.”

  “Axel, this is important. Let bygones be bygones and hear me out. It won’t be more than five minutes. Please.”

  I’m doubly pissed off that I can’t hear her say that word. I’ve waited a long fucking time to hear it. I’m even angrier that I can’t cross the distance between us to ask her to repeat it. I put everything into the two words I text to her. “Fuck bygones.”

  It may be a trick of the light, but I swear she feels my new level of rage. Her lips part in an inaudible gasp as she reads my reply.

  Turning away, she stalks to the private bar in the lounge. The waiter nods when she murmurs to him. He slides a shot glass across the counter and reaches for the premium tequila sitting on the shelf behind him. He pours. She picks it up and raises the glass to me before she downs it in one go.

  I stride to the edge of the dance floor, hating myself for being concerned about the consequences of what she’s doing. Then I remind myself that it’s been years since I witnessed Lightweight Cleo topple over after one shot of tequila.

  All the same I watch her, narrow eyed, as she downs another shot before heading for one of the velvet booth seats. There is the tiniest weave in her walk, and I have to clench every single muscle to stop myself from charging across the space between us.

  The simple, undeniable truth is I can’t.

  Because of Cleopatra McCarthy, my life exploded in a billion little pieces. Pieces I didn’t bother to put back again because I knew the exercise would be futile.

  So for over eight years, I’ve lived with this new, permanently-altered-for-the-worse version of myself. A version I’m not in a hurry to reassess or remodel. A version that keeps me steeped in the obsidian fury that fuels my existence.

  I stay on my side of the divide because to come within touching distance of her is to succumb to the carnage raging inside me. After all this time, I should have enough of a hold on myself to smother the compulsion.

  I don’t. If I did, I would’ve stopped her from stepping foot inside my club the first time she turned up.

  But even worse than the control I sorely lack is the fact that I’m a glutton for punishment. Hell, it’s the reason I run the highly successful and exclusive Punishment Club. In the handful of years it’s been open, I’ve made over twenty million dollars in membership fees alone. Who the fuck knew there were crazies out there like me seeking to be exposed to the very thing they hate the most?

  I derive a little perverse satisfaction from the fact that I’m granting them an outlet, even while I’m unable to find one for myself. I accepted my fate a long time ago. What haunts me can only be cured one way—by the moment I stop breathing.

  “Macallan. Triple. Neat.”

  I reel back my thoughts and turn at the sound of the deep, raspy voice.

  Quinn Blackwood.

  He’s not exactly a friend but there’s mutual respect and acceptance of the otherworldliness inhabiting our blackened souls. It’s what drew us to each other when we were placed in the same group for a brief time at West Point. Although Quinn never served, we kept in touch and ended up owning several nightclubs together, XYNYC being one of them.

  Like me, he doesn’t need the income. Like me, this place is one of many outlets for the demons that haunt him.

  I make sure Cleo is still seated and return to the bar.

  I watch Quinn knock back a large drink in one ruthless gulp. “You know there’s a better blend in your VIP room, right?”

  He slams the glass on the counter with barely suppressed violence. “Too far,” he replies.

  We’re roughly the same height so, when he shoots me a glance, I’m well positioned to see the hounds of hell chasing through the jagged landscapes of his eyes. I don’t flinch. I welcome the horde like kindred spirits. Our souls have endured more than enough to last us several lifetimes, and we both know it. “That bad, huh?”

  His jaw clenches as he takes a breath. “Worse.”

  “Need any help?”

  A dark shadow moves over his face, and he shakes his head. “It’s done. I have what I need.”

  I don’t press him for more information. Ours is not that kind of relationship.

  I catch movement from my lounge, and my gaze zeroes in on my nemesis. She’s risen from the sofa and leaning against the railing once more, the untouched glass of champagne again in one hand. The bodyguards are once more alert, and a few of my errant brain synapses attempt to be amused by the glare she sends their way. “If you need anything else, let me know,” I say absently, unable to take my eyes off the woman whose presence looms as large as the Sphinx before me.

  I sense Quinn following my gaze, then returning to me. “Looks like you have a situation of your own that needs taken care of.”

  “Yeah.” My voice feels as rough as it sounds. “Fucking tell me about it.”

  He doesn’t nod or smile. Quinn Blackwood rarely smiles. But then, neither do I. Another thing we have in common. “Anything I can do, let me know,” he says.

  No one can help me with this. “Thanks,” I say anyway.

  He asks questions that bounce off the edge of my consciousness.

  I shrug. I nod. I respond. But throughout, my senses are attuned to the other side of the room.

  I barely register him stalking away. I click my fingers, and Cici, one of my waitresses, sidles up to me. I relay instructions, and she leaves, but not before she smiles in a way that ramps up my irritation.

  I can’t think about that now. I have more than enough to deal with tonight.

  Four lounges from Cleo’s, Vardan Petrosyan, the New York head of the Armenian mob, is downing expensive vodka like there’s a drought coming. His unsavory presence sticks in my gut like a rusty blade, but since he’s one of the many devils I’ve struck a deal with, I have to tolerate his presence for as long as necessary.

  He’s been here going on two hours. I’ve ignored him for most of that time. Any longer and I risk pissing him off.

  Men like Petrosyan demand fear where they can’t achieve respect. I feel neither, and he knows it, but he’s also aware I need him more than he needs me right now. So we both pretend I feel the latter.

  I make my way to where he sits with his entourage. His minders stand in my way for the extra second it takes to make their point before they step aside.

  The mob boss has a tall, slim blonde perched on each thigh. They both glance at me as I approach. I ignore them and focus on the short, stocky man with boxy features.

  When he finally removes his wandering lips from one of the women’s cleavage, Petrosyan stares at me with dead black eyes, a cold smile sliding across his face. “I was beginning to think you forget about me,” he tells me in broken, heavily accented English.

  “I wanted to catch you when you were feeling soft and mellow,” I reply.

  He barks out a laugh. “Nadiya, he thinks I’m soft and mellow. Do you think I’m soft and mellow?”

  The blonde on his left immediately shakes her head.

  “Feel free to check; let’s make sure, ya?” he encourages.

  She happily obliges by groping him brazenly. “No, Vardan, you are hard…everywhere.”

  He chuckles, his eyes a touch colder. “You see, my man, you waste both our time.”

  I take a breath
and force a deferential nod. “My apologies. Do you have everything you need?”

  He stares at me for several seconds. “No, not everything. But it is nothing that a little…negotiation cannot satisfy, eh?”

  I’ve been expecting this—the obligatory extortion that happens every few months. Normally, I head it off by stating a few facts and figures, namely that I’m paying almost double market value for the service Petrosyan is providing me. This time, I don’t.

  Cleo’s persistent visits are evidence that my plan is working. The fracturing Rutherford kingdom is developing even more cracks. And I’m willing to pay dearly for that.

  “What do you want, Petrosyan?”

  His expression doesn’t change, but sensing a victory, he immediately turfs the girls off his lap. Once they’ve drifted off, he stands, adjusts his shiny suit, and rises up on the balls of his feet. But nothing can disguise the fact that I’m a foot taller than him.

  “I want for you to tell me what you’re doing with all the product you buy from me, for start. It’s not ending up on the street or in clubs, I know that for fact,” he says.

  “And like I told you when we started this…partnership, it’s none of your business.” Although I owe him no explanation, I don’t relish the idea of telling the mobster that every ounce of heroin I’ve procured from him for the last two years has been flushed down the toilet. That this isn’t about taking over my father’s business to make money for myself but to ensure the Rutherfords have zero business by the time I’m done with them. And if by doing so, I help take a few hundred kilos of drugs off the street…I mentally shrug.

  Petrosyan’s jaw flexes, but he nods. “Okay, then let’s talk our business. Economy is in toilet. I need to raise prices—”

  “Two hundred thousand a month. Fifty thousand dollars more for the same deal.”

  He looks off to the side, pulls on his cuffs, and then his fish eyes dart back to me. “I am thinking a cool quarter million has nice ring to it, no?”

  “Fine. Deal. Are we done?”

  Surprise livens his eyes for a few seconds before his gaze turns speculative. “You must really want to…how you say, shank it to my former business partner, hmm?”