In the Dark

Book 2: Kept in Paradise

by Shain Rose

Genres: Billionaires Romance; Romantic Suspense

Synopsis

The stakes are high, but the secrets are buried bone-chillingly deep in the luxurious, ultra-private billionaire enclave of Paradise Grove, where the decadent sizzle of 365 Days meets the scandalous intrigue of Desperate Housewives in USA Today bestselling Booktok sensation Shain Rose’s dark and edgy romance for fans of Ana Huang, Rina Kent, Marni Mann, LJ Shen, and JT Geissinger.

He was only supposed to be a secret fling. A forbidden kiss stolen in the dark . . .

Not the cold-blooded monster who betrayed me.

Callahan Knight is the Diamond Syndicate’s perfect weapon with honed muscles, lethal control, and merciless loyalty. Even when taking out a rival cartel’s capo—my uncle—he doesn’t flinch. He shatters my family without hesitation, and I swear I’ll never forgive him for that.

But the Syndicate doesn’t care about my hatred. To secure their power, they demand more: A vow of marriage or watch everything we love get destroyed.

Now I’m the unwilling bride living in the luxurious prison of Paradise Grove with the man I refuse to call my soon-to-be husband. Instead, he’s the villain. Enemy number one. My tormentor . . .

But also maybe my undoing.

Because when he looks at me with the same fire we once shared, I can’t decide if I want to kill him . . . or kiss him.

Yet, I refuse to be distracted by his touch or piercing gaze. Instead, I’ll play the part, wear the ring, and say my vows all while I dig for his greatest weakness.

Because he may be the Syndicate’s deadliest weapon—

But I’m just as lethal as the monster I have to marry.

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

Callahan

ONE YEAR LATER

I REALLY DIDN’T HAVE to lose her number: I saw her sparingly over the course of the following year because of the meetings her uncle wanted to have with the Diamonds.

His empire was crumbling, and he continued to make moves that made it worse. It only took twelve months for Paolo to show his hand—he tried to get ports for the East Coast, failed; tried to make nice with the Irish, failed; essentially attempted to go to war with the government over their illegal drug trade, failed.

Then, he tried to get us to partner with him, to give him access to the ports, to force the Diamonds’ hand. We were the most powerful secret society in the world.

We didn’t allow for that sort of pressure.

I didn’t end up being her savior or her knight in shining armor.

To her, I’d become the devil.

The man who tore her family apart. And I didn’t regret it.

Her uncle deserved to die.

I stared at her number in my phone while we discussed the East Coast in the boardroom underneath our city hall in Paradise Grove. The air was thick with tobacco and tension like always when the governor, along with investors, came to discuss Diamond plans. Some of them were old school, some of them not. Some of them liked the way we handled things, some of them didn’t.

Specifically, the topic of conversation was divisive.

“Your father had a soft spot for the Ruizes,” my mother said, like I should care.

“Father had a soft spot for anyone who was making him money,” Jameson grumbled, unimpressed, and rolled his dark blue eyes. I watched his shoulders tighten beneath his suit, but it was the tick in his jaw that caught me. That tick was the same one I had when I was frustrated.

“That’s why he’s dead too,” I reminded her, in case she’d forgotten that we’d found our father to be a traitor who had made dirty deals without informing us. He’d paid the ultimate price for it.

My mother sighed and looked to the governor and then Lucille. Lucille was a steely, brash woman who had befriended my mother years ago. She was a Diamond and a woman who’d taken out her own husband when he’d proved to be disloyal too. I didn’t underestimate her in her woven wool dress, and no one else should have either. When my mother assembled her support group and Lucille was a part of it, I knew it would be a struggle to sway them away from their goal. “A distant relative of his reached out. Said we need to do our due diligence with a trust that may have been set up.”

“What do we care about a trust?”

“It’s the only way for the Ruizes to keep hold of the East Coast. They’re making money, but not enough to stave off other enemies. Their territories are feeling heat.”

“I don’t especially care if they lose men, Ma.” I took a sip from the crystal tumbler of whiskey I had. I knew there was a drug war going on. It’s why we’d made sure the Diamonds stayed out of it. We’d legalized our revenue, had business partnerships that brought in billions, and we were doing quite well across the nation. “Let them crumble.”

“Fitz took ten of their men last night, tied them up and threw them out to sea. He threatened the Ruizes right after.” Her sharp gaze met mine, and I knew that look. I learned negotiation and compromise from her.

“Not our problem, Mom,” Jameson offered, but he was looking at his phone, no doubt texting the woman he loved rather than listening. He didn’t need to. We handled most business the same and he knew I had it under control.

“It is our problem, though. Fitzpatrick is volatile. He takes the East Coast, and it gets messier. I want it cleaned up, Callahan. Don’t you?”

I didn’t so much as move as I glanced around the oak table. I could see a few of our investors lean in, could see the governor tapping his finger like he was considering what it would mean. The Diamonds in this room … they had a lot of money tied up on the Eastern seaboard. Some of it in legit businesses. Others … less so.

“I agree. We’ve made sure our ports are stable,” the governor said, his voice dropping to a gravelly low. “But the transit corridors are a massacre. Fitzpatrick’s cells aren’t trying to take the docks; they hit convoys coming out of Queens and the Bronx to prove a point this last week. They hijacked the pharmaceutical shipments we’d already cleared through customs. It’s making our ‘secure’ ports look like a joke.”

One of the investors leaned forward, his eyes locked on mine. “And I’ve lost four shipments this month. Whether it was to the Ruizes or Fitzpatrick, I don’t give a shit. My insurance premiums are tripling, and buyers are starting to look at West Coast alternatives. We have the entry points, but there is no control of the streets between them. That mess is costing us ten percent of our net revenue every week.”

“What’s the angle then, Mother? Be frank.” I didn’t need her trying to sell me on something before she told me what it was.

“Apparently Paolo’s father, Jesús Ruiz, truly may have left a blood trust,” my mother said, sliding a gold-embossed file across the mahogany table. “He was dying, and he wanted to ensure the Ruiz legacy couldn’t be squandered by his sons, who he thought were too competitive to do right by the bloodline. The assets are only to be released to his biological grandchildren upon the conception of a direct heir so that he’d have biological great grandchildren.”

I scoffed and shook my head, taking the papers to look over. “Old-world paranoia meets modern banking.”

My mother shrugged because she probably would have done the same if she could have. “And his son, Sanchez, was the only one with the authority to move capital into said fund.”

“Jasmina’s father?” I asked before I could stop myself. I didn’t really know the story, just that he was killed and Paolo stepped up.

My mother and Jameson looked at me with curiosity. I wasn’t supposed to know her by name, let alone be on a first-name basis with her. Had I run a few searches on her and found out what I could? Sure. She was a wild card and I didn’t like those, so I did my homework.

“Yes.” My mother dragged out the word. “Jasmina Ruiz’s father and mother were killed twenty years ago. Monte and Paolo took her in. Monte looks at her as one of his own. She’s good with laundering like her father was. Not that it matters. To unlock and manage the fund we think may actually be there, one of you would have to marry into the Ruizes, and—”

“No,” Jameson barked right away, cutting her off, standing as if the meeting was over. “Not happening. I love Mia, and Callahan … well, he loves all the women he sleeps with too much.”

“Hear her out, Jameson,” Lucille said. “My God, look at the math. Maybe it won’t be so bad.” Jameson gave her a look of shock, and she scoffed. “Not for you. Mia is here to stay, obviously. But Callahan? What’s so bad about it?”

It was all fun and games when it wasn’t her name on the chopping block. “I’m in my prime, Lucille.” I winked at her. “I don’t need a kid.”

She tsked. “I think you do. You’ve run wild long enough. Plus, if we play our cards right …”

My mother hurried to continue, “A marriage partnership just for a few years would allow us to move men into those territories with no bloodshed. We could restructure the East Coast the way we want it rather than let the drug trafficking continue. And if there’s a trust, upon conception, we’d control the money rather than letting the Ruizes fund a drug trafficking war with it, because you know that’s what they’ll do. By ensuring the heir is a Diamond, we decommission their money, Callahan. We get the East Coast, choke out their cartels, and gain control of Fuerte Firearms.”

She dropped that last tidbit like it was the icing on the cake she needed. “Fuerte Firearms?” It was a corporation we’d wanted a part of for as long as I could remember.

She smiled because she knew she had me. “I talked with Monte Ruiz—”

“You what?” My voice sliced through the room this time.

“I did what I had to as a member of this Diamond Syndicate.” She gave me a look a mother only gives her son. “I won’t sit here useless when I know your father and I built connections that can help. Monte and I have a history, and he was honest with me.”

“None of them are honest,” another syndicate member grumbled. I agreed with him.

“He was honest about the trust. He admitted that he doesn’t know if there is one. He can’t be sure. But I trust my source. Plus, their family is struggling after what happened between Jameson and Paolo.”

There were murmurs and grumbles around the table.

“Monte’s proposition for us is an arranged marriage of sorts for protection.”

“Arranged marriage.” The words almost felt foreign in my mouth.

She rushed on. “Just for two or three years to protect his territories and men while he gives us a foot in the door with Fuerte Firearms, which, you know—”

“We’ve wanted their manufacturing and international connections for long enough,” I said softly, knowing I shouldn’t. That offer was a tempting one. Not because we needed it. But because I wanted it. The ambition in my chest was a living, breathing animal that I could barely tame.

I wanted the sovereignty.

I wanted the world to be an empire controlled by Diamonds—civilized, strategic, and absolute. Not run by impulsive cartels. Not Ruizes. Not the Chinese.

No one but us.

The world was safer that way.

Lucille produced a document. “The Ruizes are scrambling. They can’t provide port access like they promised the Irish, and they know their only legitimate business is Fuerte Firearms Corporation. It’s what keeps them afloat. Monte Ruiz is desperate. He’s agreed to vouch for us at a shareholder meeting. He’s offering us a seat at the table just to stay alive.”

“Or I’ll just run them all the fuck over,” Jameson gritted out, his hand white-knuckling the corner of the table. Tensions would always be high with us and the Ruizes. Paolo had threatened Jameson’s daughter, Franny. And we’d snuffed out everyone who was involved.

My mother’s eyes softened because she loved Franny just as much as we all did. “We are trying not to hold a whole family accountable for one man’s actions, right?”

Jameson pinched the bridge of his nose. “What Mia tells me, at least,” he grumbled like it was the only reason he hadn’t gone on more of a killing spree.

But it was also because we’d done enough damage by taking Paolo’s life. I saw how the governor’s neck tightened, how Lucille looked away.

“Strategy isn’t always a bulldozer, Jameson. We need finesse now, not more blood. Leadership is knowing when to negotiate so you don’t have to annihilate.”

My brother didn’t care for it anymore.

He put his family first, as he should.

He’d have burned the world down for the woman he loved and his daughter.

I didn’t have that, nor did I want it.

“Say I consider it—”

“What the fuck?” Jameson immediately glared at me.

I met his furious gaze. “I want to hear the whole plan before we shut it down.”

“I’m not interested in calling the president to explain why the East Coast is a war zone because we were too proud to sign a contract,” said the governor.

“I wouldn’t really give a damn,” Jameson growled, but he waved my mother on.

“I’ve spoken with Monte,” she said. “He’s offering his daughter, Maribel. He wants the Diamonds’ protection publicized to ward off Fitzpatrick and the Chinese. If we don’t step in, they’ll partner with Mr. Fitzpatrick, and the Chinese will turn that firearms business into a black-market armory for every terrorist cell on the coast. If we’re in meetings, have a say, we’ll keep it legal.”

“Fitzpatrick? The fucking Chinese?” Absolutely no way was I having them take over the East Coast. “And how do we know the trust isn’t just a rumor in the wind?”

“The stake in the firearms corporation is guaranteed regardless,” Mother said. “That alone is worth the two-year commitment. We provide the protection, we take the board seat, and we clean up the territory.”

“We don’t deal in dirty business anymore, Mother,” Jameson said, his voice dripping with condescension.

“Which is why,” I said, looking him dead in the eye, “we’re going to be the ones to take it away from them.”

“You’ll agree?” My mother sounded surprised.

“Two years. No more. I’ll establish order, secure streets, and they’ll fall in line with us or die off without us. Tell Monte I’ll be there for Paolo’s funeral, and I expect Maribel to be ready.”

“Of course.” My mother nodded to Lucille, who hurried out of the room like she was going to relay the information personally.

“Mother.” Jameson leaned in and clasped his hands together. “Should we discuss how volatile the East Coast is before or after you marry off your son, because I was given security footage before this meeting.”

“What footage?” I frowned at him, but his stare held hers as if he knew she’d withheld the information.

He then reached for a remote and pressed a button for a screen to drop down. After a few buttons on his phone were pressed, we were staring at his screen up there.

I saw a small figure in the dead night approaching one of our new investment properties in New York.

“The Knight Heights Project in Hudson Yards,” I whispered, my blood turning to ice. It was a billion-dollar flagship—a sixty-story spire of glass and automated tech. It was a personal triumph of mine and a way that we were already going to gain a foothold on the East Coast.

I’d planned and invested about a billion into it, and it was currently in the final stages of interior fitting.

The small figure didn’t just circle the building. She was at the staging area of the secondary gas main, which was a temporary line used for the industrial heaters during construction. She methodically moved toward the service elevator shaft after breaking in.

“Shit,” I hissed as I realized what she was doing. In a high-rise under construction, the shaft could act like a chimney, a natural flue that pulls oxygen and fire upward with terrifying speed.

With one movement, she reached under her chin to crack her neck, a telltale sign of someone gearing up for a fight.

And that’s when I knew exactly who it was. Jasmina Ruiz.

She didn’t just throw a Zippo. She opened the valve on the pressurized gas main and tossed the flame into the elevator pit.

The screen whited out for a second as the pressure ignited. Because the building was in its “fitting-out” stage, the floors were stacked with highly flammable architectural foam and kilndried exotic woods. The fire climbed the spine of the building fast.

I swore out loud.

My brother told everyone, “We ran the plates and face recognition. We don’t have anything yet, but I’ll keep you posted when—”

“There isn’t a need to keep me posted. I know who it is.”

My brother’s head snapped up, his gaze finding mine. “I want his name. He’s dying for that.”

“She. And she’ll soon be a part of the family. Jasmina Ruiz.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, and my brother swore.

“The girl you …” He held his tongue because there were other people in the room. “She burned down a billion-dollar building of ours?”

“I’ll handle it when I retrieve Maribel.”

“Leave it to a Ruiz,” Cary, an older Diamond, grumbled. “I want them wiped off the map.”

“We’re not killing her,” I said immediately. It was a gut response, one I shouldn’t have had. My brother’s eyes widened. Even still, I held his gaze.

Something about Jasmina had buried in my bones. Something irritating and provoking but also addictive and alluring. I didn’t want her dead, but I wanted her begging for mercy. I wouldn’t bend on that.

“Then what’s the other option?” my brother asked me.

“I said I would handle it,” I gritted out. “Mother, draw up my marriage paperwork. I’ll handle the Ruizes from now on, considering they’ll be my family soon enough.”

With that, I left the boardroom, and before I could do anything else, I hit her name on my phone screen and texted her.

Couldn’t wait to start the war until the funeral was over?

She read it. I saw that she had.

But she didn’t respond.

Fine.

Looking forward to seeing you soon, pyro princess.

Jasmina

“JASMINA RUIZ.”

I heard a sigh from him, and it sounded like when I’d left his bed all those months ago. He’d been asleep, but somehow his body knew to protest mine leaving his.

How dumb I’d been to sleep with the enemy. Now I’d have memories like this every time I heard his treacherous voice.

“Or should I call you my little arsonist?”

Shit.

He was really sticking to that theory, then. I’d covered all my tracks. There was nothing that could have given me away. In a complete act of unchecked rage after hearing my uncle had been murdered by Callahan’s brother, I may have drove to his new high-rise in the city and burned it to the ground.

Was it stupid? Yes. But, in my defense, I was pretty damn good at being stupid. I’d covered my face, I knew every security camera there was out there. I’d left my phone behind, used an unmarked vehicle, and got gasoline from one of our warehouses.

No one could have tied me to burning down that building.

Except the demonic god of a man standing behind me.

If I didn’t have to lie for my family’s sake, I might have let curiosity win and turned to ask him how he knew.

Instead, I scoffed as I looked out at the ocean. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’d like some peace before my uncle’s funeral.”

His hum carried through the wind over to me. “I am sorry about him, Jas. I hate to meet again under these circumstances.”

Me too.

“He and Lex shouldn’t have gone after my niece.”

It was true. My uncle had chosen to align with the wrong woman, Lex, and they’d threatened Jameson Knight, a Diamond who never showed mercy. Even worse, Paolo went after his kid.

If he wasn’t dead, I would have killed him myself. But Paolo was always much more selfish than most of us were.

And still, I mourned the loss of a man who’d taught me to hold my head high for my family and never bow, but I knew the time was coming that we would have to. Paolo had left a mess, and we’d lost ten of our guys. I’d had to go and ID only the two that were found. Fitzpatrick had killed them, closing in on our territories and threatening to take over. Paolo had made promises he hadn’t kept, and now it fell on us.

Really, I shouldn’t have been alone right then. Monte was keeping my cousins at home and told me if I went anywhere, I should take a crew with me.

I still snuck away to Midnight’s Edge, the cliff Paolo always brought me to, to give him one hour of my thoughts, of my grief, of my rage alone.

Because more than Callahan and his brother, I blamed my uncle. I blamed him for never seeing what our family was capable of, what I could have been capable of if he’d let me, and for putting faith in a woman he loved rather than the niece who had sacrificed for him over and over again.

I wanted to hate in freaking peace, though, before I put myself back together and went to the funeral and wake.

There, we’d be a family united and look strong for everyone, including our enemies, to see.

Callahan was supposed to be at the damn funeral home.

Not here with me.

I still didn’t turn around or welcome him in any sort of way. I fisted my hands at my sides and tried my best not to lash out at how condescending his apology was. “If you have advice for our family, you can—”

“I came to see you specifically at the moment. Want to discuss the building?”

“I don’t have anything to say to you, nor do I owe you anything after what you did,” I grumbled softly, but the mist carried my answer to him.

“Not even after burning down one of the largest investment properties we have in New York?” he murmured, closer now than he was before. Somehow, he’d moved so close that I felt the need to grimace as his cold tone hit me.

I glanced over my shoulder to see him standing there in his three-piece suit like the devil in damn black. He must have seen the sadness on my face, or maybe the anxiety that came with Paolo being gone. I’d have to shoulder our family’s business now with Monte and Perla. They were softer, nicer, not made for the life.

There was a flash of a frown across his features, like maybe he could find it in his heart to feel remorse or concern for me, before he shut the emotion away.

“Are you kidding me? Please tell me you’re not actually mourning him,” he growled in what sounded like utter disappointment.

“Fuck off,” I muttered. It wasn’t like I was crying. But even a shred of emotion on my face was bait for him. Callahan had always been good at reading people, and I couldn’t give him a window into my mind.

I never showed that weakness. And it was the worst time to do so. The family was falling apart, and it meant I would have to hold it together.

I crossed my arms and gave him my back, taking a step closer to the cliff.

“Want to repeat that?” he asked, giving me an out.

The cool air whipped through my hair, making the blonde and deep-blue highlights dance around my face, reminding me that most people might have thought I was losing it.

“Fuck off and fuck you,” I emphasized this time.

Yeah, okay, maybe I was losing it.

My aunt had cursed under her breath when I’d come home just a day ago with my hair streaked with colors much lighter than my signature brown. She said I’d lose everyone’s respect during a pivotal time when they’d all be seeing me. The fact that she was concerned about our appearance at the funeral rather than her brother-in-law’s murderers coming to scope us out proved she was further from reality than I was.

And maybe it didn’t matter, because maybe this would just be my last moment. Callahan wanted us all dead, and what better opportunity did he have than to meet me at Midnight’s Edge? I liked to think it was my cliff because it was pretty private. No one came out this far normally.

“So, you’re either baiting me to kill you or fuck you here, then?” This time, his voice was softer, and his mouth was on the shell of my ear. His warm breath was such a contrast to the misty fog caressing my skin that I shivered. It wasn’t the closeness of him, wasn’t the way his voice reminded me of what we’d once shared.

“That why you came here without your men and your brother?” It was odd that his men weren’t with him now. We weren’t friends or fuck buddies. The one time we’d been together had been a mistake, even if I thought about it more than I should have.

It should have been a time I completely and utterly regretted. I did feel guilty for it—I also felt guilty that I still got off on the memory of it when his family had been the ones to gut my uncle.

When I didn’t answer his question directly, he growled low, and the sound vibrated all the way down to my bones. “I came alone because I figured we owed each other honesty so we don’t start a war before the end of the day. Apologize for burning down the building, Jasmina.”

“Honesty?” I shook my head and turned on my heel to glare up at him. With my back to the sea, I was in a better position to protect myself from him stabbing me in the back. Yet, seeing him this close felt even deadlier, like a punch to the gut, like he’d stolen all my breath wi. . .