Made In Ruin

Book : Underworld Kings

by Maria Luis

Genres: Billionaires Romance; Romantic Suspense

Synopsis

Coming soon from bestselling author Maria Luis comes a dark and dangerous enemies-to-lovers mafia romance set in New Orleans.

**Official Blurb Coming Soon**

Release date: November 26, 2021

Publisher: Alkmini Books, LLC

Sample

Chapter One

Remi

New Orleans, Louisiana

My grandmother was right.

I’m a heathen.

You don’t grow up like I did, the daughter of a federal judge, and not feel the constraints of being locked inside a gilded cage. I push when I shouldn’t, rebel even when the consequences are delivered with the heavy strike of a gavel—thou shall suffer for misbehaving—and I always, without fail, manage to throw myself right into the thick of things. But this . . .

“Holy shit,” Kacey breathes out beside me.

On my other side, Gia whispers in awe, “Best bachelorette party ever.”

I don’t know if her fiancé would feel the same but I’m not the one getting married next month.

Which means that I’m totally free to enjoy whatever goes down on that stage, and I plan to enjoy it all. Even now, I can’t bring myself to look away from the slow, enticing dance of fabric lifting and tugging and shredding from the woman’s curvy frame. Warm lights cast her aglow, highlighting pert, brown nipples and the tight cinch of her waist. Like a wisp of curling smoke, her silk shirt flutters to the floor, already forgotten. Big, masculine hands drift over her newly exposed skin, and it’s him . . . God, it’s him I watch faithfully.

The sharp cut of his jaw.

The sinuous roll of his hips as he presses his partner into a faux brick wall and captures her wrists above her head in a smooth, one-handed move that makes my knees tremble and weep. The muscles of his back flex, and I know that it’s all for show—a performance of sin and debauchery found only here at Amoureux, an exclusive club just outside of the French Quarter—but I can’t help but wonder how the play of sinew and taut flesh might feel under my hands, how his warm skin might taste beneath my tongue.

Only the wall at my back keeps me upright in my sky-high heels.

“I refuse to die a virgin.” Kacey’s elbow bumps mine as she tips back her cocktail and downs half of it in one go. “I’m telling y’all right now, my cherry is being popped by graduation.”

I lost my virginity back in high school, in what was a remarkably unremarkableevent, and yet I’ve neverseen a man exude the sort of magnetism like that guy up on that stage. Doesn’t matter that he and the woman probably have this entire act choreographed—it’s a fantasy drummed up from the darkest depths of a dream, spun into a web of eroticism to enrapture us all.

The beat of the song changes, slowing to a grind of heat and percussion, and the woman’s red-painted nails find the waistband of his jeans. She stretches onto her toes, allowing the top half of her face to appear above his shoulder, and boldly winks at the crowd in the same breath that her thumbs edge beneath the material. Then, with a playful tug, the light-wash denim slips down over his bare ass.

Pretty sure I’m not the only one who whimpers.

I lift my cocktail for a sip and find it already drained dry. With a grimace, I prod Gia in the side and shimmy my empty cup. “I’m grabbing another. You need a refill?”

She’s been double-fisting cocktails since our first stop at Lafitte’s, and the glazed expression on her sweat-sheened face practically screams I’m at my limit. Like she’s read my mind, she offers me a wide, tipsy smile and sways like a sapling caught in the ruthless arms of a hurricane. “No. No, I’m”—her ass collides with the wall and a giggle pops free—“all good. I’m so good. Better than good!”

She stopped being “good” an hour ago, so I lean toward Kace to catch her attention. “Quit drooling over the pretty man and watch the bride for ten minutes, will you?”

“Excuse you, I’m not drooling.”

“You’re right.” I gesture at her mouth with my cup. “You’re just losing motor function after being struck dumb by the brilliance of that man’s ass.”

“Bitch,” she says, but she’s laughing.

I grin back at her. “You still okay with that one?”

Dramatically peering down into her cocktail, she swigs it around like it’s straight bourbon, not a watered-down Pimm’s Cup, and a little sloshes over the side. “Still good.” When I move to step back, she thrusts a finger at the slip of satin hanging around my neck. “Mask up. You agreed to the terms.”

The terms.

Sudden resentment bleeds into my heart, and the emotion is so visceral—so ridiculously flammable—that I feel the smile on my face slide off like hot wax.

Kace puts a swift end to all hope of escape, though, when she brings her cup to her mauve-painted lips and bites down on the plastic rim. Then her damp fingers are batting mine out of the way and tugging the masquerade-style mask past my chin and mouth to settle the flimsy material around the upper half of my face. My bones are stiff, fingers flexing uselessly down at my sides, when she taps my cheek with the flat of her palm like I’m a well-trained puppy.

“You get caught, and it’s your funeral, girl,” she says after grabbing her drink. “Not mine.”

Because I’m meant to live happily-ever-after inside my gilded cage.

Because, as my father’s daughter, I’m supposed to smile and wave like a good girl no matter the situation.

“You’re here.” Kacey gently touches the scar on the inside of my wrist. The pitying caress is there and gone again before I can pull away. “Please don’t forget that.”

I’m here in disguise.

Tucked away in the shadows like a secret that no one dares let slip past their lips.

Kace cares, I know she does. And I’ve always been acutely aware that the heavy weight of my reality is an even heavier burden on my friends. I don’t want to ruin the night—Gia’s night—so I brace myself and lean in to hug my best friend since grade school. Then I duck my chin, the way that I always do when I can’t risk being recognized, and carefully pick my way past sofas and high-top tables toward the bar.

When Kacey’s on-again, off-again boyfriend mentioned that he knew a guy who knew a guy, who could get us entry wristbands for tonight’s show, I’d mentally prepared myself for Bourbon Street 2.0—floors sticky from more than just spilled beer, greasy guys desperate to cop a feel, and girls who look just a littletoo young to be strutting around in what only God gave them.

Amoureux isn’t anything like New Orleans’s infamous party street.

Dark brick climbs the walls while soft, glimmering string-lights tangle between wrought iron chandeliers. Gorgeous marble statues are situated throughout the room, and atop each table is a bouquet of fresh flowers, pink and purple and white blooms spilling across brass tabletops like a cascading waterfall of petals.

Take away the low hum of chatter, and couples fucking all over the place, and it’s easy to forget that I’m not in some secluded English estate, standing beneath a starry night sky. Just like it’s way too easy to forget that if I’m not careful about keeping a low profile, my entrails will hang from the rafters by breakfast.

As I slide up to the bar, I touch a wary finger to the corner of my mask then drop my elbows to the expanse of dark, gleaming wood. Farther down, a few of the other girls from the bachelorette party are tossing back shots. One of Gia’s childhood friends catches my eye and waves before returning to her conversation, and I hate the relief unfurling in my gut as I take in their satin masks. It was a gamble asking everyone to wear them tonight, to make it a thing, just so I could join without my face ending up splashed across the front page of the Times-Picayune tomorrow.

Briefly, I let my eyes fall shut.

Three months.

I just need to last three more months, and then all of this will be over for good—a college degree cherrypicked by Daddy Dearest, along with pretending that my blood runs good-girl cold when it’s always burned so furiously hot. As a kid, I’d liked to pretend that Anthony Lucas meant well. He wanted me safe and he wanted me happy, and it took years for me to realize that I might as well be a last-minute addendum to one of his many contracts.

I can have happiness only when I behave.

I can have freedom—just enough to quench my thirst—if I obey without rebellion.

The second I graduate, I’m out of here. Alaska. California. The northernmost tip of Maine. I don’t care where I end up, so long as it’s far away from the man who rules over my life with an iron—

“You got the look of a virgin, pretty girl. This your first time here?”

The question may be innocuous, but every warning bell in my heart rattles to life as cotton brushes my bare arm and a big body claims the stool beside mine. I drag in a deep breath. Subtly flick my gaze to the left. He’s seated so close that I can’t make out more than a sharp profile, darkish hair, and shoulders encased in black fabric. When his hands boldly wander into my personal space, I stiffen with unease.

Turning away, I give him the universal signal for Get lost, asshole.

The plastic cup is snatched out of my grasp by ring-clad fingers. “Let me buy you another.”

“Not interested.”

My tone is sharper than the edge of a blade, and for one hopeful second, I imagine him crawling away with his tiny dick tucked between his legs. Then the sensation of hot, humid air wafts over my shoulder. “You sure about that?” he asks. “Because you look like you could use something that’ll make you feel real good.”

He’s breathing on me.

A second later, his hand—dry and rough and very much unwanted—settles on my nape.

The unease swimming in my gut grows claws, teeth.

I want to bat him off and bite his fucking hand; take the shards of the closest broken bottle and impale the glass into each and every digit that dares to touch me.

His grip tightens, his thumb pressing firmly into my pulse. “Whaddaya say? Let me take you into one of the back rooms.”

For all of Dad’s faults, and he has many, he’s taught me one crucial lesson: Never show fear.

So, I let my head swing toward the creep. I settle my hand beside his, letting my body sway close enough to catch the scent of tobacco off his skin, and then I stare into the darkened eyes of a man who doesn’t understand the meaning of the word no. “Follow me, and I’ll make you feel real good when I have your balls turned into mince-fucking-pie and fed to my dogs for kibble.”

I twist away before he can get in another word.

My feet beg me to run.

My heart thrashes wildly, and I press a hand there, right over my chest, as I zigzag through the drunken mass of bodies. Someone steps in my way, blocking the clearest path back to my friends, and I rotate on the sharp points of my stilettos to avoid being trampled.

The crowd undulates like a wave breaking upon the shore. For a single heartbeat, I have a clear view of the bar.

He’s still there.

Still watching me.

Run. Run. Run.

I step backward and let the crowd devour me down. The anxious, vice-like grip on my lungs doesn’t abate, even though the press of bodies carries me away until I catch sight of Gia and Kacey standing exactly where I left them.

Gia cups my flushed cheeks as soon as I step in close, then turns my head so I get an eyeful of the man’s tight ass as he fucks his partner like the world depends on it. “Look,” she whispers in my ear, her breath uncomfortably hot on my skin. “Isn’t that the hottest”—she hiccups loudly—“thing you’ve ever seen?”

Twenty minutes ago, I would have agreed.

The magic feels gone now.

Clasping her wrists, I wrestle my face out of her sweaty grip and look at Kace. “She’s going to hate herself tomorrow if we don’t get her out of here.”

“We can’t go home!” Gia’s eyes go all big like she’s trying to pout but can’t quite get her face to arrange itself right. “I want to watch them come.”

Kacey doesn’t even blink. “I’ll text the group and let everyone know that we’re heading out.”

It takes the both of us strong-arming Gia to tear her away from the performance. She puts up a fuss, vowing to never forgive us as she clings to the iron rail in the stairwell like a spider monkey. I release a heavy sigh. Then link my arms around her tiny waist, bend my knees to shore myself up, and haul her down the remaining steps.

The second she hits the front lawn, she drops to her knees and hurls up her guts.

I look at Kace.

Kace peers back at me.

“It’s your turn,” I tell her, already fishing out my phone to order us a rideshare.

“I hate you,” she mutters, but her heart isn’t in it as she drops down beside the bride-to-be. Her fingers tangle in Gia’s dark-red hair to keep the strands from getting dirty. Softly, she asks, “Best bachelorette party ever?”

“Ever,” Gia whispers back, leaning her head against my leg.

Swallowing hard, I keep my knees locked tight as I reach down and slip my fingers through her thick hair. She’s spent the last two years growing it out, ever since she shaved it all when her cousin lost hers after an intense round of chemotherapy. “Remember the time you got so drunk that you climbed a tree, G? We had to call the fire department.”

Kace chokes out a laugh. “You thought you were a cat.”

“Lies.” Gia’s weight grows heavy against me, and she wraps an arm around my calf. “I thought I saw a cat.”

“You wouldn’t come down.” I fight a losing battle with a grin. “I mean, you crouched up on that branch for an hour and showed your panties to every drunk frat boy walking back to campus. And then—”

“He came.”

She says it on a sigh, with so much wonder warming her voice that I feel emotion sting the backs of my eyes. For her, for them. “Did you know?” I ask quietly.

“That I would end up marrying him?”

“Yeah.”

“What can I say? I like a guy in uniform,” she says with a sloppy shrug, which makes us laugh. But then her fingers grip my ankle tightly, and I know that she’s lost in the memory of her soon-to-be firefighter husband climbing the big oak tree after her. This time, her sigh sings with contentment. “I felt safe with him. Like he would always take care of—”

The unease returns with claws straining, teeth sharp and eager for blood.

And then tension grabs me by the back of the neck, that dry and rough and unwanted hand holding me to him like a ragdoll. An embarrassing gasp flies past my lips.

“You have a good night now, you hear?” he rasps in my ear.

Gia’s startled yelp saturates the air as she falls to the grass, and it’s only then that I realize how I’ve dropped low to avoid the man’s touch. I come up swinging, just like we were taught in the self-defense class that I dragged Kacey to back in high school—but he’s already gone. Shadows envelop his bullish frame, the arms of darkness tugging him like a phantom into the night.

Bile rises in my throat as Kacey jerks angrily to her feet. “Who the hell was that?”

“I don’t . . .” Hoping to keep the nausea down, I press my lips together and breathe through my nose. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? He touched you.”

The arrival of our rideshare saves me from answering, and I shove my phone back into my purse. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Remi. Answer the damned—”

“I don’t know, okay?” Bending at the waist, I grab Gia’s right arm and wait for Kacey to do the same with her left. Together, we pull her onto her feet. “He tried to talk to me at the bar. I told him to screw off.” Opening the sedan’s back door, I lean my butt against the leather interior and push it wide. “Let’s go. Please?”

With a frustrated huff, she drags Gia into the backseat with her.

I scan the grassy lot as I cross around to the passenger seat. Whatever bouncers were manning the doors earlier are long gone, as if they were never there at all, and a solitary couple weaves between cars on the other side of the parking lot. There’s no one else around. It’s quiet, save for the rush of water from the Mississippi River just past the levee and the muted thump of music from the club.

I climb into the car and slam the door shut behind me.

“Thanks for grabbing us,” I tell the driver. He spares me an indifferent glance before turning up the volume on the country station, no doubt to drown out the sound of Gia’s drunken moaning.

Clasping my purse to my stomach, I play with the leather strap and furtively check the side mirror, half-expecting to see the man from the bar standing before Amoureux’s hulking, brick silhouette. Light spills from twin gas lanterns on either side of the glossy black door, but there’s no sign of him.

There’s no sign of anyone.

Clearly not ready to let the subject drop, Kacey asks sharply, “What did he say to you?”

The twangy notes of Keith Urban blare even louder as the driver cranks the volume. My purse vibrates a second later, and I already know who’s texted me before I pull out my phone.

Kacey: I haven’t seen you look this freaked out since HS. Please tell me you’re okay.

Before I can stop myself, I rub the scar on the inside of my wrist and turn my gaze out the window. Beyond the row of darkened shotgun-style houses, the Central Business District springs up from the horizon, all hazy yellow lights and shadow-drenched buildings. Sometimes, I wonder if I’ll miss New Orleans when I leave—if I’ll miss the scent of jasmine perfuming the air every spring or the humid breeze that clings to my skin whenever I bike Uptown to watch the oil rigs drift down the mighty Mississippi.

I’ll miss the small things, maybe, but I won’t miss how the walls of the Lucas mansion carry the life-long scars of our family. Facing off against Dad always feels like I’m gearing up for war, one where the battle is fought in the trenches of subterfuge and every quarter inch gained is mired with gaping wounds that never heal.

Anthony Lucas can be a slick, poetically humble man.

For him, apologies come best in the form of gifts—the more elaborate, the better. I’ve spent the last two years trying to convince my mom to come with me, and it makes my blood boil, the way he reels her back in with just a thin-lipped smile and a flash of something pretty. The bruises he leaves on her skin are ugly, though.

They’re ugly on me, too.

Me: I’m good. Promise.

Kacey: You’re a shitty liar.

Me: But you loveeee me.

“Fucker won’t get off my ass,” the driver grunts.

I jerk my gaze up to the review mirror, only to be blinded by the harsh glare of headlights. The car behind us isn’t just on our ass, it’s threatening to crawl up inside our bowels.

Dropping my chin, I throw up a hand to shield my eyes, and hear the frustrated slap of a palm connecting with the steering wheel. With a curse, the driver floors the gas and blows us past the I-10 exit for the French Quarter at way above the speed limit.

I open my mouth to ask him to slow down, but then the SUV in front of us is doing just that—slowing, slowing, slowing. At the last second, our driver slings the sedan into the middle lane so abruptly that my purse flies from my lap. It strikes the windshield and drops to the floor at my feet like stone.

Heart racing, I reach for it.

My fingers never make contact.

Gia lets out a blood-curdling scream as we’re violently rear-ended. Metal audibly crunches and someone, somewhere, lays a heavy hand on the horn. It’s too late to prevent the inevitable; too late to retract my hand or not give a shit about my stupid purse. My forehead slams into the dashboard with a painful thud, my vision exploding in shades of murky gray.

That split-second of unconsciousness is all it takes for Hell to rise up and swallow us whole.

The car fishtails, spinning with a screech of tires right there on the overpass. I spy the Superdome, lit up in stripes of pink and purple like candy poured from a box of Nerds, followed swiftly by the metal and concrete jungle of the Crescent City Connection in the distance. We skid out of the rotation with such force that the side of my head collides with the window, and a ragged sound crawls up my throat as my seat belt snaps me back into place.

“Stop,” I whisper, but I don’t know who I’m even begging because my heart is throbbing in my throat and the world won’t stop spinning. I reach for the handle overhead. Slam my eyes shut in the hopes of subduing my raging motion sickness. Then, louder, a plea ripped straight from my soul: “Slow down!”

The driver grunts out a hoarse, “Fuck, hold on,” an instant before we’re rammed from the left.

No.

Oh, God, no—

We swerve at a wild, gut-clenching angle.

Kacey’s strangled cry pierces the night, the sound raw and horrified, and then an ear-splitting shriek of metal scraping concrete overrides all else. Peeling my eyes open, I realize with a flood of horror that we’re pressed against the guardrail.

I see the pitched rooftops of houses, the shadows of a moonless night winding down lamp-lined streets. I see it all because the guardrail is giving away, breaking in two like a fractured bone, and we’re hovering on the precipice of no return.

“No one move,” the driver rasps out on a broken breath. “Y’all hear me? No . . . one . . . move.”

I obey without question, swallowing past the fear gathering like a tumor in my throat long enough to shift only my gaze from the darkened streets to the man behind the wheel.

His eyes are wide in his face.

Terrified.

The plastic handle overhead gives an audible protest as I fist it tighter, harder.

“Please,” Kacey whimpers from the backseat. “Please don’t let us—”

Then those headlights flash again, and we’re freefalling.

I beg for help.

I scream for Kace and Gia.

An eternity of purgatory passes, and in those last few moments when up becomes down and we fall into Hell, I prepare myself to die.

Again.