Born a Queen (The Queens Book 3) Read online

  Born a Queen

  Book Three of the Queens

  Nikita Slater

  Copyright © 2020 Nikita Slater Writing Services Ltd.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Epilogue

  Coming soon…

  Nikita’s Newsletter!

  Bonus: Excerpt from Scarred Queen: The Queens Series

  Bonus: Excerpt from Alejandro’s Prey: The Queens Series

  Bonus: Because You’re Mine

  Also by Nikita Slater

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  About the Author

  “They’re dying to kill

  And living to die

  Snub nose, headshots

  If you touch anything that’s mine.”

  Amore, Pitbull & Leona Lewis

  Prologue

  Mateo lit a cigar and leaned forward in his chair, placing his elbows on his knees and allowing fatigue to settle over him like a cloak. He was tired, but it was a good kind of tired. It’d been a long two years. Mateo acted as second-in-command, enforcer, and diplomat to the Butcher, Isaac Sotza; flying around the world, using the might of the Venezuelan cartel to convince both friends and competitors that they needed to work with the Butcher instead of against him.

  Mateo had also taken on a special project, one that was personal to Sotza. Something that he only entrusted Mateo to complete. Hunting the Mexican cartel boss, Nicolás Garza. Mateo looked down at the bloody heap that used to be Nico Garza. After several long seconds, the mess of bones and gore that used to be his chest lifted and dropped. Garza was still alive.

  Good. Mateo wasn’t quite done with him yet. He had strict orders from Sotza to prolong the suffering. This man had shot the Butcher’s wife. Though it was only her arm, and she’d recovered in a matter of days, it didn’t matter. In this world, the underworld, such insults couldn’t be allowed to pass unchallenged.

  Mateo was impressed with Garza. Impressed with his ability to run and hide. It had taken twenty-three months for Mateo to finally hunt him to ground. And disappointingly, Garza’s second-in-command and lover, Desiree, wasn’t with him. Maybe Garza knew Mateo was closing in and hid her somewhere, drawing Mateo’s focus onto himself to protect her. It was a noble attempt, but ultimately useless. Mateo would find her too and finish the woman who helped try to bring down the Venezuelan cartel. Despite his dislike of killing women, Mateo would do his job.

  Nico let out a moan. Or maybe it was more of a gurgle since he didn’t have any teeth or a tongue.

  “Are you waking up?” Mateo asked in surprise.

  Garza had more stamina than Mateo had given him credit for. Not that Mateo minded, he liked playing before the kill. It was something he had in common with his boss. It helped ease the ever-lurking darkness staining his soul. Death and suffering grounded him in a way nothing else could.

  Nothing else except a pair of sharp blue eyes attached to the only woman that he’d ever looked at twice. She consumed his thoughts. She was his perfection, though she was far from perfect. Her quick wit, her barbed tongue, her fiery temper. It all belonged to him. Raina would be his prize for completing this mission. Sotza had promised and the Butcher didn’t break his promises. He agreed to give Mateo two things if Mateo took out Sotza’s enemy; his stepdaughter and the American east coast.

  Now, Mateo was ready to collect.

  He bent over and pressed his lit cigar into Garza’s now empty eye socket, putting it out. God forbid he start a fire and be forced to leave before his job was completely done. He pulled out his phone and tapped the screen into camera mode. He pointed it at the dying man, “Smile, Garza.” He took several shots and sent them to his boss. He’d get rid of the phone with the evidence once he was finished.

  He stood, stretched his back and cracked his knuckles before reaching into his pocket for the gloves he wore when he worked. He stared down, not a flicker of emotion over what he was doing except for a sense of satisfaction over a job well done. He’d managed to keep Garza alive for five days of torture. If he was at home, at the compound, in the ‘shed’ as they called the building where they detained prisoners, he’d be able to keep Garza alive for weeks.

  As it was, Mateo would have to finish up soon. He was hearing some concerning gossip coming out of Italy, Raina’s current country of residence. He needed to get to her, extract her from whatever the hell she’d managed to get herself into and then take her home. Not to Venezuela, but to Miami. Their new home.

  “Okay, Garza,” Mateo announced. “Let’s finish this.”

  Since Garza was close to the end, Mateo decided it was time for his signature. He picked up a pair of garden shears he’d set aside on the table and bent to his prey. Gently he picked up Garza’s mangled hand and worked the shears between his fingers. He snipped Garza’s trigger finger off and tossed it onto the table. The other man didn’t say anything, but his gurgled screams spoke eloquently.

  Chapter One

  It was Raina’s twenty-first birthday. She wanted to go out and party, dance all night, make friends, flirt, maybe take a guy home if she really felt like it. She’d never done that. Never taken a guy home before. In fact, she’d never even had sex. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to. She really, really did. But life had thrown a major curveball at her two years ago and she’d been running ever since. This time, it appeared she was running into a dead end.

  Raina didn’t think she was going to get to party for her birthday. No, she was pretty sure she was going to die. She peered out into the dark night from the window of her rented room. She was on the fourth floor of a very old building. One that was sinking. But then, all the buildings in Venice were sinking.

  Italy was her ninth countr
y in two years. When she left Venezuela, leaving the mother she just met behind, she went on the run. She had to assume there were people after her, or at least watching. Sometimes she would come home from an evening out and she would have that eerie feeling that someone had been in her apartment. She suspected dear old stepdad, Isaac Sotza, the Venezuelan mob boss, had people keeping an eye on her. He probably knew where to find her from the moment she left his estate.

  But did his second-in-command? Her mind flashed back to her time in Venezuela. The brief month before her mother ushered her out of the country in a daring escape. Mateo Gutierrez. Cartel to the marrow of his bones. Sotza’s right hand man and her constant shadow while she was in Sotza’s care.

  Mateo was everything she hated in a man, arrogant, dangerous, rude. But he was also indecently attractive. And for some reason he’d wanted her. She wondered if the two years since she last saw him had dimmed his regard. Somehow, she doubted it. Even in her brief time observing the mafia, she noticed the guys didn’t let things go. They held onto their grudges, their obsessions. She suspected those qualities were what made the men so hard and so successful.

  Raina flitted around her apartment, shoving her possessions into a small suitcase. She didn’t have much. She travelled light because she never knew when she’d have to pick up and run. She had done it before, but never in this much of a hurry. That was because she’d done something stupid. She crossed the wrong people and it was only a matter of time before they found out and came after her. She suspected sooner rather than later.

  And she was right. Seconds after that thought entered her head, as she was reaching for her purse, preparing to leave her tiny apartment for good, the door crashed open. The only thing that saved her from being shot in the heart as she stood gaping at the man who kicked the door in was the fact that he kicked it so hard it rebounded off the wall and slammed shut again. The bullet meant for her thudded into the heavy wooden door.

  Raina dropped her purse and ran for the only place in her apartment with a door that would close and lock. Her bathroom. As she ran, reaching for the frame, her front door was flung open again and the room sprayed in bullets. She felt a tearing, hot pain hit her in the back. The force of the bullet flung her into the bathroom. She landed hard on her knees. She didn’t have time to assess herself. She rolled onto her back and kicked the door shut, reaching up to lock it. Thank god these old Italian buildings had thick doors. Bullets thunked into the wood as she crawled toward the bathtub and dragged herself inside.

  “Fuck!” she snarled, reaching behind her to touch the spot on her back. Her hand came away covered in blood. She really hoped the bullet hadn’t taken out her only good kidney. Even if it didn’t, the blood loss for someone like her could be catastrophic.

  She had to get out before the man who shot her got inside the bathroom. She’d picked this place because it had a window in the washroom with a fire escape. She was going to have to get out of the bathtub though, since the window was over the toilet. She took a deep breath, eyed the bathroom door, which was still in one piece and flung herself out of the tub. As she was kneeling on the toilet reaching for the latch, she realized there were no more sounds hitting the door. Had they given up on coming after her?

  That didn’t make sense. The front door was thicker than the bathroom door and they’d had no problem breaking through that one. She stopped, her hands hovering against the window, and listened. At first there was nothing, and then she heard muffled thumping sounds. A man shouted, but it was cut off. What were they doing out there, killing each other?

  Raina wasn’t going to wait around to find out. Whatever was happening it couldn’t be good. And she needed medical attention right away.

  She turned back to the window. A scream leapt from her and she fell off the toilet as bullets crashed through the window. A man had come up the fire escape to cover the window and she’d come face to face with him. She huddled on the floor as small as she could get and covered her arms with her head.

  She knew she was a dead woman when she finally heard the sound she’d been expecting. The bathroom door crashed open, smashing against the bathtub. She tensed, waiting for that awful hot tearing sensation to rip through her again as she was shot full of holes. Instead, she heard two muffled shots and a shout from the balcony.

  When the seconds ticked by and she was still alive she chanced a peek through her arms. Mateo Gutierrez was standing over top of her; tall, scowling, eyes and gun trained on the window.

  “Mateo!” she gasped.

  “Raina,” he acknowledged grimly and looked down at her. He reached for her, dragging her off the floor.

  She groaned in pain but was forced to follow as he pulled her out of the bathroom and into the main room. She gaped at the two dead men decorating her place. They hadn’t stood a chance. Probably thought they were going to kill a helpless woman. They would have no idea that she had an entire cartel at her back and, apparently, at her disposal.

  “Jacket, shoes, purse. Hurry up,” he barked at her.

  Raina didn’t pause. Her only chance of survival was with this man. She dragged a leather coat on, flinching in pain as it stuck to her back. She bent over to tie up her running shoes, but as she straightened, dizziness engulfed her. Mateo caught her before she hit the floor, grabbing the part of her back that had been shot. She cried out, clutching his arm to shove him away.

  “What’s wrong?” he demanded.

  “Shot,” she muttered.

  He turned her around and lifted her jacket and shirt. He muttered something she suspected was a nasty swear word in Spanish.

  “Is it bad?” she asked, peeking at him over her shoulder.

  “No,” he growled, and then picked her up in his arms.

  This was the second time he’d done this. The first time he’d been kidnapping her from her university campus. This time? She didn’t know. He was definitely saving her life, but she suspected there was more to him being here. The timing was too convenient.

  “Mateo?” she whispered as he glanced into the hallway before striding out her door.

  “Si, Raina?” He took the stairs two at a time, careful to hold her tight against his chest so he wouldn’t jar her wound.

  “Thanks for coming for me.” She had to say the words in case she didn’t get another chance.

  He paused for a moment on the second-floor landing and looked down at her, his dark eyes hot with anger, possession and longing. “I will follow you into hell, chica.”

  “Let’s hope not,” she sighed right before passing out.

  Chapter Two

  “Fucking stupid,” Mateo muttered darkly.

  Raina gritted her teeth and sat as still as she could while he worked to patch her up. She’d woken up in a room she didn’t recognize. It was filled with empty cages and smelled like antiseptic. Mateo explained to her that he brought her to an animal hospital that was closed for the night. He couldn’t risk taking her to a regular hospital, not with the Italian Cosa Nostra hot on their heels.

  “My people are looking for ways to get us out of the country. Airspace is being carefully monitored, as are trains and buses. The family you chose to cross have their fingers in everything.” His voice was devoid of emotion, but she could feel the accusation and anger swirling around him.

  “I didn’t choose to cross anyone.” She flinched as he pressed an alcohol-soaked gauze pad to the wound on her back. She was sitting on a metal exam table, leaning forward with her back to Mateo. He’d pushed her shirt up. “I was ordered to work on documents for Antonio Savino. Not my fault the asshole didn’t want any loose ends.”

  His hand dropped to squeeze her hip. “Watch your fucking language, Raina.”

  She twisted around to look at him with a laugh. “You watch yours, gangster.”

  Mateo’s sharp gaze softened. He reached up and pushed Raina’s pink glasses up her nose. “I forgot to say happy birthday,” he said softly.

  Raina’s smile faded as her heart fluttere
d at his unexpected touch. “I was sort of passed out. It’s not a big deal.”

  “Yes, it is,” he said seriously, then got back to work.

  It felt good to be near Mateo again. It was as though the years faded and they were back in Sotza’s garden together in Venezuela, Raina trying to read a book while Mateo stalked and bullied her. Tried to get her to go back inside where he deemed it was safer.

  Two years ago, Sotza had ordered Mateo to kidnap Raina and bring her to Venezuela to meet her birth mother, Elvira. As much as Raina had resented being taken against her will, she didn't actually hate her time there. In fact, she loved a lot of it. Venezuela was beautiful. Sotza's mansion was high up in the mountains; practically a natural fortress. She definitely wanted to go back someday.

  But not today. Not tomorrow, and not anytime soon. She was enjoying life too much. As nice as it was to see Mateo again, she wasn’t ready to go back to that life permanently.

  Raina suspected that Mateo wanted permanent. He was older than her, he was looking to settle. He was far more serious. And when he looked at her... he stole her breath. He made her heart pound. He terrified her. The things that he wanted from her were not things that she was willing to give him yet. She didn't want a home, a family and babies. She didn’t want the mafia.