Page 63 of Diary from an Inked Throne

“Eh, my name might not be on the title. We might just be borrowing it from a new friend who was more than happy to accommodate us once we persuaded them with a bullet.”

“The address, MacGregor. I’ve got fucking bounty hunters breathing down my damn neck, ready to drag me back to Saint View at any minute.”

He rattled off an address he swore was only a few minutes’ drive from my current location.

It made me realize the rednecks weren’t the only ones who’d been following me from a distance.

But MacGregor didn’t need the million dollars. He wanted the power of ruling a Mafia empire, just like I did.

And yet it was Luca who had that all to himself.

That just pissed me off. MacGregor was right. We were stronger together.

We circled the building, and I peeped out from around the corner. When the coast was clear, the hunters having gone inside to look for us, or hell, perhaps to order food after assuming we’d ditched the car, we doubled back. Priscilla threw the baby into the back, while I snuck to the side of the hunters’ truck and rammed my knife into the rubber of a tire.

I grinned at the satisfying hiss of the air escaping and then strolled to my car and got inside it, giving the trackers the middle finger through the windshield when they finally noticed me and came running.

But they were too late. I sailed out of the parking lot, smug and well satisfied knowing they couldn’t follow, as they cursed and kicked their flat tire.

“Idiots,” I muttered. “Stupid, redneck idiots.”

Priscillia craned her head back over her shoulder, her ratty blond extensions falling around her face when she turned back to me. She clapped her hands together, the slap of her palms and her nasally voice grating through my ears.

“That was really smart.”

“I know,” I ground out.

She sighed and threw her hands up in the air, her chipped nail polish flashing in the bright sun. “What are you pissed off about now?”

I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. I couldn’t stand this woman. Not one thing about her. Her personality was as ratty as the rest of her. “Why did you comment about that being smart?’

Her eyebrows, too dark to match her hair, furrowed together. “What? I don’t know. It was smart. I was giving you a compliment. You’re mad about that?”

I said nothing. It pissed me off that she’d made the comment like she was surprised I’d done it.

It reminded me of the way my brother had always spoken to me. It never mattered what I did or how good my ideas were or how loyal I was to him. It was always met with a raised eyebrow or a condescending pat on the shoulder.

Like I was a good little boy who deserved a participation award for trying.

There’d been no condescending pat on the head when I’d shot him four times in front of everyone he knew.

There’d been no patronizing eyebrow when I’d married his woman, stepped over his dead body, and taken his heir.

The lack of respect his men had shown me sent rage through my blood. They were supposed to be my men. This was supposed to be my empire. Carlos was fucking useless. Just because he was older, didn’t mean he was more qualified. He hadn’t even been able to organize Luca’s death properly! No balls to kill his son himself, he’d made the deal to have it taken care of.

But I’d been the one with the balls to kill my brother and take his seat.

Luca didn’t get to sit there just because he was blood, when Carlos and I were the ones who had built it all.

I was the smart one. The one who had the good ideas.

And as soon as Luca was dead, I’d come back with my son, the true heir to the Guerra kingdom. The one I’d rule for the next eighteen years and well beyond if I had anything to say about it.

They’d see I was the brains all along. That our father might have never noticed me because I’d always been in Carlos’s shadow.

But everyone would see me now.

I turned off the highway, onto a dirt road, and followed MacGregor’s instructions until I stopped outside an old farmhouse with peeling paint, a few cows in the yard, and nothing much else as far as I could see. I opened the door and slid out, surveying it all with the disgust it deserved.