Page 1 of Kings & Corruption

Chapter1

Willa

Ishouldn’t have come home.

That’s what was going through my mind as I watched everyone milling around the reception venue. Some things never changed. It was pretty much the same crowd that had been at every wedding, baptism, and funeral since I was born: dark-haired men packing heat under their suit jackets while their overly made-up wives gossiped, holding champagne glasses carefully so they didn’t mess up their freshly manicured nails. The men were talking business — they were always talking business — but they were also watching the younger women in the crowd while they pretended like they weren’t.

Probably scoping out a round of new mistresses.

Ew.

I caught the bride watching me and forced a smile. She smiled back, but it wasn’t happiness I saw in my mother’s eyes.

It was relief.

I guess that’s what happened when your ex-husband informed to the Feds and you got a chance to redeem your name with the biggest Mafia don on the East Coast.

That would be Roberto Alinari, the man standing at my mom’s side. I had to admit, he looked handsome and elegant in a tuxedo, more like a trust fund billionaire than a Mob boss notorious for his brutality.

I suppressed a shiver when I realized he was staring right at me, regarding me coolly while pretending to engage in conversation with a couple I didn’t recognize.

“How are you holding up, Willa?”

The voice came from my shoulder, and I turned to find my best friend, Mara, standing next to me.

“Oh, you know,” I said, “my sister’s still missing, my disgraced mother just married the most infamous Mafia boss in the country, and thanks to my dad, I’m a social pariah, but otherwise, life’s just grand.”

“Oooookay,” Mara said. “Someone needs more champagne.” She plucked a glass from a passing tray carried by one of the uniformed waitstaff and handed it to me.

I drank greedily, even though I’d promised myself I was going to be responsible at the wedding. I’d done enough partying in the year I’d been traveling to last a lifetime.

What could I say? Everyone processed grief differently. My mom had barely been able to get out of bed when it became clear that my sister, Emma, was really missing, and I’d run for the nearest airport the second I’d turned eighteen.

I felt ashamed of it now. I probably shouldn’t have left my mom alone, even though she’d seemed more than happy to let Roberto Alinari help her pick up the pieces, but at the time, I’d been drowning in my own grief.

Grief and the deeply felt sense that something very bad had happened to my sister at Aventine University.

Running, leaving it all behind in a trail of jet fuel and far-flung beaches, had seemed like the best way to forget. It had worked too — until my mom’s engagement to Roberto Alinari had broken through my party-til-you-forget haze.

Mara scanned the crowd, her curly brown hair brushing against her shoulders, which were bare under her violet off-the-shoulder dress. She hadn’t changed at all in the year I’d been gone, and I could still see shades of the apple-cheeked kid she’d been when we became best friends in first grade.

She froze, her brown eyes lighting with interest. “On the plus side,” she said, “you now have the hottest stepbrother in town.”

I followed her line of sight to the guy standing against the wall, his murderous gaze trained on me.

“Gross,” I said. Antonio Alinari — otherwise known as Neo — might have been beautiful, but he was also the biggest dick in our extended crime family.

And not in a good way. At least, not that I knew of.

“You have to admit it’s true,” Mara teased. “I’m wet just watching him watch you.”

I scowled. “That’s all kinds of fucked up.”

I would never, and I did mean never, admit Neo was hot. Not out loud anyway. It was bad enough before our parents were married when he was just a garden-variety douchebag.

Now he was also my stepbrother.

Secretly, though? That was another story. In the privacy of my own screwed-up mind, I had to admit he was gorgeous, with dark hair that shone under the lights in the country club and a muscled physique that strained the seams of his tailored suit.

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