Rouge: Act 1 – Scene 1

Three weeks ago

Kian

Thrusting deep inside her ignites an all-consuming fire underneath my skin and I have to dig my fingers into her thighs to resist collapsing from pleasure. Her loose, strawberry-blonde curls spill over my pillow as she gazes up at me through sky-blue eyes. I’ve only ever seen them on a screen, but they sparkle in person.

This isn’t real. It feels too good to be real.

Her moans fuel me to shove reality away. She’s rightfully mine and knowing I’ve finally captured her has blood, adrenaline, and ecstasy surging through my veins, pumping into my cock. One more thrust and I’ll secure a McKennon heir—

A gentle buzz vibrates next to my head, wrecking the happy ending I’ll likely never get from the woman of my dreams. The soft noise blares in my ears thanks to my splitting headache.

Last night I got lost in my frustration and stayed out way too late with my two best friends. Merek dipped out early, naturally. He treats his job as head of McKennon security seriously, which means the lad works twenty-four seven. But Tolie thrives in the nightlife. He knows the Vegas underworld almost better than I do thanks to the many jobs he’s secured through O’Shea Entertainment, Las Vegas’s largest employer, and going out with him is always a fecking adventure.

He and his castmates partied all night as a “pregame” for Halloween this weekend. After I made sure Tolie wasn’t going to try to fuck one of the Greek statues again, I dragged him back with the rest of his friends to Rouge, the Las Vegas burlesque and male revue club where they dance. I crashed in his dressing room while they kept the debauchery going.

Thank feck Tolie has a rule against sleeping with castmates in his own dressing room bed or I’d have hauled my arse back to my suite. Then again, maybe I should’ve. I didn’t drink, but the pounding bass that blared through the walls until six am made me feel like I did.

The night before the cast’s Devil’s Night performance was supposed to be easygoing, and it was by their standards. But I should’ve left as soon as they broke out the absinthe. Now, I’m still in my black button-down and slacks, reeking of cigarettes I didn’t smoke and booze I didn’t drink and suffering a migraine-like hangover I didn’t even get to earn.

My mobile rumbles against wood and I blindly slap the bedside table until the aggravating device tingles underneath my hand. As I grab it, the folded playing card underneath it drifts to the ground.

I swipe the screen and press it to my ear without even bothering to open my eyes. If it’s quiet here, it’s too early in the day, giving away who’s on my caller ID. None of my direct business contacts are up in the daytime. Only him.

“Dad, you’re not supposed to call before noon.” My voice sounds like I’ve been chewing rocks, and my throat doesn’t feel much better.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Kian. It’s 12:01, and this is bloody important. You’re lucky I followed your stupid rule. You didn’t break yours last night, did you?”

I grit my teeth, wanting to snap back, but the note of concern in his question has me biting my tongue. Out of habit, my fingers gravitate to the poker chip-sized coin in my pocket and I trace the raised design as I answer him.

“Of course not. Nuns drink more than I did last night.”

“Good, because this party-boy facade has gone on too long. Kian… it’s time to wake up.”

My heart stutters in my chest as my exhausted mind tries to keep up. The adrenaline I felt in my delicious dream is actually thrumming through my veins now, helping me ignore the pain in my head.

“Is this about the Red Camellia?”

“It is. I confirmed the details at poker last night while you were off playing the part. I need you to ruin the Red Camellia.”

My sleepy eyes finally snap open at the command I’ve been dying to follow for three years.

As soon as the last word is out of his mouth, I’m already putting my father on speaker so I can text Tolie at the same time. He’s a crucial part to this crazy plan he helped me concoct. I could go try to find him in the cast’s big rec room where I left him during the wee hours of the morning, but I’m not in the mood to see postcoital naked strangers right now.

I’m sure he’s half-asleep, but he answers me almost immediately, albeit with typos.

The excessive emojis following one of Tolie’s many signature words make me snort, but my father’s phrasing finally registers and my brow furrows.

“…ruin the Red Camellia.”

As much as I want to object, the words fall from my lips out of habit.

“How do you want it done?”

I always ask the same question when it comes to jobs for the Garde, the secret society my family pledges our loyalty to. I’m a low-ranking card to these men, even though the McKennons were once poised to take the throne.

It was the Keeper, Charlie fecking O’Shea, who ruined us.

I was supposed to marry his daughter, Lacey O’Shea, according to the arranged marriage contract our fathers entered into years ago. My father and I thought O’Shea was one of the few good men left in the Garde, but after he withdrew that contract without explanation, he made me the black sheep of our society and he became my enemy number one. The fact that he’s currently in jail and my family is the one being ostracized shows everything that’s wrong with this organization.

Families have to buy into this society and once they join, their assets are tied up with the organization. We receive half of our inheritance after our parents die and we’re only eligible for the rest once we get married to another Garde heir and have a child of our own. If we never do, our remaining fortunes get locked in with the Garde and distributed to the other families. It’s how the founders ensure loyalty, but their rules have fecked me over and they’ve lost mine.

I’ve made my own connections, money, and business dealings without the Garde’s help, but none of it matters. Since my father is still living, I don’t report the wealth I’ve made independently from the Garde, so they think I’m penniless. When the Keeper inexplicably deemed me unworthy, many in our society stopped doing business with McKennons, rendering me powerless in their eyes, too. Now, no Garde father will ever consider letting his daughter marry me. Not that I want their women.

I want mine.

“I could give feck all how it’s done.” My father’s Irish accent thickens with every angry word. “From the wee bit we know about his decision, his daughter could’ve been the one to put him up to all this. Kill the girl and dump her in Lake Mead if you have to, or fuck her and ruin her in a way that no one else will want the precious O’Shea flower.”

“Mam wouldn’t have liked you talking that way,” I tsk playfully, trying to calm him down. My mother passed away from a heart attack nearly four years ago. I can’t have my father do the same.

She was the one who championed Lacey as my future bride, making the argument that the two most powerful families should unite to prevent divisiveness within the society. I’ve never met a member of the O’Shea family in person. Having all of us together in one room—especially the heirs—could lead to a brutal coup or mutually assured destruction. But Mam met Lacey when she was just eighteen, and after that one meeting, my mother was convinced we were a perfect match.

“Bah, she knew my flaws and loved me anyway. The woman was a saint. Your mam would’ve been able to fix all of this if she’d been alive when Charlie breached the contract.”

She might’ve had a sixth sense about who her son should end up with, but I don’t know how my mother, a woman, could’ve convinced the Keeper of anything. The Garde values a woman’s beauty and nothing else about her. The lack of respect for my late mother in the role she played in the matchmaking has only made my father more furious about the betrayal.

But the McKennons have been clawing our way back to the top. We finally have the support to take back what’s ours and the timing couldn’t be more perfect.

“Charlie O’Shea might be my nemesis, son, but he can’t stab our whole family in the back and expect us not to retaliate. This is your revenge more than mine. You deserve to do with his prized possession as you see fit. The Red Camellia was supposed to be yours, after all.”

“You’re goddamn right about that,” I mutter under my breath.

I sit up and grab the folded queen of diamonds card from the floor as I open my social media app. Scrolling under my fake profile, the app proves it knows me better than I know myself, and Lacey O’Shea magically appears on my feed.

Her sky-blue eyes are dull, completely devoid of any intelligent thought or passion. Nothing like the ones in my dream. There’s no smile as she stands beside her best friend, Roxana Muñoz, in a pose that thousands of other socialite influencers have adopted in an effort to look effortless. It makes me sick to see, and I’d almost believe the facade… if I wasn’t also keeping track of her in Roxana’s less curated profile.

Roxana has perfected the art of oversharing and constantly takes snapshots of her chaotic life. I scroll the feed to quickly find one of those posts as I try to stay engaged in the conversation.

“How did you confirm my tip? My contact wouldn’t give me a definite answer on the timeline this week. I think they’re skittish about what I’ll do. Everyone in town knows Monroe is here for his wedding this weekend, thanks to his big-arse mouth—”

“He’s ‘the Baron’ now, you know,” my father reminds me with a harsh chuckle. “Monroe’s father might’ve died from ‘mysterious’ causes, but it still made him the head of the household. According to our rules, that makes Monroe the head of his name.”

“‘Mysterious circumstances,’ my arse. The only thing mysterious about the old Baron’s death is that his son didn’t off him sooner.”

“I have no doubt he played a part. There was little ‘old’ about the man. He was fit as a fiddle. The coroner wanted an autopsy, but of course the Keeper couldn’t allow that. We can’t implicate another Garde member. Deaths are dealt with in-house.”

“And deaths within families aren’t dealt with at all. Just like the old days.”

The Garde tried to distinguish itself from the Mafia that all but ruled the United States at one time. Instead of overtly entering lives of crime to slake their lust for money, they traded secrets, using them to gain positions in government and influential companies across the country.

It only took two generations of moral compromises for greed to dig its roots. The society brags about higher-minded ideals, but they’ve perverted them: twisting truth, flaunting the facade of beauty, granting the illusion of freedom, and stealing all the power they can for themselves. These days, the Garde is just like its Mafia counterpart. But because the Garde has infiltrated the government, they’re able to use their authority to avoid getting caught.

Now the organization has a list of enemies longer than its membership and one of our own is being prosecuted for the first time. We should be sticking together more than ever before, but they’ve turned their backs on my family.

“It’s the way it is. The Garde has rules, and he’s the head of his family—”

“The man’s a snake, Dad. I’d rather cut off his head than give him the distinction.”

“You’ll have to play nice a wee bit longer if you want to win this, Kian.”

Fecking hell. He’s right. But I refuse to acknowledge it with anything more than a grunt as I tug on my hair in frustration.

There’s a long-suffering sigh before he responds, “Well, the Baron is indeed in town for his wedding, so I convinced an old Garde friend still loyal to the McKennons to invite him to one of our standing poker games. Of course the weasel jumped at the opportunity to schmooze.”

“You’re terrible at poker,” I groan. “You didn’t lose this time, did you? Last time you lost to a Baron—”

“I didn’t lose!” He gives a wry chuckle. “Believe me, I’ve learned my lesson. I don’t play for anything but money now.”

I snort and shake my head, resisting the urge to tease him further about betting the deed to a hotel on the Las Vegas Strip in a game several years ago with Monroe Baron Sr. Losing the property wasn’t a devastating blow. There are still plenty of businesses in Vegas with our name behind them, not to mention my own private holdings, so it’s funny as hell now.

“You should’ve invited me. Maybe I could’ve won the hotel back.”

“We don’t need that hotel. One is enough. And you know I couldn’t do that. I wasn’t planning on playing, regardless. Just observe. Fortunately, the arrogant fool was so hammered by the time I got there that I was just another face to the bastard.”

“Loose lips with the liquor, is he? The Baron should be a teetotaler, like his father before him if he knows what’s good for him. They’ve never been able to hold their liquor.”

“He thinks he’s impervious to everything, including getting rat-arsed. I made sure he never had an empty glass. After a while, all I had to do to find answers was listen to him bitch and moan.”

My father boasting about tricking the cocky son of a bitch should make my chest swell with poetic justice, but breath escapes my lungs as I study Roxana’s most recent post.

With the other picture, Lacey’s practiced, emotionless expression was front and center. But as always, without an audience, her performance ends.

In this photo, Roxana sticks her tongue out with her middle finger raised beside her cheek, her face so close that I can see where the filter has erased the pores from her deep-golden skin. She almost takes up the whole screen, but in the background, there’s Lacey, enthralled with two street performers dancing on the Vegas Strip sidewalk.

Her smile is perfection, so pure I can feel the delight that’s making her smooth ivory skin glow. She’s untucking a loose strawberry-blonde curl from behind her delicate ear, as if she’s trying to create a curtain of separation between her and the camera so she can enjoy the show in peace. The move inadvertently flashes the huge sparkling rock on her left ring finger.

Fuck.

I shake my head and want to exit the app, but I’m unable to peel my eyes away from Monroe Baron’s diamond, flashing like a hazard light at me.

“Monroe bitching and moaning?” I scoff. “What does that gobshite have to complain about? Charlie O’Shea’s daughter is basically the future queen of the Garde. Once Monroe marries her, he’s next in line to be Keeper. Then when he runs for office, he’ll already have access to every single secret the Garde has and he’ll no doubt use that advantage to secure the American presidency one day.”

And Lacey will be his forever.

That near-constant, gnawing ache in my chest flares up again. It’s gotten worse as the years have passed. Waiting in the shadows for the right time to get my revenge has nearly killed me.

My father insisted I grow up in Ireland away from all the Garde’s backstabbing, but my family’s crime connections got me mixed up in the fighting circuit. It was brutal—I’ve had to set my own broken nose too many times—but those skills have proven to be useful time and time again in helping me blow off steam and performing the odd jobs my father has me do to protect our business. They’ve been my only saving grace for the past year, but I’ll never truly rest until I have my revenge.

I fiddle with the queen card in my hand and my eyes widen as an idea sparks. My father won’t like it. As much of a softy as Finneas McKennon is with his family, McKennon revenge against everyone else is notoriously biblical: steal, kill, destroy. Anything less would be a failure in his eyes.

This all-or-nothing strategy has made him an excellent businessman but a terrible poker player. He’s good at assessing what’s in front of him but awful at reading the players around him, and he’s notorious for placing big bets on bad cards.

But what if stealing the queen of diamonds is all I need to gain a winning hand?

“The Baron doesn’t want Miss O’Shea to go to her bachelorette party at Rouge tonight, especially since she’s refusing to have his bodyguards in tow. Seems that she feels safe in her hometown,” my father continues, giving me the information I need about her security presence—or lack thereof. “He also believes going to the revue is a slap in the face the night before their real wedding.”

“So they are supposed to get married tomorrow? My contact couldn’t confirm.”

“According to the man himself, they’re meeting at the courthouse tomorrow morning to get the legal part over. He even said she better not embarrass him tonight at the ‘sinful’ show or he might call the whole thing off.”

“Let me guess, he was a good little boy and went home all by himself after the poker game?” I sneer, knowing good and bloody well that Monroe has a different mistress every day of the week.

“Of course not. He left while necking two of the waitresses from the casino floor. Barons don’t have McKennon loyalty. That’s what’s wrong with the Garde. Arranged marriages don’t have to be solely business contracts, even less so if it’s a good match. Despite our families’ differences, you and Lacey were a good match before she became a daft socialite. Your mam was never wrong. Blackmail and financial power may be the most important things to the organization, but nothing gives a man more strength than having someone he loves by his side. Just look at your mam and me. Once I set my sights on her, there was no one else. Garde men will never understand that, though. It’ll take someone like you as the Keeper to change everything for the better and O’Shea made sure that could never happen.”

“Careful, Dad. Don’t let old age make you get all fecking romantic.”

“Oh, trust me, there’s still enough ruthlessness in me to get the job done. Speaking of which, Miss O’Shea maintaining her pure image wasn’t the only grievance the Baron had. He’s convinced she’ll fall into trouble at Rouge.”

“It’s her own family’s establishment. What trouble could she get into?”

“Ironic you’d ask. Hopefully your ruse tonight promises just that. You have to ruin the O’Shea name, Kian. If you do it right, the Garde may even wise up and realize you’re the leader we need to overthrow that spineless traitor while he’s in his jail cell. I’m counting on you and so are all the families who supported us when we were shunned. It’s the only way to get back at the Baron and the O’Shea all at once. Ruin them and never look back.”

My thumb grazes over Lacey’s face on the screen, covering up the diamond ring, and a slow smile stretches across my lips.

“I plan on it.”