One-Eyed Royals Read online

  Riptide Publishing

  PO Box 1537

  Burnsville, NC 28714

  www.riptidepublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All person(s) depicted on the cover are model(s) used for illustrative purposes only.

  One-Eyed Royals

  Copyright © 2018 by Cordelia Kingsbridge

  Cover art: Garrett Leigh, blackjazzdesign.com

  Editors: Rachel Haimowitz, Veronica Vega

  Layout: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com/design.htm

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Riptide Publishing at the mailing address above, at Riptidepublishing.com, or at [email protected].

  ISBN: 978-1-62649-639-2

  First edition

  September, 2018

  Also available in paperback:

  ISBN: 978-1-62649-640-8

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  Shattered by their devastating breakup, Detective Levi Abrams and PI Dominic Russo find themselves at war right when they need each other most. While Dominic is trapped in a vicious cycle of addiction, Levi despairs of ever catching the Seven of Spades. The ruthless vigilante’s body count continues to climb, and it’s all Levi can do to keep up with the carnage.

  When Levi’s and Dominic’s paths keep crossing in the investigation of a kidnapping ring with a taste for mutilation, it feels like history repeating itself. Thrown together by fate once again, they reluctantly join forces in their hunt for the mastermind behind the abductions.

  But the Seven of Spades hates sharing the spotlight, and they have an ace in the hole: a new batch of victims with a special connection to Levi. Their murders send shockwaves through Las Vegas and change the rules of the game forever.

  The Seven of Spades has upped the ante. If Levi and Dominic don’t play their cards right, they’ll end up losing everything.

  J.J.Q.T.C.P.

  Cousins by blood, siblings in spirit.

  About One-Eyed Royals

  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

  Dear Reader

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Cordelia Kingsbridge

  About the Author

  More like this

  Dominic groaned as sirens split the air and flickering red and blue lights filled his rearview mirror. He kept driving for a few seconds, hoping the cop would pass him, but no such luck.

  He pulled his pickup truck over to the side of the road and glanced at the dashboard clock. Goddamn it, he was going to be late. Again.

  The cop who approached his car was a young white woman whose blonde hair was braided beneath her cap. Dominic adjusted his jacket to better hide the shape of his shoulder holster—he had a concealed carry permit, but there was no point in taking risks around cops. Then he put his hands back on the wheel and gave her the most disarming smile he could muster, which was no easy feat these days.

  “Is there a problem, Officer?” He knew for a fact he hadn’t been speeding.

  “Your right taillight is broken, sir.”

  Dominic’s hands tightened on the wheel so hard it creaked beneath his grip. The cop noticed and raised her eyebrows.

  “I’m aware of that,” he said, struggling to keep his voice even. “This is the third time I’ve been pulled over for that light in the past five days.”

  “Then you should probably get it fixed.”

  “I will. It’s just that money is a little tight right now.”

  She gave him an unimpressed look. “Money’s going to be tighter if someone rear-ends you because they can’t see you’re hitting your brakes.”

  “Is a broken taillight really the best use of your time?” he said despite his better judgment. “How about the serial killer that’s been stalking the city for almost a year? Or the neo-Nazis running wild around the Valley?”

  He nodded to the building nearest them. The symbol of Utopia—a white supremacist group swiftly escalating in scope from street gang to outright homegrown militia—was graffitied in stark black paint on the wall.

  The cop turned her face aside, and he could see he’d hit a nerve. As he studied her in profile, he realized something else.

  “We’ve met before,” he said, taken aback. “You’re that rookie cop Levi Abrams liked—Kelly Marin, right? The one who got busted for leaking the Seven of Spades story to the Review-Journal last April?”

  She blinked, retreating a step. He seized on her moment of hesitation.

  “Levi put you up to this, didn’t he? He asked you to harass me.”

  “The LVMPD doesn’t harass civilians, sir,” she said stiffly.

  Dominic snorted. “So it’s just a coincidence that I’ve gotten more tickets and warnings from cops in the three months and change since Levi and I broke up than I’d gotten in my entire life? One of your buddies gave me a ticket for jaywalking last month, in the middle of a crowd of people doing the exact same thing. You can’t expect me to believe Levi didn’t put out some kind of covert BOLO, asking you all to keep your eyes peeled for me and my truck and find any possible reason to hassle me.”

  Kelly didn’t answer, but he didn’t need her to. When their relationship had gone down in flames in November, Levi had promised to make Dominic’s life a living hell—and he’d been living up to that promise. Not only was Dominic hounded by cops every time he turned around, he was pretty sure it was Levi who’d broken his taillight. He’d left his apartment one morning to find the light deliberately smashed, and no further damage to his truck or the other cars in the lot.

  “Look, are you gonna give me a ticket or not?” Dominic asked. “I’m running late for a work meeting.”

  The truth was, he would have been late even if Kelly hadn’t pulled him over. But that was Levi’s fault too. Since their breakup, the bastard had been steadily blackballing Dominic from every casino one by one. When Dominic had resorted to not-so-legal venues, each operation had been mysteriously raided by the LVMPD the v
ery next day.

  In a matter of weeks, Dominic had found himself persona non grata at almost every gambling establishment in and around Las Vegas. The only place Levi’s influence didn’t extend was the Railroad Pass in Henderson, a half-hour drive from the Strip. So unless Dominic was content with gambling online—which just wasn’t the same—he had to haul his ass all the way out there, and he always underestimated traffic driving back into the city.

  “I’ll let you off with a warning this time,” said Kelly. “Make sure you get that taillight fixed.”

  “Of course.”

  Dominic turned the key in the ignition. He knew Levi believed he was doing the right thing. This wasn’t like the other times Dominic’s gambling had gotten out of control, though. He’d learned from his past mistakes; he had a handle on the gambling now. It wasn’t a problem, but Levi was too bullheaded to accept that.

  “By the way,” he said to Kelly as she backed away from the truck, “you might want to remind Detective Abrams that he left his phone charger at my place when I fucked him last Saturday.”

  Dominic slid smoothly back into traffic, leaving her gaping behind him.

  “This is a new low for us,” Levi said as he took in the Seven of Spades’s latest crime scene.

  “It doesn’t reflect well on building security, that’s for sure,” said Martine.

  They were standing in the chambers of District Court Judge Cameron Harding, who had been murdered in the city’s Regional Justice Center—a building full of people, cameras, and armed guards—in the middle of the afternoon, with nobody noticing anything amiss until hours later.

  Like the vast majority of the Seven of Spades’s now twenty-two victims, Harding had been drugged into paralysis before his throat was slit from behind. A half-empty coffee cup on his desk was the most likely source of the killer’s drug of choice, ketamine, though they’d have to test it to confirm.

  Harding himself was seated at his desk, but it was the objects on the surface that caught and held Levi’s attention. Two statuettes of Lady Justice, sword in one hand and scales in the other, had been set up on either side, angled to face Harding. Little craft eyes had been glued over their blindfolds so it looked like they were staring at him.

  At the top edge of the desk was a bronzed model of the scales of justice, with a seven of spades card carefully balanced on each scale. Finally, a sheet of paper sat in the center of the desk, right in front of Harding, with one of his bloody hands resting on top of it. Levi could tell from the displacement of the blood around Harding’s chest and neck that the killer had pressed Harding’s hand to his own throat wound before laying it atop the paper.

  When Levi and Martine stood side by side, he had to look down to meet her eyes—she was a petite woman, though her commanding presence effortlessly filled a room. “You know anything about this guy?”

  “Nope.”

  Steering clear of the crime scene photographer, Levi circled the desk with his gloved hands in his pockets. The CSIs were still working the room and the coroner investigator hadn’t arrived yet, so it was even more important that he not disturb anything.

  By leaning over Harding’s shoulder, Levi was just able to make out the words at the top of the blood-stained piece of paper beneath the man’s hand.

  “It’s the oath of office Clark County district judges take,” he said to Martine.

  She snorted. “The Seven of Spades is so extra.”

  He shot her a bewildered look.

  “That’s Mikayla’s assessment,” she said, referring to one of her teenage daughters.

  Mikayla wasn’t wrong. The Seven of Spades styled themselves a vigilante, targeting only betrayers of trust—people who had committed some form of treachery and gotten away with it. The killer took particular delight in staging the scenes to emphasize the victims’ guilt.

  The setting and details of Harding’s murder sent a clear message. Levi just didn’t know how Harding had violated his oath as a judge; he’d never met the man and wasn’t familiar with his career.

  Martine came around the other side of the desk, studying Harding’s body. “At least the killer is still sticking with their usual MO. No signs of struggle or violence.”

  Levi nodded. The Seven of Spades—who was quickly racking up one of the most prolific, uninterrupted strings of serial murders in modern history—had a distinct killing style. They were able to appear trustworthy enough to incapacitate their victims with drugged beverages without raising any alarms, then administered a single passionless knife stroke to the throat.

  The Seven of Spades had only broken from that MO three times. They had once hired a sniper to kill a man on the steps of this very building, in retaliation for that man trying to frame them for his wife’s murder. On another occasion, they had slaughtered five human traffickers at the same time, then flown into a rage and mutilated the bodies postmortem. And once—only once—they had killed a single victim without bothering to take him unawares, instead subduing him with a stun gun and a forceful injection of ketamine.

  Afterward, the Seven of Spades had confessed to Levi that they’d enjoyed using such active violence, and there had been concern for a while that the killer would become more aggressive. But each of the murders since then had been faithful to the original MO. The only thing that varied was the elaborate staging.

  Levi turned to the responding officer, who was hovering a few feet away. “This building is covered in cameras. How did the killer manage to slip in and out without drawing any attention?”

  “The head of security already looked into that,” the officer said. “The building’s entire system was hacked and put on a sophisticated loop that nobody noticed. They haven’t even been able to fix it yet—they had to call in specialists.”

  “Carmen,” Martine muttered.

  Levi closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Not long after their debut, the Seven of Spades had cultivated a mole in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department—Carmen Rivera, a brilliant young technical specialist. She’d been arrested a few months ago when Levi and Martine had discovered her betrayal, but she’d escaped within days thanks to the street gang Los Avispones, another ally of the Seven of Spades. Wherever she was now, her assistance continued to provide the killer access and information they wouldn’t have been able to obtain on their own.

  “Okay, we need to—”

  “Levi Abrams!” snapped an ice-cold voice.

  He winced before he even turned around.

  Deputy District Attorney Leila Rashid was standing on the other side of the crime scene tape strung across the office doorway, her arms crossed. As always, her black hair was pulled into a fuss-free ponytail, and her simple pantsuit flattered the hard, lean lines of her athletic body. She crooked her index finger at him, gesturing for him to come over.

  Despite his irritation at being summoned like a dog, Levi walked up to the tape. Martine accompanied him, a curious look on her face.

  “Did you maybe forget to do something today?” Leila said, laying the sarcasm on so thick it would’ve crushed a lesser man’s spirit.

  “For God’s sake, Leila, a city judge has been murdered—”

  “Cameron Harding?” She peered past him at the body, then waved a dismissive hand, apparently unfazed by the grisly scene. “Everyone hated that douchebag; his sentencing was blatantly racist. I’m only surprised the Seven of Spades didn’t get to him sooner.” Pointing a finger at Levi, she said, “You were supposed to be in my office half an hour ago for trial prep.”

  He opened his mouth, but she barreled on without giving him a chance to speak.

  “Jason Wilson’s new defense attorney is a total slimeball. You cannot go into that cross-examination unprepared, especially with your anger-management problems.”

  “Jason Wilson?” Martine said, while Levi bristled all over. “Isn’t he one of the Utopia gangbangers who was arrested for the assault on Sergei Volkov’s underground casino? I thought those trials were supposed to st
art a couple weeks ago.”

  “Don’t even get me started,” said Leila. “All the Utopia assholes we have in jail or on bond keep getting their trials postponed because their legal teams are in constant flux, and the court schedule’s a mess. Their attorneys keep quitting.”

  Martine hummed thoughtfully. “I think I read something about that. They’ve been getting death threats, right?”

  “Yeah. Even worse, as far as lawyers are concerned, big-ticket clients have been threatening to pull out of their firms if they represent Nazis.”

  “You’re a lawyer,” Levi said.

  “I’m a prosecutor. There’s a difference. And don’t try to change the subject.” Leila stepped closer to the tape. “You didn’t even call to tell me you weren’t showing up, nor did you answer any of my calls or texts, which meant I had to waste time tracking you down.”

  Levi suppressed a cringe. That had been shitty of him, though he had an explanation. “I know, I’m sorry. My phone died hours ago. I lost my charger and haven’t had time to buy a new one.”

  If it had only been Leila, that might’ve worked. But Martine knew him too well. She was his partner, his best friend, a sister far superior to his biological one, and she wasn’t so easily fooled.

  She narrowed her eyes. “You don’t lose things. Which means you know where your charger is but you can’t get it for some reason . . .” Her eyes went wide. “Oh my God, you left it at Dominic’s apartment!”

  “You’re the worst,” said Levi.

  “You slept with him again?” Leila said, loudly enough to catch the attention of the uniformed officer standing guard at the doorway.

  Levi glowered at the man until he hastily backed out of earshot. “I didn’t plan on it! It just happened. We ran into each other at the grocery store—”

  “You don’t live anywhere near each other—”

  “And one thing led to another,” he continued, steadfastly ignoring that comment. “I thought . . . Well, it doesn’t matter what I thought. I was wrong.”

  This wasn’t the first time he’d found himself in this predicament. He and Dominic would cross paths—and all right, sometimes it was because he’d engineered the circumstances and sometimes because Dominic had. They’d start talking, and if they made it through the first five minutes without fighting, things would start feeling normal again. Dominic would seem like the same charming, thoughtful, easygoing man Levi had fallen in love with, Levi would believe there was hope for their relationship after all, and they’d end up in bed.