Concede (The Diamond Empire Book 1) by Kathy Coopmans (bts book recommendations .TXT) 📕

his eyes. It has me on pins and needles. Little tiny pricks everywhere. I’d think out of character for an agent too. But what the hell do I know since I don’t have much experience with the law.

For his sake, though, I hope those watching are more focused on what he has to say rather than the way he’s looking at me. Roan, the boss, worked with someone on his payroll to have this meeting wired directly to him.

Just another thing Agent Wozniak isn’t aware of, and if he keeps up with the curt, rude line of disrespect, he’ll find himself getting tortured to death.

Our empire’s men are just as ruthless to those they despise, as they are kind and gentle to those they love. The whole lot of them won’t and don’t care if he’s a clean-cut member of the law. The Diamonds give no second chances, accept no excuses, and the monsters inside them will bleed Wozniak dry.

They’ll erase him as if he never existed. His bones will rest at the bottom of The Hudson River, and no one will question who’s done it. Not that I’ll know who killed him. I just know they will.

Yet, if he dies, it matters to me. It matters so much it’s hard to keep the distress from showing on my face, and it makes no sense why I should care when the reason I’m sitting in an interrogation room with ugly blue-chipped painted walls in the first place has left my family in a pile of grief and despair. Head’s cut off and heart bleeding. I just can’t change the innate nature to kill someone just because you can.

I’ve always felt that way until a month ago. Now I’m unsure what to think, how to feel. Or maybe I’ve done lost my mind along with pieces of my heart.

A month ago, someone brutally murdered my loving mother, Deidre, my sister Danika, her husband David, and their eight-year-old son Steven. In my sister’s home on Christmas Eve, no less.

They lived in Jericho, which is about forty minutes outside of Manhattan. One of the safest suburbs surrounding the city. They chose to live there to find some normal for Steven.

The thing is, when you’re in the mafia, there’s no normal. There’s no place safe from an enemy. Not that they had any, but the Empire has plenty. It was a cruel and vicious message. I’m sure of it, and so is the rest of my family.

We just don’t know who or why?

Since, my thoughts, my nightmares have consisted of the copious amount of blood, the brain matter all over the hallway wall and carpet where David laid face down with half of his skull blown out. And my sweet nephew Steven appeared to be asleep, except he wasn’t. Someone suffocated him in his bed. His tiny windpipe crushed from the compression. His hands clinging on to a teddy bear given to him by my mother when he was born.

And my sister and mother, I can’t get the terror-filled way their eyes looked out of my head. The image was utterly terrifying.

I couldn’t get to them fast enough when I shoved Theo, my mother’s longtime driver who happened to be mine for the day, out of the way after he tried blocking me from going outside after I saw my sister and mother hanging from a tree in the back yard through the kitchen window.

Gutted and strung up like fallen tinsel.

I began screaming and crying and begging Theo to call Roan and not my father, Aidan. I couldn’t ask him to do that when I couldn’t do it myself. So, while he made the devastating call, I ran back into the house, grabbed a knife, a chair, and cut them down, and waited. I held my bloody bludgeoned sister and mother in my arms, rocking back and forth until Roan and my brother Dray dropped to their knees next to me.

The rest of the evening and the past month have me balancing on a jagged knife’s edge.

Agent Wozniak is so far off the mark regarding my wings too. However, if he thinks I’m an angel, he’d be wise to keep that word to himself. It’s a reminder of the man who has always done things to my mind and body I shouldn’t allow.

Seth Mitchell.

On the day we met, he wasn’t very friendly. He stared at me like a cobra, coiled and ready to strike.

I didn’t like how he looked at me, so I took off running to my room before he could hiss and wound me with his venom. I stayed in there cursing him until Mom made me come out and told me I was disrespecting our guests. I wanted to say to her I didn’t want to play with boys, but I knew not to test her or my dad.

After that, I’d made up my mind that there was no way I’d be friends with that boy, and ever since, we’ve been a pair of warriors with our swords drawn. Ready to fight and cut each other down.

And yet, I find he’s always been a wicked temptation too. A whole lot of rough—a sexy, sinful dream I’ve had more times in the two decades I’ve known him than I can count. The first time I made myself come was to his face and plenty of times after.

The night before, I slept with him, my best friend, Sienna, and I had a little too much to drink. Seth offered to take me home. Of course, I argued and said I’d call for a ride. He insisted, and I agreed to keep the peace. I must have passed out in his car because I don’t remember much after that.

I woke the next morning to find him sleeping on my couch. I stood there, drooling for minutes as I admired his too beautiful for words face before clearing my throat to make my presence known.

He jumped up like an angry lion and got up in