CHAPTER 1
COLE
I lift my wrist and look at the time. Fuck.
I’ve got ten minutes to make it to my father’s house, and we’re sitting in traffic. My father is not someone you make wait.
I ask my driver, “What’s the holdup, Stone?”
He leans his head out the driver's side window, trying to see down the road. “Shit, I dunno. Maybe someone's having car trouble.”
I look out the window, and the worry about meeting my father disappears when I see what’s happening on the sidewalk in front of the animal shelter.
A man is shoving his finger in a woman’s face, and I can hear his raised voice even through the glass, but I can’t make out what he’s saying.
“I’ll be back. Stay here,” I tell Stone.
“Cole… where… what?”
I don’t care that we’re sitting on Main Street or that I have somewhere to be. I’m a Kingston, and even though I do a lot of wrong things, I will never stand by when a woman is being verbally or physically attacked. I ignore Stone as I get out of the car and walk over to where the man is still shouting.
As soon as I reach the two of them, I put my hands at the waist of the woman, lift her up, and place her behind me, and I’m shaken as I look into the blue eyes of the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
She’s mad. Fighting mad. I want to soothe her, but first I need to deal with the Neanderthal. I turn back to him. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
The man pounds himself in the chest. “Me? There’s nothing wrong with me! It’s that little bi?—”
He doesn’t get the word out. I punch him in the throat, and he falls to the ground with his hands around his neck, trying to catch his breath.
“Cole—” Stone says.
I raise my hand to stop him. I don’t need a lecture right now. I should have known he wouldn’t stay in the car. He may be my driver, but he works for my father, the mafia king of the South, Robert Kingston. And if something happened to me on Stone’s watch, we all know how that would turn out.
Ignoring Stone, I approach the woman. “Are you okay?”
For the first time, I notice she’s holding a white cat protectively against her chest. She blinks up at me. “Yes…yes, I’m okay.”
“What is going on here?” I ask her and instantly regret the harshness of my voice. I fist my tattooed hands at my side to stop from reaching for her.
She takes a step back. “I’m just trying to?—”
She stops suddenly and shakes her head, wiping the tears from her eyes. “This is my fault. He owns the building and can do what he wants. I’m just trying to save the animals.”
I put my hands on her shoulders, and she tenses. I hate that I have that effect on her. Yeah, most people fear me and my family, but I don't want that from her.
My first instinct is to lift my hands off her, but I don’t. “Talk to me. Tell me how to fix it.”
She holds the cat tighter, and I realize I need to go about this another way. I release my hold on her and instead run my hand lightly across the cat’s head and down its body. “What’s her name?”
“His. I mean, Leo is a boy.”
The cat starts to purr loudly and lifts his head to look at me. It’s as if he’s judging me, trying to figure me out, and I’m not sure which of us is more surprised, me or her, when Leo stretches and climbs into my arms.
I hold the cat to me, and it curls into a ball against my chest. I can feel the change in the woman standing before me. She steps toward me. “Leo likes you.”
I look into her blue eyes and demand, “Tell me your name.”
She tilts her chin. “Luna.”
