Dark Deception (Vampire Royals of New York #1) - Sarah Piper Page 0,40

her résumé. She was Charlotte fucking D’Amico, for chrissake. She’d learned how to crack a safe by the time she was fifteen, could spot a fake Dutch Master at a hundred yards, and had amassed more knowledge of art history than most PhDs and museum curators twice her age. Her father’s crew had watched her grow from a gangly kid into the strong, capable criminal she was today, but in Rudy’s presence, Charley would always feel like a silly little girl getting underfoot while the grownups planned their next big score.

Through a cool, gentle voice that belied the anger in his eyes, Rudy said, “Your last several outings have been less than informative.”

“How is that my fault? I can’t control what people do with their belongings before we get there.”

Rudy slammed his fist on the table, making her jump again. The people at the table behind them looked over.

Great. The last thing she wanted was another scene at Beyoglu. Just a ten-block walk from home, the Turkish café used to be one of her favorite lunch spots on the Upper East Side, but ever since Rudy had declared it their “usual” place, she hadn’t been back on her own. He’d embarrassed her in front of the staff too many times for that. Now, whenever they arrived together, the hostess sat them outside.

“I’d advise you not to take that adolescent tone with me,” he said, which Charley found ironic, considering he’d never stopped treating her like a kid. Still, she knew she was on dangerous ground.

Pulling off a successful heist wasn’t like the movies, where everything came together seamlessly over a pack of cigarettes, a few cartons of Chinese takeout, and a music montage. It took weeks—even months—of careful, tedious preparation involving blueprints and public records searches, background checks on the property owners, surveillance, onsite intelligence gathering, payoffs of household employees and security technicians, identity theft, document forging, route planning, in-case-of-injury planning, contingency planning, and yes—lots and lots of Chinese takeout.

Lately, Rudy had been relegating Charley to mind-numbing fact-finding missions at private auctions and events, bringing her in later, cutting her out earlier, sharing fewer secrets. For months, her efforts had turned up jack shit; she figured that’s why he’d been giving her the crap assignments. A punishment, a warning, call it what you want.

But lately she was starting to wonder if he believed she was involved in the infamous double-cross.

If he believed betrayal was genetic, passed down from father to daughter.

Charley sipped her water, trying to cool the rage boiling up inside her.

Rudy was pissed about her bad luck streak? Fine. But Charley was pissed too. Pissed that her parents had brought her into this world with no intention of helping her become a legitimate, tax-paying adult. Pissed that no one seemed to know what had truly happened to her father. Pissed that no one had bothered to find out.

It was her father’s inside guy, Rudy had always believed. A man none of them had ever met. Her dad had vouched for him, bringing him in at the last minute on a big job in the West Village. The mark was an extensive art collector, the cache valued at $70 million on the street.

Posing as contractors, her dad and the guy went in alone, with Rudy and the others in strategic positions throughout the city. Charley was at Rudy’s apartment, coordinating the whole thing through an elaborate system of coded text messages they’d worked out in advance.

The men had made it in, made it out, made it to the Holland Tunnel.

But that was the last anyone had heard from them. They never checked in again, never showed at the rally point in Jersey.

Hours turned into days. Charley and Rudy were frantic, the rest of the crew looking to them for answers they just didn’t have.

A week after the heist, her dad finally turned up—murdered and left in an abandoned tire warehouse in Trenton.

The art he’d boosted—along with the inside guy—had vanished.

There was no evidence at the scene, nothing to tie him to the theft. The police said it was a gang hit—gunshot to the head, body stashed, wrong-place-wrong-time kind of thing. But that was bullshit. People like Charley’s father never died from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Everything was calculated and planned, nothing left to chance.

Rudy was out of his mind with grief over the loss of his brother, but he and the others were convinced it was an inside job—the worst kind. They believed Charley’s