message, and people started looking for suspects, no one would be able to describe anything about her except the color red.
But for now, she knew people were staring. Which is why she had to play the role of the haughty attention-seeker, wearing red and acting mysterious just to seem alluring. No one could accuse her of being an actual threat.
Even though she was.
Finally, after wandering through the halls and into the lushly landscaped grounds beyond the house, she came across Alfred watching as Tinsley greeted her guests. She had a large crowd gathered around her, and as the youngest of the Constantine family, this was her introduction to the elite and society’s finest.
But Ginger couldn’t care less about the girl. Her sights were set on her target.
Alfred Carino was instantly recognizable. Tall and slender, with just a slip of a mask over his beady eyes, Alfred looked menacing despite his wiry frame. Even if you didn’t know he was the head of one of the most powerful crime syndicates, you would feel it off him, smell it off him. He had all the money in the world and yet preferred to earn more of it in the most despicable ways.
Ginger hated the fact that the only way she’d be able to deliver her grandmother’s message was to get close enough to Alfred to seduce him. She might even have to go through with the whole thing. She hoped to god she could get him the message before that happened, because the thought of having to touch that bony, pale body anywhere made her stomach turn.
Still, this was her job.
Doing what makes other people uncomfortable, it’s what you were born to do, her grandmother would tell her. It runs in the family. You can’t hide from your destiny.
Sometimes Ginger wondered if her destiny was to end up just like her grandmother. Or worse, her mother, who had died when Ginger was only eight years old. Murdered by a lover, who turned out to be a traitor. It wasn’t her father, however, he up and left long before that.
At least Ginger knew she’d never fall in love, would never lose her senses in that way. And aside from the occasional one-night stand with some random stranger at the bar, something needy and harmless, with a man that just wanted to get lucky, she didn’t want for much else.
What man would ever understand her true self, anyway?
What man would ever look at her, the real her, and think she had something to offer? No man. They’d all want to lock her away.
Ginger sighed and steeled herself, straightening her back. She had to focus. Right now wasn’t the time to get lost in her own pity party when she was in the throes of a much more dangerous one.
She eyed the guards around Alfred. There were four of them, all roughly the same height and build, and had it not been for their different masks, they’d be impossible to tell apart.
But while most of them had different colored masks on similar to the one that Ginger was wearing, one of them was wearing the head of a wolf. It was paper mache but still menacing looking, with white sharp teeth on a pointed snout, and its eyes were black, so that you couldn’t see the eyes of the person underneath.
The sight of that mask made shivers roll up her spine. It was an interesting choice, and if it was meant to be intimidating, it was working.
It’s just a mask, she told herself. Probably wearing it to make up for some shortcomings.
But even as she told herself that and slowly approached the guests, her skin continued to feel hot and prickle in the warm air. She couldn’t see the Wolf’s eyes but she could feel them, and the closer she got, the more she realized that there was something particularly dangerous about this guard and it had nothing to do with the mask. Perhaps it wasn’t even a guard at all.
Watch the wolf.
Keep your eye on the mark.
3
Ginger Fucking Jones.
The Wolf recognized her right away.
Or, to be more accurate, recognized that mouth of hers. Sweet and tart and bringing up all the memories he’d touched on from time to time, the ones where he wanted press her up against the wall and ravage her, grab her by the hair and watch those damned lips wrap around his cock.
His dick lengthened in his tuxedo pants just thinking about it.