King's Ransom. Jackie Ashenden

       CHAPTER ONE

       Ajax

      I WAS TEN years old the first time I suspected my father was a criminal.

      At thirteen he showed me the truth.

      That’s when I decided I was going to take him down. But if you want to take down a man like Augustus King you have to do it right. You can’t leave anything behind. A crime empire is like a Hydra—cut off the head and twenty more sprout.

      It took me nearly two decades to cut off every single head. Yet I did. And I put that prick in jail once and for all.

      But surviving decades of being the oldest son of the biggest crime lord in Sydney doesn’t leave a man without scars, and mine ran deep.

      That was okay, though. Scars were reminders of the big picture and my big picture involved keeping my brothers and my city safe. Staying vigilant for danger. Always on the lookout for threats.

      Threats such as William goddamn White, my father’s enemy and the last head of the Hydra.

      Dad had been in jail five years and I’d been legit ever since, running one of the fastest growing property development companies in Sydney, and, as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t simply cut that head off the way I preferred. Not if I wanted to avoid jail myself.

      No, I had to use other methods.

      I leaned against the wall of the ballroom of one of Sydney’s top hotels, studying the glittering, couture-wearing crowd all gathered to celebrate the formation of a new charity.

      I hadn’t been invited—no one would invite a King to a swanky charity ball like this one—but I’d shown up anyway and they’d been too afraid of me to turn me away.

      The King past was something my two brothers and I were trying to overcome, but it came in handy at times. And I wasn’t above using it, especially when it came to driving home to the cream of Sydney society that the King brothers were up-and-coming and they couldn’t ignore us any more.

      But that wasn’t the only reason I was here.

      That other reason was sitting across the ballroom from me, at a table surrounded by goons in suits trying hard not to look like goons in suits and failing.

      Miss Imogen White, William White’s daughter and the most guarded heiress in the entire city.

      The chick was like Rapunzel in her tower—no one was getting inside. Both figuratively and literally. She was the apple of her father’s eye and he made sure she stayed pure and pristine, his perfect Princess.

      Sadly for White, I was about to storm his daughter’s pretty little castle and sully the fuck out of it.

      He’d managed somehow to stay out of the law’s reach following the collapse of Dad’s empire and he’d been waiting in the shadows ever since. Not drawing attention, quietly trying to resurrect Augustus King’s filthy legacy.

      A legacy I was going to destroy once and for all.

      That motherfucker was going down and I was going to use his daughter to do it.

      I tilted my head, studying her as she sat on her chair, all alone apart from her goons.

      Five foot nothing, long blonde hair the colour of pale corn silk. Big green eyes that watched the rest of the room and the people in it like they were a cage full of tigers and she was a goat tethered to a stake.

      Interesting that her father had managed to get her an invite and that she was attending without him. Almost made me think that she was playing the part of a goat tethered to a stake.

      Bait. To lure someone out.

      Me, perhaps? But then, probably not. As far as White was concerned, I was too busy running King Enterprises, my property empire, to worry about him—an illusion I’d worked hard to cultivate to hide my real motivations.

      Whosever bait she was, Imogen was pretty in her plain white cocktail frock. A perfect little doll. Pale and virginal and pure. Except not totally pure, not with the kind of sulky pink mouth that would look great wrapped around a man’s cock.

      Yes, she was lovely, but she was also nothing but leverage.

      Her father’s weapon that I was going to turn back on him, using her to ensure that whatever he was doing in those shadows, whatever plans he was hatching, he needed to stop immediately and get the hell out of Sydney.

      Only then would I release his daughter.

      And if he didn’t? I’d take that carefully guarded virginity of hers and make her mine. Because if there was one thing I knew about William White, it was that he’d rather slit his own throat than have a King touch his daughter.

      Especially me. As far as he was concerned, I was still rough and brutal, still only a few steps away from the violence that had made me.

      He wouldn’t want his daughter anywhere near me.

      As plans went it wasn’t all that subtle, but I’d been searching for some legal way to take that bastard down and hadn’t managed to find anything I could use against him.

      No, his daughter was it. My plan to protect everything I’d built.

      Ten years ago, I could have headed over to her and slung her over my shoulder and no one would have stopped me. Even the police would have given me a wide berth—they didn’t want to mess with a King.

      But it wasn’t ten years ago. It was now, and even though I’d never have considered using Dad’s kind of tactics—I was, after all, a different man—the stakes were too high to risk failure, which meant the end justified any means.

      Such as kidnapping William White’s daughter from a ballroom full of people.

      Oh, yeah, and not get caught.

      I glanced away from the scaredy-cat Princess and looked towards the bar area of the ballroom. Sure enough, there was my younger brother Leon, along with his wife, Vita. They were commanding a lot of attention, which was the reason I’d demanded the pair of them attend the ball with me.

      They could take the heat while I did my thing unnoticed.

      Leon would be pissed if he knew what I was planning, especially given his own past, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. This was my idea and not telling him would allow all the responsibility to fall on me if it turned to shit.

      The only person who’d get hurt here was William fucking White.

      I shifted against the wall, checking on Imogen again.

      She was sitting up so straight and still, her hands clasped in her lap, holding herself rigid, except for one little white-satin-covered foot that was tapping to the music that filtered through the ballroom. Then it stopped and she looked down at herself, colour staining her pale cheeks. As if she’d only just realised what she was doing and caught herself. As if tapping her foot to the music was a bad thing.

      Another man might have felt sorry for her sitting there all by herself, not even able to enjoy the music. But I didn’t. I couldn’t afford to. She was a tool for me to use. That was all.

      On the table near her was a glass of