Our Scrappy Queen Signed Paperback

This Scrappy Queen needs to be controlled...

I’ve been stalked by a guy for months who doesn’t under the words: Not Interested. But once he escalates his threat by putting my coworker in the hospital, I go on the offensive to give the creep a taste of his own medicine. As a self-proclaimed control freak, I refuse to wait for him to come after me. When I sabotage his wooded torture shack, I accidentally blow up the house and the three-month long investigation belonging to the team that’s been watching him. Of course, I don’t know they aren’t his goons when they come for me, so our introduction consists of me running, cursing, kicking, and punching, only to ultimately lose the fight, but not before I give one a black eye.

We’ve been tracking this scumbag for three months, waiting for him to lead us to the big fish—the head of the Difallo human trafficking empire. But when a hellcat blows up our plans, literally, we scoop her up for questioning. She fights us like no woman ever has before, which unfortunately for everyone involved, only turns us on. Her curves are inviting, her tongue is wicked sharp, and her right hook is a thing of beauty—making us want to keep her mouth busy while we tether her hands high above her head.

But when we realize she’s the scumbag’s victim and not an arsonist, our protective instincts roar to life.

She says she’s not interested in our help, but her actions say otherwise, and although we recognize her skill, we can’t leave her to take care of this on her own. Not when we’re already convinced she belongs with us.

With her life on the line, she has to give up control to survive. When she does...

She’s ours to protect, ours to fight for, ours to love.

“Hey, O’Dell. She’s back.”

I jump off the couch and run over to the monitors that Dem has had his eyes glued to for the last two hours. “Fuck. What are we going to do about her?”

“I know what I’d like to do with her,” Kerr rumbles from the armchair.

“I said about—dickhead—not with.”

He flips me off but otherwise makes no effort to change his feet up, head back position. “What’s she doing?”

“Up to the same old shenanigans. Slinking around the house, looking into windows, leaving love notes on the door. Did Soren find anything on her?”

“No, but to be honest, I didn’t ask him to look hard. I really didn’t think she’d keep coming back, and the pictures we sent him weren’t much to work with.” 

“I think it’s time for one of us to follow her back to her car and at least grab a license plate or something.”

That snags Kerr’s attention as he sits up. “I volunteer for something.”

“Keep it in your pants,” I chuckle. “But yeah, get ready to follow her and grab her license plate.”

Kerr is lacing up his boots when Dem says, “What the fuck is she doing?”

He maneuvers the cameras and zooms in on the propane tanks feeding the twenty-by-eighty trailer. The guy we’ve been monitoring for the last three months, Bobby Lash, has been using this piece-of-shit mobile home as a backwoods office and showroom to meet prospective clients looking for girls of varying ages and ethnicities. 

He’s a human trafficker—a piece of garbage that I’d sooner shoot than deal with—but Bobby is nothing more than a stepping stone to the guy doing the wheeling and dealing for this despicable enterprise: Joey DiFallo, son of Vincent DiFallo, patriarch of one of the oldest organized crime families in Chicago. 

That’s why we’ve been sitting out here in the middle of nowhere for three months, waiting for the opportunity to catch him—aka the Big Fish.

This assignment has been by far the most frustrating assignment we’ve ever worked on. Knowing what he’s doing in that trailer, knowing there are women—even worse, girls—being moved in and out of there consistently and not being able to move on them has rubbed me and my partners raw. Sitting by and doing nothing goes against our very nature, but we’re trying to keep our eyes on the prize.

At least that’s what Townsend, our employer, keeps reminding us.

I pull out our binoculars and go to another window to get a different vantage point of our femme fatale, who has been casing the property and haunting our dreams. Every time she comes here, she’s wearing skin-tight black, and every thick curve she has begs to be dominated and controlled. She’s the sexiest thing we’ve seen in a long time and that’s not just three months’ worth of isolation talking.

I set my sights on her, realizing about the same time Dem does that something is very wrong.

“Fuck. Are those explosives?”

“I think so,” Dem calls from his perch in front of the monitor. 

“Fuck!” I turn and grab a rifle, pulling my comm piece out of my pocket and sticking it into my ear. We cannot have her blow this place up. Doing so will fuck our entire operation.

Kerr is already on his feet, his go bag on his shoulder, an M4 at his side. He nods his head and taps his ear. “Let’s go.”

We’re held up in a house that overlooks the trailer by a couple of acres. It takes under a minute to run down the hill and crouch behind the trees. 

“What’s she doing?” Kerr hisses as she runs back to the propane tanks from the trailer’s rear door that she’s pried open.

I shake my head, signaling to him to take the front of the house while I sneak around the back. I figure we’ll surprise her and she’ll cower when faced with two large, highly trained men, promising to never come back without asking us questions. 

I get to the propane tanks, finding the pressure valve tampered with and a series of fireworks duct taped to the top. Considering she’s in the house right now, I’m betting all the burners are wide open. “Shit, man. She’s definitely planning on blowing up the house.” 

“No shit?”

Our gazes connect the moment she exits the property, her blue eyes immediately going to the rifle across my chest. She dashes back into the house, slamming the door shut behind her.

“She’s coming your way… watch the front door,” I say into my comm.

“Roger that,” Kerr responds.

I eye the door, checking the seams with a wary gaze. “Please don’t be booby-trapped.”

Turning the handle, I slowly open the door, leading with the nozzle of my gun. I don’t relish the idea of shooting a woman, but I learned a long time ago never to underestimate an adversary. The smell of gas permeates the air, so my first stop is the stove where I turn off the burners. 

Yeah, she’s definitely planning to blow this place up, which means we need to get out of here—fast.

“Come on out. You got nowhere to go. My partners are waiting for you outside.”

This is my first time inside this shit hole. The living room is passable, the kitchen bare bones, but the primary bedroom with its king-sized bed is immaculate—a real party room—which turns my stomach sour. 

Fucking pieces of shit. I can’t wait until the day we get to kill these motherfuckers.

I’m moving down the hallway toward the second bedroom when a closet door flings out, knocking me backward. Our intruder jackrabbits out of her hiding space and runs out the back door.

“She’s on the move. Back door.”

“Left or right?” Kerr growls.

“Fuck if I know.”

“Dammit! She’s heading south to the road.”

I jump out of the back door and run south after Kerr and our mystery intruder. I’ve got to say, I’m both annoyed and impressed she took me down, even momentarily. He’s only a few feet behind her when he jumps and tackles her, taking her to the ground. 

But she’s spry, rolling out from underneath him and jumping to her feet. Unfortunately for her, Kerr is just as agile and he’s on his feet, ready to lunge again. She jumps and spins to perform some kind of roundhouse kick—which looks great in the movies, but isn’t really practical in close combat. Kerr grabs her thigh and uses her momentum to throw her to the ground.

At this point, I’ve slowed to a light jog to enjoy the show. Fighting in the open near the house is not ideal. We need to get out of here before someone drives up, but she’s too much fun. The things coming out of her mouth would make the most hardened combat soldiers blush, and she’s calling Kerr everything in and out of the book.

“Get off me, you shit-licking piece of soulless garbage!” she screams as he flips her over, putting her face in the dirt. “Fucking prick!”

Kerr looks up at me with a gleam in his eye that is not appropriate given the situation. “You want to fucking help a brother out?”

I grin. “I want to watch her kick your ass some more.”

He narrows his eyes. “Bag, twenty yards back.”