NYT bestselling author Tijan returns with book two in the Kings of New York Series, an intensely passionate story of a man trying to make amends and the woman who makes him want to keep his promises in
A Cruel Arrangement
This was my place. My business. Easter Lanes.
Then a guy comes in, trying to rob me, daring to take it away from me.
My home. My life.
Hell no. I won’t let my livelihood be threatened.
No one knows what I’ve done to build this life for myself.
Except he might.
Ashton Walden, a man I remember from when we were kids.
Even back then I could tell how dangerous he would be one day.
He’s now the head of the Walden mafia family, and my father is so in debt to them that they practically own him.
My dad and I are estranged and I want nothing to do with him or his debt, but the day after the attempted robbery, I don’t wake up in the hospital.
I wake up in Ashton Walden’s home. And he drops a bomb on me.
If I want my livelihood back, I need to earn it back.
And thus begins our cruel arrangement.
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5-Stars ~ Reviewed by Sharon Thérèse
Brace yourselves for an emotional roller-coaster in A Cruel Arrangement. Tijan’s second novel in the Kings of New York Series is the epitome of suspense, beautifully dark, exhilarating and daunting, and I couldn’t have turned the pages quicker even if I’d tried. Trust me when I say it’s a must-read for mafia romance lovers! And by now, you’ll know that it’s my favoured trope, but what I like about the author’s storytelling is her punchy writing in short sentences. She doesn’t mess around, making you wait for the action, and neither has she adhered to global collective mob syndicates as such. Two families with similar interests and ties; another the root of the problem they’re up against.
Of course, a heroine in the ‘line of fire’ adds more spice to the read—no pun intended here because you’ll soon learn who’ll be calling the shots. This time, Tijan has brought Molly Easter, a courageous but at-risk woman, together with Ashton Walton, who’d been running his family affairs for a while. As I’d expected, theirs is not a love match; however, not only do circumstances force them to look at each other in a new light, sparks fly in all directions.
Tijan has intertwined characters and prior events from A Dirty Business exceedingly well. I met Trace West, Ashton’s best mate and business colleague, and although their brotherly friendship is being tested, finding out who the true culprit is behind a savage happening will give them a run for their money. Sadly Molly’s on the receiving end of a fallout caused by whom you may ask! I got beyond exasperated to see that this person could easily have had the heart to tell her the truth. All I can say is he’d been a thorn in her side since she could remember; no surprise here after reading what she’d been through. Without wallowing in the past, she’s adamant about making her bowling alley a success.
So when Ashton drops Molly the bombshell, it’s a game-changer. I wasn’t that keen on her having to make a cruel arrangement with him in the first place. It seemed to me to be a means to his end to please third parties. Read the first book, and you’ll catch my drift. Not forgetting what’s at stake, the author barely lets her readers come up for air. It’s vengeance at its purest. Molly and Ashton’s descriptive steaminess compensated for blood-curdling scenes in a nonstop battle that had me on tenterhooks, rooting especially for her. Ashton? He’s on the ball, worming out the enemy, and despite him being an annoyingly drop-dead gorgeous anti-hero with his own backstory, he’s a good leader and protective of those he cares for.
I recommend reading A Dirty Business if you haven’t already since the author has addressed unanswered questions. Hoping there’ll be more where this came from. Bravo, Tijan!
Many thanks to Montlake Romance Publishers via NetGalley for an early copy in favour of an unbiased review.
EXCERPT
© 2023 Tijan
All rights reserved.
I had a problem.
I was pointing a gun at a guy with green makeup on his face, and I kept thinking how he looked like that goblin guy from one of those superhero movies. A bubble of laughter was coming up in my sternum. I tried stopping it, I did, but once it was past my throat, it was hopeless.
I bent over, my gun still in the air, and the laughter was kapoosh! Totally coming out of me.
I winced, hearing a note of hysteria on the edge of it.
“Molly!” That was my employee who was on the ground, his arms folded behind his head as he lay on his stomach, and I could hear how horrified he was.
I raised my head back up, steadied my arm, and cleared my throat. “Let’s review the changes that just happened here. You”—I shook my gun, indicating the green guy—“came in here, to my bowling alley, to rob us. Correct?”
He had a rifle aimed at me, and it was at this point I realized how crazy I really was.
Like, seriously crazy.
A rifle against my handgun. And I was laughing.
I was verging on lunacy. A lunatic. Me.
But he was wearing green makeup, so there could be an argument about who was the more irrational one in this situation.
“You do this sort of thing often?”
“Molly, my god.” That was from a different employee. “What are you doing?”
We had a good situation here. Not the robbery, obviously, but what I’d built in this business. Easter Lanes. This was my place. My business. I was proud of what I’d done for the bowling alley when I took it over from my dad. He’d already run it into the ground, so I seized an opportunity when he was particularly vulnerable, and he was a lowlife street gambler, so those moments were fairly common. We were talking twice a month, but this time was when he was up a literal shit creek and he had no one to come and save him. So, me, being his daughter, well, I took a page from his book—I conned him. Meaning, he called me for bail money and he seemed extra frenzied to get out of there, which probably meant there was someone on the inside who wanted to give him some sort of beating.
I told him I wouldn’t post his bail until he gave me the bowling alley. I was aware that some debts came with the business, but at that point in my life, I had nothing to lose. So I got the bowling alley, renovated what I could, and have continued renovating it over the years as profits got better. I paid off the bowling debts, but that was it. Anything to do with Easter Lanes was all mine. Added a whole pub part and gaming section so families could come here too.
I made sure it appealed to all ages to maximize our customers.
And it worked.
This robber guy had no clue what he was threatening here. This was my life. My only life.
This place was in my blood, and because of all of that, yeah, I went a little unhinged when I looked up and saw a rifle pointing at me.
“What are you playing at, woman?! I told you to give me the money. Why are you waiting? Give me the money!”
Oh, boy.
Boys, girls, don’t try this at home.
The register drawer was closed. The key was right next to it. I looked at my staff because they knew where the extra keys were, but . . . I could grab it, so quick. I could—I did something. That I was going to regret.
“Molly!” from my one employee.
And my second employee. “What did you do?!”
My staff was shouting and gasping, but one scream drowned out the rest. The green-faced robber was shrieking at me, shaking his gun. “What did you do?! You crazy psycho bitch!”
I swallowed the key to get into the register.
That’s what I did.
I was still holding my gun up, but it was shaking because my hand was shaking because my arm was shaking because I was shaking. My whole body was trembling, and I was tasting tears.
Enough!
Screw this. I’d not endured my whole tragic, sad story of a life to get it all taken away from me by this guy. “You come in here! Thinking you’re going to rob my place! This is mine. And I’m not going to take this. You know who my dad is?”
I had temporarily stunned the green-faced robber, because he began backing up, slowly inching away from me. He’d forgotten he had the rifle in his hands, but he paused at my question. “Your dad?”
I could see the realization start coming to him.
His eyes were flickering, skirting, panicking, and he was beginning to remember that some businesses in our neighborhood were hooked in. I’m talking Mafia-style hooked in. I wasn’t above using some of that intimidation if it meant I wasn’t going to be arrested for homicide today.
“Who’s your dad?” His voice rose, more shrill, and I could see the green face paint start to drip.
“Shorty Easter. You know who he is?”
His eyes jerked to the name of my bowling alley. I had it in neon letters above the bar. Easter Lanes. Anyone who was anyone knew that Marcus Easter, a.k.a. Shorty, was basically owned by the Walden family. He gambled at their establishments, but he also gambled for them. I knew his debt to them was so deep that he’d have to live nine lifetimes before paying anything back, but he had other uses, and I knew they used him for those. What they were, I never asked and never wanted to know, but I knew he did jobs for them.
The robber backed all the way up until he hit the door. His rifle slumped down, and he almost dropped it to the ground. “Oh, shit.”
It wasn’t my dad’s name that was causing this change of mind. It was who owned him. I never wanted to use their name, ever, but this was a life-and-death type of situation. A girl had to do what a girl had to do to not get ripped off.
“The Waldens own my father. You coming in here, threatening his daughter, his business. That’s going to have some consequences for you.”
His eyes were really bulging out now. “Oh, fuck. Fuck!” He was plastered against the door, shaking his head. The desperation was edging in him because I was also feeling it, just in a different way. Easter Lanes was the only place I had that was me. Out of all my other homes, nothing stayed. Foster. Shelters. Nothing held.
No one stuck, but this place did. I would not let someone take that away from me, and hear me roar because I was a mama lioness protecting my cub. I was desperate and a lunatic right now, but I didn’t care.
He was going to leave. It was the only play he had left. Get out. Run. Get away as far and as fast as he could go. I was waiting for him to accept that choice, but suddenly he jerked away from the door. His rifle snapped back up.
“If what you say is true, then I’m fucked! Fucked, lady. So I figure you owe me. You want me gone? I need money. If not, I’m dead anyways, and we both know it. You give me all your cash, and I’m gone. Yeah, yeah. I’ll go, but I need cash. What do you have?”
He reached forward, trying to grab me, and I recoiled, feeling the switch happening.
Oh, no.
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A Dirty Business #1
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Review
Tijan is a New York Times Bestselling author that writes suspenseful and unpredictable novels. Her characters are strong, intense, and gut-wrenchingly real with a little bit of sass on the side. Tijan began writing later in life and once she started, she was hooked. She’s written multi-bestsellers including the Carter Reed Series, the Fallen Crest Series, and the Broken and Screwed Series among others. She is currently writing a new YA series along with so many more from north Minnesota where she lives with a man she couldn’t be without and an English Cocker she adores.
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Vi Keeland is a #1 New York Times, #1 Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author. With millions of books sold, her titles are currently translated into twenty-seven languages and have appeared on bestseller lists in the US, Germany, Brazil, Bulgaria and Hungary. Three of her short stories have been turned into films by Passionflix, and two of her books are currently optioned for movies. She resides in New York with her husband and their three children where she is living out her own happily ever after with the boy she met at age six.
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Vi Keeland is a #1 New York Times, #1 Wall Street Journal, and USA Today Bestselling author. With millions of books sold, her titles have appeared in over a hundred Bestseller lists and are currently translated in two dozen languages. She resides in New York with her husband and their three children where she is living out her own happily ever after with the boy she met at age six.
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