Hers to Take

  Loving Your Enemy Series

  Book One

  HERS TO TAKE

  Talia Ellison

  Copyright © 2016 Talia Ellison

  All rights reserved. No part of this novel may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior permission in writing from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  For more information about the author, go to: http://taliaellison.weebly.com

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  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  More books by Talia Ellison

  Chapter 1

  I pressed my finger on the scanner, and the rusty green door beeped, sliding open. A strong light nearly blinded me, reminding me that I’d just had a long walk through a secret underground tunnel to get here.

  “Hello, Cassandra.” Todd raised his gun up, a mocking smile on his face. I tugged at my loose ponytail that was barely containing my long wavy brown hair. For everyone outside this household, my name was Cassandra Riley, and I was just a college student who lived with her mother. Everyone in here knew the truth about me: that I was the daughter of Vincenzo Ferrara, the drug lord who controlled almost half of this city, and my real name was Octavia.

  The person who the outside world knew as my mother was just someone my father had hired, and my real mom lived with my father and brothers, although she never showed herself in public with them. Not many people were allowed into my father’s inner circle, only the most trusted ones, and Todd was one of them, although he loved to tease me. He and my brothers practically grew up together. “Found any rats?” he asked.

  “Shut up.” I went past him, pushing his gun away from my face. “Just be careful you don’t shoot yourself.”

  “Your brothers are waiting for you upstairs!” Todd yelled as I strode away. One day, I was going to get tired of pretenses and just walk through the front door, but then I’d lose that tiny amount of freedom and normalcy that I had. If my father’s enemies found out about my existence, they would find a way to use me against him.

  My fake house was three blocks away from my father’s mansion and no one knew about the tunnel that connected that small, regular family home with this mansion. I traced my hand over the white flowery ornaments on the stairway as I climbed up. My high heels clicked on the white marble surface as I made my way to the biggest room in the mansion.

  “Octavia, finally!” my oldest brother, Jason, said as he looked up from the map that was spread across the huge wooden table. His brown eyes were narrowed at me, his black hair disheveled, dark circles prominent around his eyes.

  “Where have you been?” Tony asked, and shook his head to get the brown strands of his shoulder-length hair out of his dark eyes. He was older than me just by a year. “We were getting worried. Dylan was talking about starting a search for you.” He nudged Dylan, who pressed his lips into a tight line, his hazel eyes—the same color as mine—staring back at me.

  “I overslept.”

  “Overslept? With who?” Jason asked.

  “Hey, Jason. Drop it. She’s here now and she’s fine,” Michael said, his hazel eyes softening, and I offered him a smile. My thoughts flashed back to this morning.

  ”Where are you going?” The guy’s eyes sparkled with confusion as I quickly got dressed and grabbed my purse.

  “I have to go. Sorry. Thanks for an amazing night.”

  “Can I at least know your name and call you sometime? Maybe tomorrow... or we can... repeat this.” The guy sat up in bed, his hair messy. “We could have breakfast together and...”

  There wasn’t anything I’d like more: to be able to date and not have to lie about who I really was, but that wasn’t my life, and anyone who got close to me would get dragged into my world... or well, my family’s world, and only death would get him out of it. So I put up the walls of steel around my heart and offered the guy my warmest smile. “Maybe we’ll see each other again.” I stormed through the door, my throat feeling tight. My life might seem normal, but I couldn’t run from my legacy forever.

  “O!” Jason yelled, and I blinked at him.

  “What?” I tilted my head at him and came closer to the table. Tony was typing something furiously on his computer.

  “I asked who you were out with,” Jason said. “We should send someone to pay him a visit and make sure he behaves himself around you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Thanks, brother. I know you’d do anything for me, but leave the guy alone. I don’t intend on seeing him again anyway.”

  “You should date Todd,” Dylan said. “He’s in on everything and Jason likes him, so...”

  I grimaced, raising my hands up. “Hell to the no. Enough about my love life. What’s going on? You all look like you swallowed something sour.” Aside from all the teasing, I could see the lines around Jason’s eyes, the worry in Michael’s, and I knew it wasn’t because of me. Something was up and I wanted to know what. My four brothers didn’t just get this spooked so easily for nothing.

  “There are rumors our competition is planning to introduce a new drug that will change everything to the market,” Jason said, his face serious as he went back to studying the map.

  “You mean the Viteris?” The Viteris were the only family in this city who had almost as much power over the drug business as us, and they had been our main enemy and competition for decades. So far, my family had managed to lead our business without too many problems, but it was only a matter of time before the Viteris tried to overtake our market and destroy our business. They’d tried in the past, but they’d underestimated our power, so that war had ended sooner than they’d hoped for.

  “Yep.” Tony didn’t even look up from the computer. “But all we have are rumors. No one has any real intel. Nothing about the drug or about what the Viteris are planning.”

  “There’s one more thing...” Michael hesitated, and everyone looked at him as if they wanted to shush him.

  “What?” I asked when he didn’t continue. “And don’t say nothing because you wouldn’t be acting like this. You keep forgetting you don’t have to protect me all the time from everything.”

  “We have reasons to believe the Viteris have Katya.” Jason leaned heavily on the table.

  “Are you sure?” A tremor ran through my body. Katya was my cousin. A cousin I’d met only once on a vacation in Spain despite both of us living in the same city. Seeing her here would simply be too much of a security risk for both of our families. She was a nice girl, and we’d had a lot of fun during that week we’d spent together. But no one was supposed to know that she was related to us. And if they knew about her, they could know about me. “Do you think they found out about
...?” No matter how much we tried, our enemies always figured out our secrets eventually. I should be glad that my existence had been kept secret for twenty years.

  “No, she was kidnapped from a bar with a few other girls,” Dylan said. “You know how the Viteris are. They might’ve been looking for more sex slaves.” He curled his lip in disgust. “There’s a chance they have no clue who she is... unless she tells them. She doesn’t know a lot about you and has to be aware of the risks if she talks, but if the Viteris realize we’ve been hiding most of our female family members, they’ll come snooping around and then...”

  “We have to find her,” I said, not even willing to consider what Katya was going through if she’d been kidnapped by those monsters. We had to save her before it was too late... before her body would show up in some dark alley and her death was ruled as a drug overdose... Because that was how the Viteris usually covered it all up after they were done with the girls they’d taken and tortured.

  “We will.” Michael came over to me and placed his hands on my shoulders, rubbing gently.

  My gaze fell on the red circle on the map and I creased my brow. “What’s in that building?”

  “Aaron Viteri, Roberto’s son, has an apartment there, and if someone has the files that could help us save Katya and figure out what his father is up to, it’s him. We just can’t get into that damn place since they upped the security,” Jason said, slamming his fist on the table. “That building is a fort. No one unknown can get in, even the tiniest thing can trigger an alarm and lock down everything, and stupid Viteri hasn’t fallen into any of our traps.”

  “My friend from college moved there recently with her boyfriend.” I gaped at him. My brothers looked at one another as if they knew something that I didn’t. “Wait a second, you knew that already, didn’t you? Did you have something to do with Pauline moving there?”

  “Um.” Dylan worried his lip between his teeth. “We might have convinced a real estate agent to make a nice offer for her old apartment and to recommend that building to her and her boyfriend. Since the boyfriend is one of Viteri’s dealers... Well, not too highly ranked, but everyone who’s around him is screened... which means that you, as Pauline’s friend, were screened by Viteri’s men to make sure you’re not working with the enemy the moment Pauline started dating him. And since the Viteris are always looking to expand their business to new areas...”

  “What? And you didn’t warn me about that?” I didn’t know if I was more surprised and shocked or just angry that I could’ve been exposed and captured. My brothers would sooner hide me from the world in the darkest corner than risk something like this. “Did you try some of that shit you’re selling or what?”

  “Michael thought it would be better if you acted normal because we were sure the Viteris wouldn’t find anything suspicious about you. You’ve been Pauline’s friend since high school and they’re aware of that. You don’t know what her boyfriend does for a living or who he’s involved with. At least we knew they’d be looking into you, so we checked everything to make sure there wouldn’t be any leaks. It’s better to have them rule you out than have them randomly screen you one day, then kidnap or kill you before we can react,” Dylan said. “Please don’t be mad.”

  “I’m not, I just... I don’t know what to say.” As Cassandra, I must have relaxed too much. Hell, when I’d visited Pauline, the guard at the door had been watching me carefully, and there was something that looked like a detector and a monitor near the entrance, but I hadn’t been paying much attention to any of that. “You could’ve told me, you know.”

  “I assure you, you were safe at every moment,” Tony said, his eyes meeting mine, and I knew he wasn’t lying.

  “So you’re telling me I was in the same building as Aaron Viteri when I visited Pauline last week. That’s not even his family’s area!” Actually, that was one of the rare areas that didn’t really belong to anyone. Yet. But it looked like the Viteris were seeking to get control of that part too.

  “No, he goes there every Wednesday and stays for a few hours,” Jason said. “We wouldn’t have let you go there at all otherwise.”

  “So what was your deal with Pauline?” I still failed to see how Pauline moving to that building would benefit them.

  “Well, back when we set that plan in motion, we were able to access a fraction of the security system of that building, but we couldn’t get the blueprints or any info on how to disable the alarms. And since the security was already good, meaning they didn’t let anyone inside who they didn’t properly screen... We couldn’t risk breaking in without knowing full well what we were going into. Getting caught would cost us too much and if we didn’t get the files... it would be a disaster,” Dylan said. “We were hoping that... since you were already marked in the system as Pauline’s friend and weren’t suspicious... that you could drop a phone or something hackable in the hallway so we could carefully plan our attack.”

  “But that plan fell through because just as we wanted to tell you everything, they decided to up the security, and now we can’t smuggle anything hackable inside because all connections and signals are heavily monitored or blocked,” Michael said. “Now the only way to get to the files would be to break into the apartment and copy the files off the computer onto an undetectable flash drive, which right now seems impossible without triggering an alarm or getting caught.”

  “Okay.” I crossed my arms. “But why do you think Aaron would keep any important files in that building if he’s not even there? Don’t the Viteris have a secret residence that we can’t even find? I doubt a single apartment at the top of a random building in the middle of the city would be that special.”

  “But why protect it so fiercely then? Maybe he needs to be able to access that information quickly and going out of town or underground all the time would be difficult for him,” Michael said.

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a decoy. If they upped the security, then they know everything about you snooping around and are waiting for an opportunity to counter attack and hack into our systems. Maybe it wasn’t to protect anything inside.”

  “Are you doubting my skills?” Tony raised his head from the computer, his mouth falling open. “You’ve got to be kidding me. They can’t know I accessed their system. I’m sure.”

  “I’d never doubt your skills, but... I don’t know about this.” I shook my head. “But if you’re sure we’d find what we need there and we don’t have much time to get Katya back alive... then we need to get into that apartment and check.”

  “Yeah, except we can’t.” Jason sagged down into a chair and dropped his head into his hands. “And believe me, we considered every option. We even tried pest control and a few other things, but they lock down the top floor for such visits. There aren’t any secret entrances that we could find. We can’t exactly climb the walls in the middle of a very busy street. And Viteri rejected all the men and women who tried to seduce him in hopes he’d take them to that apartment for the night when he was in the area.”

  “I can get inside the building again,” I said. “But instead of dropping off something like you planned, I can try to get inside Aaron’s apartment.”

  “No, absolutely not,” Jason said. “If you’re caught near Viteri’s apartment... No way.”

  “Didn’t you say a flash drive can pass undetected? They won’t look at me too closely since they know I’m Pauline’s friend. Besides, she already invited me to come over again because her boyfriend’s rarely at home.” No matter how much I didn’t want to get too involved in my family’s business, I didn’t want Katya to die because I missed an opportunity to help her. Besides, it was only a matter of time before one of us slipped and the Viteris found out about me. And despite what my brothers thought, I wasn’t so helpless. I grew up around them, after all.

  “She’s right,” Tony said. “She’s our best shot. Viteri isn’t going to fall for anyone, and if he actually ends up having some fun with one of our spies, he won’t take th
em to that apartment. He’ll see something’s off if everyone’s throwing themselves at him just in clubs in that area. Any devices we might plant on him won’t help because they’d be detected and wouldn’t get us any files. I could try hacking further into their system, but that could take months.”

  Jason got up and turned toward him so fast that Tony nearly fell off his chair. “No! She’s not risking her life for this. We’re not losing both her and Katya because we can’t come up with a better solution.”

  “But she could say she got lost... She doesn’t have to break in or try anything obvious. If the building is anything like most of the buildings in that area, then there has to be a door that leads to the terrace and if she can get there... From the photos we took from the air, we know Viteri’s apartment looks right onto that terrace, and the guards patrol it, but if she can sneak past them and get inside... They won’t shoot her on sight just for being there. She can say she just came to see the view.”

  “You’re out of your fucking mind.” Jason jabbed a finger into Tony’s chest. “You would send your own sister to...”

  “What’s the meaning of this?” An angry voice boomed from the door, and Jason and Tony immediately separated. I turned around to face my father. His blue eyes immediately softened, his lips spreading into a smile. “My little princess.” He came toward me and pulled me into a tight hug.

  “Not little anymore.” I grinned when he let go of me.

  “But you’ll always be my little princess nevertheless.” He placed his hand on my cheek, and then his gaze focused on Jason. “Did you find a solution to our problem?”

  “No, we...”

  “Yes, but you’re not going to like it,” Tony interrupted.

  “We’re not doing that!” Jason snapped, but my father raised his hand, shushing him.

  “Let your brother speak.”

  “Octavia can get into the building. If she can get to the terrace and through a few doors, without being seen by the two guards on the rooftop and avoiding the cameras, she has a chance to get the files and get out of there before anyone realizes what happened. They don’t suspect her since her friend lives there. If there are too many guards or they spot her, she can give them some stupid excuse... Besides, we know Viteri won’t be there, so the guards will be more relaxed.”