Checkmate

By Stephanie Nichole

"I'm going to take the king, queen, and the whole damn board by the time I'm done with my father and Las Vegas."

Luca Healey 'Lombardi' has known since he was a kid that he wanted to be a detective but he never imagined how hard that road would be in the heart of Las Vegas where the Mafia controls everything.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kingston Publishing Company
• Release date: Apr 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9781645334200

Book preview

Copyright

Checkmate is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

CHECKMATE: A NOVEL

Copyright © 2023 by Stephanie Nichole

All rights reserved.

Formatting & Cover Design by KP Designs

- www.kpdesignshop.com

Published by Kingston Publishing Company

- www.kingstonpublishing.com

The uploading, scanning, and distribution of this book in any form or by any means—including but not limited to electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of the copyright holder is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized editions of this work, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

Table of Contents

Copyright

Table of Contents

Dedication

Playlist

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Epilogue

Extras

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

Dedication

To all the bookworms of the world. Thank you for all of the support and for following me on this journey. You are my people and I love you and this magical world we sometimes live in.

She was half human and half hurricane, a half that’s living to destroy and a half that’s trying to survive. – Unknown

Playlist

Blurry by Crown the Empire

Iris by Natalie Taylor

Violent City by Mansionair

Heartless by Diplo ft. Morgan Wallen

Natural Born Killer by Highly Suspect

Deadweight by I Prevail

Blackout by Solence

Her Eyes by Fame on Fire

Brand New Numb by Motionless in White

Prologue

Bright lights against the darkened night sky. 

Sounds of music, drunken pedestrians, and slot machines ring out into the otherwise quiet night. 

The Vegas Strip. 

Sin City.

Oh, how it sins. 

It’ll draw you in under the pretense of a good time. Come and join the fun. The thrill of possibly winning some money. 

However, there is an underbelly to the strip. 

Dark and dirty.

Tainted.

Smeared with debauchery. 

Covered in shining lies. 

Dig a little deeper and you find the quiet dealing of mafias. 

Drugs, sex, and money. 

The leader of them all, the King Pin, of them all. Lorenzo Giordano. He has a lot of enemies, some of his own blood. If it’s illegal then you can bet his name is on it. His hands smeared with the dirt and blood of it. King of drugs, smuggling guns, all covered by the lies of a casino and strip club. 

Many have tried to take him down and all have lost. 

The Gio Casino. 

Lorenzo Giordano’s second home.

Lavish and dripping with money.

Golden walls, polished white floors.

Crystal chandeliers and champagne. 

Crooked, dirty dealings of abundance. 

In the shadows of the night, one moves against the side of the Gio Grand Hotel and Casino. Someone steps out of the back door; it slams with a harsh thud. Million-dollar cars fill the lot where the valet has parked them for the night. The boy, unaware of the threat upon him. 

The crunch of a boot on pavement enters his ears but by the time he turns around, it’s too late. Two gunshots ring out. Aim true and fatal. 

He falls to the ground. 

The moon above is the last thing he sees. 

His last breath, ragged and harsh.

The beginning of the end. 

A dent in the empire that would start the crumble.

One

Vivianna

The world rotates on the idea of good and bad, right and wrong, and so forth. The funny thing is that the world is more than happy to pass judgment on whoever they want as they see fit, but they never once take the time to look in the mirror and see what kind of person they are. What are their morals? What are their values? Are they a good person or are they a bad person? Most of the world sees everything as black and white—but not me. 

The world is full of good people who do bad things and bad people who do good things, but does that define them? Do we ever take the time to look at what causes a person to make the decisions that they do? Would it even matter? 

It seems that most of the world is so quick to judge a person based on their actions. If the person makes one bad decision, that’s all anyone ever sees. They never considered that maybe they were backed into a corner and forced to make a hard and rash decision. Maybe they were forced to side with the devil. Maybe, the devil was the lesser of two evils at play. We don’t know, yet we judge, we talk, and we decide whether they are worthy or not. 

It’s this very idea that made me leave my family and the family business behind—without looking back. In my world, the devil is my father, Lorenzo Gio Giordano, and he is the king. Everyone answers to him, and everyone bows at his feet... except me. I hate my father and what he stands for. I hate the actions that he deems necessary. He’s the reason I left the only home I ever knew. He’s the reason I’m coming back now. 

In my family I had two saving graces—my mother and my brother, Leo. My mother was killed in a car accident when I was ten and Leo was fifteen. I say killed with the quotations because, in my father’s line of work, it’s not shocking to have casualties of war. A war that is a constant in this life. That’s what my mother was. A casualty. Something that brought all the families together to mourn the loss, even though one of them ordered the hit on her. The moment she was laid in the ground the mob wars continued.

Now, Leo is a casualty. Taking out my mother was one way to hurt the king and the Giordano mob and put a chink in my dad’s armor, but it didn’t last. Actually, it did the opposite. My father came back with a vengeance. He tore apart two families until he found the one who had hired the hit. 

However, taking out Leonardo Leo Giordano, the infamous son of Gio Giordano, the heir to his throne as king, is a way to take down the Giordano mob, once and for all. Like pulling a card from the house. It doesn’t just hurt—it destroys. It’s been two months and my brother hasn’t been avenged, justice has not been served, and it is overdue. 

I’m going back home to Las Vegas and I’m avenging my brother. I’ll serve my own form of justice once I figure out who pulled the trigger that ended his life. I’ll face the devil himself and I will get justice for my brother. Everything in the place I call home is a battle of wills, a game of strategy, and I’m about to win. 

Checkmate.

Two

Vivianna

The hustle and bustle of the city below is barely audible up here on the balcony of my penthouse apartment. I sigh as I take a sip of my latte. I love Manhattan in the early mornings. Watching the sun as it rises, peeking through the sky-high buildings as the day comes to life. This is how I try to always start my mornings. I breathe in the fresh air, and up here it’s almost as if I’m in the clouds. I have a safe and strict morning routine. My alarm goes off every morning at five; I get up and get dressed in my workout attire, and head down to my apartment building's gym. I spend forty dedicated minutes doing cardio before coming back upstairs, showering, and then heading out to my balcony with my indulgence of the day—a chocolate croissant and a latte for breakfast. While I go over my schedule for the day, owning and running a booming and highly demanded event planning company is no easy task and requires a large amount of dedication and organization. Yes, I have an assistant and she is a godsend, but I still don’t trust her the way I do myself. So, I always check my schedule first thing, make any notes that I may need for that day, before diving into whatever book I’m reading at the moment. After reading my two chapters, I head inside to get dressed for the day. 

At seven on the dot, I head down to the sidewalk where my car and driver are waiting on me. Then I go into my office where I spend the day consulting with clients, bidding on upcoming events, and ordering an obscene amount of decorations. 

My days are swamped, and my nights consist of me overseeing whatever parties and events I can while I check to make sure everything is going smoothly, before I head home and relax in front of my TV with Netflix and Chinese takeout. 

If someone would have told me this would be my life when I left Las Vegas four years ago, I probably would have laughed in their face. I wouldn’t have believed that Vivianna Giordano, no Vivianna Bilotti (my mother’s maiden name), could have become the respected business woman that I am today. Bilotti Parties and Event Planning changed my life and I’m thankful that when I arrived in New York City I decided to drop my legal last name of Giordano. While Giordano is a well-known and feared name, it’s not the type of reputation I wanted to hold in the business world. Besides, naming my business Giordano Parties and Event Planning would have probably put a target on my back. As far as New York is concerned, I’m Vivianna Bilotti. 

I’m on my way down the elevator when my phone starts to ring with an unknown number. I swipe my finger across the screen and put it to my ear. Good morning, Vivianna Bilotti, I answer. 

Vivianna, the voice that I’d recognize anywhere comes through my line, but instead of the over-the-top confidence I was once used to, the voice sounds hesitant and laced with a tinge of distraught. Matteo Gigante, my now ex-boyfriend, even though if you ask him he’ll say I’m his ex-fiancé—despite the fact that we were never actually engaged, just promised to be by our families consent for power. 

Matteo, I reply curtly. I’m unsure of why he’s calling me or how he even got my number. But considering only my brother, Leo, has my phone number, I’m guessing he got it from him. Which means, I’ll have to kill my brother. I ignore the congested sidewalk and head straight for my car, the back door opened and waiting with Russell standing beside it. He tips his head in acknowledgement. Acknowledging him, I give him a little wave and smile back. I slide into the back seat. Look, while I’m super excited to catch up, I’m kind of busy at the moment, you know not murdering people for money or power. Although when you see my brother, you can tell him I’m going to kill him for giving my number out.

Vivianna, Matteo says, his tone clogged with emotion. It causes me to halt the next snarky comment on the tip of my tongue. I sigh heavily. This is about Leo.

Those four words make my stomach flip upside down and dread fills my body with my next breath. I know that line. I know what it means when your family is part of the Italian mafia. What? I manage to croak out. My voice is barely a whisper.

There was a situation… last night. I shake my head, even though I know that Matteo can’t see me. The tears are already building in my eyes and the emotion is in my throat. He’s telling me everything I need to know, without actually saying the words. I know the mob lingo that runs in our family business. I’ve heard my dad say this same thing more than once, but I need Matteo to actually say the words. 

Just spit it out, I tell him harshly. I know it’s not his fault, but this is one of those moments where I want to kill the messenger, no matter who is at fault. 

I hear him sigh on the other end of the line. Vivianna, I’m sorry, he says quietly. Leo was shot and killed last night.

There it is, the harsh reality check of the life I’ve tried to run from. This is why I left everything I had ever known. The death, revenge, carnage, and bloody life of being part of the mafia. That constant target on your back and the need to always look over your shoulder. Always wondering if the people you meet are your friends or your enemies, are they there because they want to be, or because they need information? This is why I left and its why Leo is dead now.

Three

Luca

The clouds above are angry. Ash gray, an eerie, ominous feeling. They shake with anger as the thunder roars within the city, silencing the normal hustle and bustle heard on the streets. Lightning rages across the sky. An empty promise of rain on the horizon. It’s a cloudy, dreary day in Las Vegas. It’s actually pretty fitting considering the events that will transpire later on today. I shake my head in disbelief, still unable to fully believe or process the fact that Leonardo Giordano, the infamous son of Lorenzo Gio Giordano, the king of the Giordano mafia, the king of Las Vegas itself, had been killed in cold blood. I feel responsible. That sinking, nagging feeling that settles in my gut, pulling me under with the weight is something I can’t seem to shake. I guess it makes sense though.

Leo was a good guy. He had quickly made it clear that he didn’t approve of his father’s actions, and he wanted a change. He wanted to rid Las Vegas of any and all mob influence for good. Throughout the years, many have tried but none have succeeded. Leo believed that it was the reason his mother had been killed. An innocent bystander whose life was taken too soon. Once he found out that I was actually an undercover detective with that exact job, he quickly became my best friend. When I asked why he wanted to take down his own father, his reply was simple: to get my sister back home. I could see that undeniable look of love in his eyes.

Vivianna Giordano was a force to be reckoned with from what I knew of her, but Leo was loyal to a fault. If there was anything I had learned about him, it was that he loved wholeheartedly and protected those he loved with an unmatched ferocity. Somehow, despite the whispers that Leo should not be crossed, I found myself believing that might be more true when it comes to Vivianna.

For the last two years, I’ve shown my face beside Leo’s as his right-hand man all around town. A certain impression has become synonymous with my face and name that only being Leo’s right-hand man could bring me. No one except the two of us really knew what was going on behind the charade. I had climbed through the ranks of the Giordano mafia empire and found myself immersed in their world. I had to admit, I admired the way that Gio ran his mafia. It was completely discreet. Cleaner than some. No one stepped out of line, and no one uttered a word of disrespect. It was admirable to an extent.

Three nights ago, I had received an urgent text from Leo to meet him in the back of the casino his family owned. We usually didn’t do shady alley business, but something about the way he had typed the message told me not to question it. I hurried from my apartment down to the Vegas strip. It was loaded with people as normal. After I managed to find a parking space in a garage, I pulled my over-the-top, Bugatti Veyron, into the space. A gift from the Giordano family for my services and loyalty. The car costs more than I make in a year on the undercover force.