Fallen

  ANGELS OF NEW YORK

  BOOK ONE

  QUINN MARLOWE

  Copyright © 2024 by Spitfire Press

  All rights reserved.

  Spitfire Press and colophon are property of Glass House Press, LLC, and may not be reproduced.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any names of characters, business, places, events, or incidents are fictitious or have been used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

  cover by Deranged Doctor

  Contents

  Note from the Author

  1. duca

  2. natasha

  3. duca

  4. natasha

  5. duca

  6. natasha

  7. duca

  8. natasha

  9. duca

  10. natasha

  11. duca

  12. natasha

  SNEAK PEEKS!

  About the Author

  Also by Quinn Marlowe

  Note from the Author

  You guuuuuuyyyyyyysssss, this little book!

  When I decided to become an author, the Angels were the first series I thought of. That’s a whole other series, though, which I don’t mean to start until 2026. Angels of New York is the start of that.

  Angels, U, coming later this year, is in the same universe.

  Dark Angels, coming next year, is as well.

  And when I tell you this got a whole lot bigger than I thought it would, I’m not lying.

  But would it really be a Quinn Marlowe property if it didn’t at least START in the mafia world? And would it really be mafia if I didn’t start with Duca?

  So here we go. For those of you who wanted a Duca book, this one’s for you. And for those of you who wanted a Barney book, he’ll be coming soon. I bet you didn’t think their stories would involve angels trying to save the world.

  But here we are.

  I hope you love it as much as I loved writing it, and that you rush right out to preorder the next in the series! Link in the back.

  -Q

  Chapter 1

  duca

  I hated working at Christmas.

  But when your boss calls you for a mission that might keep the entire family safe, you don’t say no.

  The problem was a mission right now meant going out into the city with the rest of the fucking idiots doing their shopping at the last minute. Like they’d be able to find anything interesting the day before the holiday. If they’d really cared—if they’d had any sort of brains in their skulls—they’d have had their shopping done already and be home with their families on Christmas Eve.

  Though half the families in New York would be out on the streets, jumping in cabs and taking carriage rides and drinking hot chocolate. Ice skating at Rockefeller, gazing up at the tree like they’d never seen one before. Find their way to all the parks that had lights or decorations, and doing whatever else families did at this time of year.

  The thought made me smile, though, because it brought the memory of what my family did this time of year. My mother was Old World Italian, which meant she took Christmas way too seriously. And because she was Italian, she’d essentially made up her own rules and then pretended we all had to follow them. Every Christmas Eve when we were kids had included a storm of last-minute gift wrapping, then another storm of gift opening, followed by a feast that would have impressed Jesus himself.

  Though based on the rumors I’d heard, the guy wasn’t too hard to impress. People these days thought they could use his name for all sorts of crazy ideas, but he’d been a hippie at heart. I bet he’d like a slice from the cart off the street and sweet relish on his New York hot dog.

  He probably would have adored my mother.

  As for my father...

  Well, as far as I knew, he was in Hell already. And he could fucking stay there.

  “Done,” a voice suddenly said from behind me.

  I turned on my toe to find Joseph Rossi still on the phone, his eyes lifted to the ceiling and his hair practically standing on end. I wasn’t sure who he was talking to, but they weren’t giving him good news. He’d nearly straightened the curls he’d always hated so much.

  I glanced around the room, looking for anything to keep me busy while I waited. There was nothing in here, though, but for the desk and a single tabletop Christmas tree, decorated with a sparse number of bulbs and lights.

  Right. A tree that was both too small and too under-decorated. That could only mean one thing: his secretary Regina had been tasked with bringing it in and putting it together. Fat Jimmy Rossi had probably given her very specific directions about it, too.

  Hey, I’d seen Joseph’s actual house. He and Sloane didn’t do anything small when it came to Christmas. It just wasn’t their style. Joseph had probably approved the small tree because he thought it made him look tough, which he definitely wasn’t.

  He had me for that.

  Which was, I assumed, why I was here.

  I wished he’d get off the phone and tell me what he fucking wanted so I could get out there and do it.

  “Right. Got it. Talk to you soon,” he said, and finally hung up the phone. “Duca, thank you for coming.”

  I scoffed at that. “Since when are you so formal? What’s going on?”

  His lips quirked and he rolled his eyes. Joseph was the second-in-command of the Rossi family, and a growing power in New York. He had everything: the looks, the business acumen, and a wife who could murder a man without chipping a nail. But he’d never been tough, and he certainly wasn’t formal. We’d known each other since we were kids and had never lost the easy camaraderie that came with growing up together. When he got old enough to take on responsibilities in his father’s organization, I was the first one he brought in to join him.

  And neither of us had ever looked back.

  “Right. The party starts at 6. Get over there, chat up Antony Angelis, and see if you can get him to meet me.”

  I stared at him, wondering if he thought we’d been in the middle of a conversation or something. “That’s it?” I finally asked. “You think I’m just going to waltz into the Angelis house for their Christmas party, find the boss, and get him to suddenly fall in love with me? What the fuck, Joseph? I’m good, but I’m not magic.”

  He shrugged. “You don’t have to be magic. Just use your charms. Get in there and get to Antony. We need the Angels on our side if we’re going to come out of this alive.”

  I took a deep tug on my cigarette, then smashed it into the crystal ashtray on the desk. Terrific. Get into the Angelis house—which we hadn’t been invited to—get past the security I was sure Antony had surrounding the place, find a way to meet with the head Angelis, and somehow convince him to become a Rossi ally.

  Sure. No problem.

  “Yes sir,” I snapped, my tone only a little bit sarcastic.

  I left through the side door, which led directly into the garden, and pulled my coat tight around me at the brisk night air. We’d had snow for about a week now and the weather was cold enough to keep it frozen. It was beautiful, but it was also a hassle.

  Impossible to go anywhere without leaving footprints.

  I made for the car I’d parked at the curb, my mind racing through what I knew. The war with the Massimos—and their Old World allies—was over, courtesy of Brooks and her New Orleans demons, but Joseph and Michael Rossi had been nervy as hell ever since. The fact that the Massimos had come so close to wiping us out over nothing didn’t sit well with either one of them, and they were building alliances with the richest families in town to shore up our resources. My own family was on the list, as a small but very wealthy part of the underworld, but Joseph had sent someone else to my uncle to broker the deal.

  Why not me, you ask?

  Blame my father. Or blame me. Neither of us had pleased the de la Rocas.

  Which was why Joseph was sending me to the Angelis instead. The Angels. I didn’t know much about them, honestly. They’d shown up in town overnight with too much money and too many guns, and had set up shop in Midtown. It wasn’t a neighborhood that made sense, but neither did the Angelis family. They didn’t seem to have their hands in any of the rackets and hadn’t tangled with any of the other families in the city. No deals, no introductions. Just a group of entirely too-handsome mobsters dressed like they’d run with Capone back in the Twenties taking over the joint.

  They had more money than God, and that made me nervous. The fact that no one knew where they’d come from made me even more twitchy. I liked people who had history and made sense. The Angelis were none of that.

  Then there were the rumors about them not quite being human. Not that I put any store by it. I’d never been into that whole supernatural thing. My world was solid. The streets of Brooklyn. The gun in my hand, and the other in my shoulder holster. Blood and sweat and tears.

  I didn’t buy that they weren’t human. I just didn’t know what they actually were.

  The good news was, they were just as mysterious for everyone else in New York. No one had managed to make inroads into their house yet, and no
one knew where they’d come from or what they wanted.

  Evidently Joseph was expecting me to figure that out and get them on our side before anyone else even approached them.

  Like I said. This was why he kept me around. Because I never failed at missions like that.

  Chapter 2

  natasha

  I skimmed around the corner, my feet barely touching the floor in my hurry, but slammed myself back to the ground when I saw the waiters hustling toward me. They’d been hired to do only what we asked them to, and as far as I knew they were discreet. But that had never meant we could get sloppy.

  If they found out who we were, no amount of money would save us. Or our mission.

  I forced myself to slow and smile at them as they walked by, praying my expression was as vacant and harmless as I’d been practicing. I’d spent hours in front of the mirror figuring out how to look like I wasn’t thinking about anything at all, and though the expression didn’t come easily to me, I was getting pretty good at it.

  I hoped.

  One of the waiters looked up and cocked a dark eyebrow, his lips quirking and his head tilting in a way that suggested he was anything but innocent.

  Shit. Had he seen me speeding around the corner? Had he noticed that my feet hadn’t actually been touching the ground? I wasn’t still glowing, was I? It happened sometimes, when I got too excited. This was my first time here and I still hadn’t learned how to regulate some of my more... unique talents.

  A quick glance at my hand showed me that I was not in fact glowing, though, and when I looked back up at him he’d turned his eyes away from me. The group marched past me without another look and I stalled, watching them until they rounded the corner. Then I turned and ran in the other direction.

  I needed to find Antony before the party started. I needed to know what we were doing tonight, and what we were going to do if—and when—our target showed up. Because the last time we talked, I was in charge of bagging him. I was the one with the special orders. And I didn’t have a plan yet.

  I slowed again when I got into the main dining room. None of the guests were here—the party didn’t start for another half hour—but the wait staff was milling about, their bodies making the place feel crowded. I still didn’t understand why Antony was holding the main event in this room, which was smaller than the grand ballroom, but that was also not my problem.

  He was here to maintain appearances. Act like he knew what he was doing as the head of a New York mafia family. Make connections with the people we needed on our side. And as such, the party was his domain. Food, guests, waiters, and the house to hold it all in...

  Antony had done it before, in other times and places, so I assumed he knew what he was doing.

  Still, if it had been up to me, I would have wanted more space for the crowds. It would have given us more room for finding our target and separating him from the rest. Would have made my job easier.

  Not that Antony cared about that.

  I turned my gaze across the room, wondering if Antony was here. He wasn’t, but my brothers were. They stood a head taller than anyone else in the place, their dark hair and broad shoulders close enough to identical that they could almost have been twins. I looked from them to the girls standing in front of them, and rolled my eyes.

  Both girls were looking up at the men like they were the most gorgeous things they’d ever seen, their faces caught mid-laugh at something either Mattias or Valentine had said. Probably Valentine, I thought. Mattias was smart but quiet, whereas Valentine was always talking. He’d never passed up the chance to tell someone else what he thought, and he’d never seen a girl he didn’t want to bed.

  Mattias hadn’t, either. He was just more quiet about it.

  I rolled my eyes again, allowing myself a moment of pure disgust at the two of them. They would both shag anyone that said yes, and then spend the next three days telling me about their experience. Honestly I thought they probably took too much pleasure in it—both the shagging and the retelling. I always gagged over it and they always laughed... and then went and found some other poor girl or guy to serve their purposes.

  I should really go over there and give them a piece of my mind now, before they blew the whole night. All it would take was a moment of them not paying enough attention for everything to go sideways on us. We were here to make contact with the man I’d been told about, and if we did our jobs, we’d find him and save him from a horrible fate.

  But it would take all of us, and that didn’t leave room for standing around, fucking girls with our eyes.

  I spun on my heel and headed in the other direction, though, leaving them to it. I needed Antony, not Mattias and Valentine. Snagging the contact was my one and only job. If my so-called brothers didn’t do their jobs, that was on their heads. Not mine.

  Yeah, I know that sounds selfish and self-serving. I get it. But this was my first mission and I was nervous as hell. I didn’t have time to take care of my brothers as well as myself. I was sent here to prove that I could be part of a team like this, and I wasn’t going to fucking fail.

  I’d let them fall on their faces in a heartbeat, though. And I’d probably laugh as they fell.

  I slipped through the door to the kitchen, which was just as crowded, and looked through the people to find the face I needed. Antony was standing at the stove in all his blond, blue-eyed glory, the glow coming off him almost otherworldly. I paused, my breath caught in my throat. He was nearly godlike in his beauty, and I knew I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. The cooks were moving around him like he was some sort of sun that might burn them, their eyes downcast except for quick glances up at him. Their cheeks were flushed, their fingers clasped tightly around spoons and bowls.

  Yes, every woman in here was thinking about what she’d do if she got him naked.

  And not one of them would be brave enough to ask for what she wanted.

  This did bring a quick smile to my lips, and I felt my mind calming as I moved toward him. Antony was my mentor and teacher, and had chosen me by hand for this mission, teaching me as we traveled and giving me the tools I’d need to succeed. He was nearly as big a flirt as Mattias and Valentine...

  But he was also a father figure to me.

  “Antony,” I said, interrupting him as he tested the nearest stew.

  “Natasha,” he breathed, dropping the spoon into the pot. He wrapped me in a quick hug, then stood back and looked me over once. “You’re not dressed.”

  I waved that off as unimportant. “I need to know what we’re doing tonight.”

  At that, he nodded once, took my arm, and steered me into a corner. When he spoke again, his voice was lower. He ran through the people who would be at the party, what their positions were in New York, and whether they were in the underworld or not.

  And by ‘underworld,’ I meant the mafia. Not the actual underworld. I was still having trouble getting used to the difference.

  “And the Rossi?” I asked breathlessly.

  “Not a Rossi,” he corrected. “Someone who works for the Rossis. I have received word that he’ll be here, though I don’t know his name. But you’re to steer clear of him. I’m not sure yet whether he’s the one we’re seeking.”

  I frowned at that. “I thought we knew exactly who we were here for.”

  Of course, he didn’t have the man’s actual name. I did.

  And I’d been told not to tell Antony.

  He frowned back. “Yes. There have been... conflicting orders.”

  I felt my frown deepen. Conflicting orders? Other than the ones my superiors had given me when they’d pulled me to the side before I traveled here? That didn’t make any sense. The orders came right from the top and I’d worked in the office that generated them. They were always very clear. If Headquarters had given Antony conflicting orders, that was a problem.