Angels Like You

AN ETL PRESS BOOK. An imprint of Plot Bunny Publishing. Copyright © 2023 by Elizabeth Muse. All rights reserved. Thank you for purchasing an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of this book in any form without express permission from its author, except in the case of brief quotations used in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial use permitted by copyright law. Please understand that this is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Cover Design: Charlie Matthews Designs Co. Editor: Blanchard Editing ISBN: 978-1-957666-12-9 (Ebook) ISBN: 978-1-957666-13-6 (Paperback) ISBN: 978-1-957666-14-3 (Hardback) First Edition, 2023 www.plotbunny.co For Guy Ritchie… you know what you did. If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever. ALFRED LORD TENNYSON A Note From The Author Angels Like You is a contemporary dark romance. As you can imagine, there are quite a few trigger warnings that apply to this novel. Please use this link or scan the QR code below to see the full list. Contents 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 Chapter 28 Epilogue Also by Elizabeth Muse About the Author 1 AMELIA I can’t remember what life was like before I lost him. There’s only after now. Living with the grief. And there’s a lot. But living is a stretch. I haven’t been living for a while. Unless you count when our daughter, Eloise, comes in and lights up my world. But it’s so dark when she’s gone and so bright when she’s around, I have to squint. It’s like staring at the sun. It hurts. Everything hurts. All the time. My heart, most of all. And when I look at our daughter, I see him. The man I gave everything to when I had so much more to give. Back when I was whole. Before they gunned him down. My love. Of course, they all tell me that Eloise needs her mom, so I try still. I’m tired, but I fight for her. I fight with all I have left. Which is probably why I’m sitting in another goddamn meeting with my brothers and our father. I’m barely present. Propped up in a chair playing human when I feel anything but. I’ve stopped listening. I don’t know that I ever did, though. Nothing the men in my family say has ever applied to me. Unless you count when they tell me who to marry, how to dress, and where to be. If it’s business, I’m not to have an opinion. But they don’t say that last part out loud anymore. It’s the 21st century, after all. Women aren’t just objects. Play things. But if your dad is the head of the Dixie Mafia, it’s a bit different, I guess. The Dixie Mafia, something that was supposedly disbanded. Taken down by the FBI decades earlier. The Cornbread Cosa Nostra. A joke my sister, Caroline, used to tell when she was still around to get a rise out of dear old Dad. Before she ran off, anyway, and left me all alone to carry the curse of being a woman in this family. But it’s not dead. It’s a thriving empire, built on the blood of our enemies. No longer racist. Not based in Mississippi. And with a whole new set of rules. Rules that have helped it survive far longer than its predecessor. Sometimes my brother, Thomas, teases that we only use the name for brand recognition. But in a world where we are told to blend into the background, only coming out at night and in the shadows, like some kind of boogeyman, I know it couldn’t be further from the truth. Not that it matters. I’ve stopped listening. * * * Baby brother Drew is droning about territory. He’s not quite old enough to do anything about it, but he’s being trained. My father wants him ready. In the event that Thomas and Sawyer are incapacitated in some way, he needs to be prepared. I can’t. I’m a girl. It doesn’t matter that I’m older than him. He’s a spare for a spare. Redundant, if you ask me, but no ever does. I go back to my daydreaming, never paying too much attention, remembering covert glances and featherlight touches that my love used to give to distract me from my boredom in meetings just like this one. Before he was my love, though, he was my father’s bodyguard, and our relationship was forbidden. “Philip is in London,” Drew adds. “A few of our contacts let us know him and his new bride showed up a week ago. We should tell the Pembrookes.” The disdain for this man is clear in baby brother’s voice and I perk up without meaning to at the mention of my ex-fiancé and the last name I haven’t heard in a hot minute. The latter not putting a bad taste in my mouth like the former. Once upon a time, we would visit London at every available opportunity. If we had even a long weekend from school, we were gone. And summers were always spent in Hyde Park, on double decker buses, and on tours of Westminster Abbey with the Pembrooke brothers. They were the only ones who understood our unique lifestyle and loved humoring me in the corny tourist things. Mainly because they too were the children of Made Men. They knew why pretending was mandatory sometimes. Acting like carefree teenagers for a few