House of Payne: Tag Read online

  HOUSE OF PAYNE: TAG

  (House of Payne #7)

  Stacy Gail

  House of Payne: Tag

  Mysterious. Anonymous. Genius.

  No one knows the identity of the famous urban artist known only as Tag, and that’s just the way Tag likes it. He got his start in one of the most gang-ridden neighborhoods in Chicago by anonymously tagging his world with beautiful graffiti, and that anonymity kept him alive. Sure, Tag’s work is now so hot it’s being turned into tattoos at the greatest tattoo studio in the world, House of Payne, but he’s still not going to reveal himself. To anyone.

  Volatile. Passionate. Brilliant.

  Artist Ivy Gemelli is the last of her family. Mother—dead. Father—shot in his cab for fifty bucks. Uncle and brother—murdered in the family’s auto paint shop, which was then burned down to the ground. She’s the last one standing in a never-ending struggle to just freaking survive, and it’s made her tougher than nails. That’s why, when she sees her own art show up in Tag’s designs, she’s more than ready to go to war.

  Hot. Powerful. Irresistible.

  Tag wasn’t looking for a sexy complication like Ivy, but that’s exactly what he’s got. Her murdered brother’s long-ago lie brought them together, but now that Tag’s got Ivy in his sights, he’s not about to let her go. Ivy is all fire and fury, and he’ll do whatever it takes to keep this sex-on-stilettos woman with him, even if he has to keep her in the dark about his past.

  ***This standalone, hot contemporary romance contains a strong alpha male, mention of the sexual practice of edging, and a spank or two (or three). There are multiple, explicit sex scenes (you have been warned). No cheating, no love triangles, no cliffhangers. HEA guaranteed. This book is not intended for readers under the age of 18***

  99,000 words

  Discover Other Titles by Stacy Gail:

  Bitterthorn, Texas Series (Carina Press):

  Ugly Ducklings Finish First

  Starting From Scratch (novella)

  One Hot Second

  Where There’s A Will

  Earth Angels Series (Carina Press):

  Nobody’s Angel (novella)

  Savage Angel

  Wounded Angel

  Dangerous Angel

  House Of Payne Series:

  House of Payne: Payne

  House of Payne: Scout

  House of Payne: Twist

  House of Payne: Rude

  House of Payne: Steele

  House of Payne: Max

  House of Payne: Tag

  Scorpio Duology:

  Year of the Scorpio: Part One

  Year of the Scorpio: Part Two

  Brody Brothers Series (Carina Press):

  Branded

  Braced

  Novellas:

  Crime Wave In A Corset (Part of the steampunk holiday anthology, A Clockwork Christmas)

  How The Glitch Saved Christmas (Part of the sci-fi holiday anthology, A Galactic Holiday)

  Connect with Stacy Gail:

  Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/RmNxH

  Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1rU3qmY

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/Stacy_Gail_

  Instagram: https://instagram.com/stacygailsworld/

  Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/stacygailauthor/

  Blog: http://stacygail.blogspot.com/

  Copyright

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author. Characters and names of real persons who appear in the book are used fictitiously.

  Copyright ©2018 by Stacy Gail.

  Cover image ©2018 vishstudio. Shutterstock photo ID number: 245972779

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to Katherine B. for educating me on all things Korean. We need to get together for some bibimbap!

  As always, thank you, Jade C. Jamison for kicking off the inspiration for House Of Payne in the first place, as well as being my sprint buddy throughout this book. You’re the best!

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Epilogue

  Note From Stacy Gail

  About the Author

  Connect with Stacy Gail

  Prologue

  “England has its Banksy, but let’s face it—Chicago’s not England.” Sebastian Payne, the brown-haired, suspender-wearing owner of the tattoo studio known as House Of Payne, spoke to a crowd Ivy Gemelli had never seen in a real ink-slinging parlor. Everywhere she looked there were exclusive labels, tailored suits and the kind of big-ticket clubwear that would pay her rent for three months. “Well-mannered aristocracy and tea parties work great for our friends across the pond, but that’s not who we are. Chicagoans are blue collar, through and through. We’re as hard and gritty as the city itself, and that’s what our homegrown artists reflect. So England can have its Banksy. Here in Chicago, the windy city, we have the legendary urban artist known only as…Tag.”

  Whoop-di-freaking-do, Ivy thought while moving unnoticed through the applauding crowd. That was how it was with these hoity-toity snobs; as long as she had a tray in hand and wore the plain black button-down shirt that vaguely looked like wait staff, she was as invisible as any other servant.

  Fine by her.

  As a servant, she was happy to serve up a boatload of truth.

  “Though no one knows what Tag looks like, most of you now know this mysterious artist’s bio.” While the owner of the ridiculously swank, overpriced tattoo joint kept on spinning his line, Ivy slowly made her way toward where he stood on a dais. At either end of the dais were security guards; not the donut-munching, mall-cop variety in polyester uniforms and squeaky shoes. These were legit muscle-for-hire killers in Armani, earpieces in place and wearing hard expressions that only genuine badasses could achieve.

  If she weren’t so determined to see this through, the sight of all that muscle would have made her turn tail and run.

  But she wasn’t going to run. She was in the right. The people who saw her coming—and knew they’d done her wrong—were the ones who needed to run.

  “Tag started his career on the South Side, in some of the meanest streets Chicago has to offer. It’s just a mile-and-a-half stretch called Back of the Yards, but that neighborhood has one of the worst murder rates in this country, if not the world. For decades it’s been the prime breeding ground for gangs, from the Yard Kings to the Backyard Killerz, and so many more. One might think that nothing good or beautiful could ever come from such a nightmarish place. But this is the world that gives fuel to Tag’s fire.”

  Blah, blah, blah. Ivy had to work at keeping her sneer from surfacing and continued to scan the crowd, looking for possible points of trouble. Her g
aze snagged on a man standing with a woman who had the rockabilly look down pat. Both the man and woman were tall compared to her own height; if she stood on her tiptoes she was five-and-a-half feet—nothing spectacular going on there. But the man had to be a foot taller than she was, and he was built like a frigging wrestler—the cool ones, not the dumpy villains nobody cheered for. His dark hair was parted just slightly off center and hung in his face in that brooding, bad-boy, Winter Soldier kind of way that made a woman feel both a wicked spike of danger and a fluttery thrill of fascination.

  Or, at least it made her feel that way.

  Which didn’t help her cause in the least, damn it.

  Tearing her gaze away from the brooding juggernaut of a man, Ivy continued toward the dais while the owner of the tattoo studio kept on blabbing.

  “Tag had a hard life growing up in Back of the Yards, dodging the gangs and doing anything and everything he could just to stay alive. As he did, he did something so beautiful, so unbelievably human, that just thinking about it gives me chills. Tag began to create art.”

  Geez. Dude made it sound like this Tag bastard was getting ready to walk on water just because he’d survived Back of the Yards. So the hell what? She’d survived it, too. Her family hadn’t, but she had.

  “Amazing.” Beside her, a middle aged woman with an edgy, asymmetrical haircut and a rail-thin body wrapped up in Chanel dabbed at her extravagantly made-up eyes. “Just amazing.”

  Ugh. I’m gonna barf.

  “Such is the indomitable spirit of this man,” Payne went on, “this urban artistic genius—”

  Actually fucking barf.

  “—who has now brought six designs straight from that merciless concrete jungle, to share them exclusively with House of Payne.” He stepped to one side of the dais and gestured to six rectangular panels that were veiled and spotlighted, as if they were in some kind of pretentious art gallery instead of a place where peeps came in to get their ink done. “Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot reveal to you the identity of the reclusive, mysterious man whose work is so easily recognizable for its social conscience, its wicked wit and its depth of emotion. I can, however, give to you the six original tattoo designs created by this world-renowned urban artist, a man simply known as Tag.”

  The material draping the panels fell away, and the crowd gasped impressively at the six colorful, distinctive pieces, from a kid skateboarding off a cracked sidewalk and into a terrible, never-ending abyss, to a woman with rainbow skin, lying on her side bleeding out rainbow blood. But the one thing that tied all these pieces together, aside from the unusual way the artist managed to work his name into the art as part of the background, was what people thought was a diamond, whose facets spelled out a name.

  Her name.

  Ivy.

  The thing was, it wasn’t a diamond.

  It was a gem.

  Short for Gemelli.

  Quickly she skimmed the six panels, making sure the gem design was there before she made her move. Stepping up beside the Chanel-wrapped woman, she nudged her. “Hey.”

  The woman turned, a haughty brow going up. “Yes?”

  “Make yourself useful and hold this. Thanks.” Without a qualm, Ivy shoved the tray into the woman’s hands, stepped up to the foot of the dais and ripped open her shirt.

  “That gem design is stolen intellectual property, asshole, and I’ve got the proof of that right here,” she yelled, furious. Camera flashes went off while the rockabilly woman ran onto the dais, and the mountain of a man who’d been standing beside her stared at Ivy with eyes that burned over very exposed inch of her. Then she spied the pack of hired bruisers closing in, so she stuck out her chest to show the design she’d created, tattooed on her left breast almost a decade ago and clearly visible above her bra. “Ivy Gemelli is my name, and if you look at that gem you’ll see the facets in the center spell out the name Ivy. I’m going to sue your ass, and that talentless hack Tag, for stealing shit off real artists and daring to call it their own.” Strong hands on either side of her grabbed her arms none too gently and hauled her back from the dais and toward the nearest exit.

  “You’re part of that crime, and I refuse to let you get away with it,” she raged over her shoulder, so furious that it leaked out of her eyes as she looked back at the crowd now on the dais. “Mark my words—I will not rest until I break House of Payne into fucking pieces.”

  Chapter One

  Twenty-four hours later

  “I’m just saying, if you tell the world you’re suing someone, you should probably talk to a lawyer.” Ji Dao, owner of Clawsome Nail Salon and Spa, looked up from the client whose eyebrows she was waxing. “You know my cousin works for that personal injury lawyer you see on TV—that bald man that stands like Peter Pan on high-rises and makes those crowing noises? Maybe he could help you.”

  “Thanks for the suggestion, Mama Ji.” Ivy didn’t look up from the London skyline she was recreating in extreme miniature on her client’s two-inch long acrylic nails. The Shard building wasn’t quite perfect… “Unfortunately, I don’t think an ambulance chaser is the kind of lawyer I need.”

  “I still can’t believe you ripped off your shirt in front of all those news cameras.” Torn between awe and a fit of the giggles, her best friend and Ji’s daughter, Minh—or Minnie, to her friends—sat across the small aisle at her own table, giving her client an expert hand massage. “Nice bra, by the way. New?”

  “I figured since my tat was the only proof I could easily fit into that pretentious circus they call a tattoo parlor, I should at least wear a bra that doesn’t have the elastic all shot to hell.”

  “Oh, I hate when that happens.” Minnie shook her head as she worked on her client’s hands. “They can put a man on the moon, but they can’t make bra straps that last longer than three months.”

  “Maybe you and Ivy have shoulders that are built wrong.” Coming out of the back storage area carrying bottles of acetone, Clawsome’s manager and Ji’s sister, Yun Hee, went about delivering the bottles to each nail station. “I’ve never had that problem.”

  “Honey, every woman who’s bigger than an A-cup knows the struggle is real when a bra decides to give in to gravity.” Mrs. Robbins, Ji’s waxing client and a favorite around the spa, waved a hand that was thin and wrinkled, but her nails were works of art, thanks to her weekly appointment at Ivy’s station. “Now, what’s all this about Ivy ripping off her shirt in front of cameras? What’d I miss?”

  “Ivy’s my hero,” Minnie said.

  “That ungrateful girl went rabid and lost her mind in public,” Yun Hee scoffed. “She’s an embarrassment to the entire salon.”

  “Ivy let her temper off its chain,” Ji corrected mildly, glancing over the rim of her half-moon glasses encrusted in pink rhinestones. “Everyone knows that crazy things happen when Ivy’s temper becomes unleashed.”

  “I have no regrets.” Straightening from the table, Ivy looked at her work from another angle, then painted on a tiny gem with her name in the facets with a detail brush. There. Now it was perfect. “Wait, that’s not true. I regret not lining up an actual lawyer before I told the world I was going to sue the thieves nine ways to Sunday.”

  “Sue about what?” Mrs. Robbins wanted to know. “Who are you going to sue? Why were you so mad? What happened?”

  “Ivy had her signature gem design stolen by that urban artist everybody thinks is so hot,” Minnie offered while rubbing oil into her client’s cuticles. “You know, that dude who supposedly came from around this neighborhood by the name of Tag. Ever heard of him?”

  Mrs. Robbins harrumphed. “Heard of him? A whole section of an abandoned building right across from my apartment was surgically removed and airlifted to some museum somewhere just because it had a white whale painted on it. No one gave a damn when the rest of the building they left behind caved in about a day later. Nearly killed a boy riding by on his bicycle, can you imagine?”

  “Hopefully he’s done with painting on the walls ar
ound here, now that he’s famous and people are buying his work online and at that House of Payne place.” Yun Hee moved to the linen closet, grabbed up a couple bags of cotton balls and began refilling the containers at each nail station. “He can afford to use canvases now and get serious money for his ttong.”

  “Tag’s art isn’t shit, Yun Hee. It’s stolen.” Still fuming, Ivy slicked on a nice, non-smearing topcoat over her design, then popped her client’s fingers under the lamp to dry. “Or at least the tag I made for myself—the gem signature I’ve put on every project I’ve done since I was a teen—is stolen.”

  Yun Hee, who’d never liked her and made no secret about it, gave her a dagger-sharp side-eye. “Yes, like I said—ttong.”

  Nice. “Considering he stole that gem tag from me, I can’t help but wonder what else that jerk’s heisted from other artists.” Ivy sat up in her seat to stretch her back. That was the only problem with doing nail work, or as she thought of it, art in miniature form. By the end of the day, her back was screaming at her. “My head wants to explode every time I think about how that guy is raking in the chips because he’s a plagiarizing thief.”

  “So—” Mrs. Robbins interrupted herself as Ji quickly ripped off the wax from her brows. “Lordy, lordy, lordy, Ji. Have you no mercy?”

  “If there’s no pain, I’m not doing my job to make you beautiful,” Ji responded, unfazed as she massaged in soothing lotion.

  “So you had some art stolen,” Mrs. Robbins tried again after catching her breath. “Why did you rip off your shirt, Ivy?”

  “Because I wanted the world to see the proof that they were celebrating a thief and a fraud. I had my tag—a gem with the facets spelling out Ivy—tattooed over my heart when I was seventeen. It’s an older tattoo, so that’s proof it was mine long before that lowlife artist-wannabe Tag snatched it up and claimed it as his.”