Broken Pieces Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  The Patchwork Series

  About Broken Pieces

  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

  A note from Toni Aleo

  More books from Toni Aleo

  Copyright Notice

  The Patchwork Series

  Pieces

  Broken Pieces

  Pieced Together (Coming Soon)

  The rules of The Works have remained unchanged for centuries. There is to be no romantic mixing between any of the five supernatural clans.

  But from the moment Oceanus von Stein, second-in-command to the Patchwork family, caught sight of Taegan Conner, daughter of the leader of the Wolves, he knew he would never love anyone else.

  Only now, Taegan has been promised in marriage to another, an arrangement to strengthen her family’s alliances—and she gets no say in the matter.

  Neither does Oceanus.

  While they both know they have their places and responsibilities in their clans, their love is too strong. How can they let go of what they have? Though it is forbidden, Oceanus and Taegan won’t stop until they can have each other. The only problem is that the world is against them, and Oceanus has a threat to his sister’s life to vanquish.

  Can they find a way to be together, or will they both always be two Broken Pieces?

  Being the oldest isn’t always easy.

  Everyone depends on you.

  Looks up to you.

  You are the poster child for the family.

  Plus, you worry about everything.

  Well, at least, I do.

  Which means being selfish isn’t possible. Maybe not selfish—that word is harsh and I’ve never really liked it, but something along those lines. What I mean is that my needs, my wants are not important when I have three younger siblings and a father to worry for.

  You see, I’m a very busy man. I have many jobs. The first and most important being to protect and love my family. With everything inside of me. It is my job to guide my brothers and sister in the right direction to be future leaders of our community. The community my family runs. A community that is unseen to the human eye, which is fine by me. Dealing with witches, wolves, shifters, and vampires, along with the Patchwork citizens is enough in my opinion. They cause enough drama for one man, yet I love them. I want to protect them.

  They are my extended family.

  Even if a faction of our Works—the shifters—wants to overthrow my family and take over, I still care for their well-being. I have to. It’s my job as a future leader of the Works. When my father decides to step down, which could be at any moment, it will be my job to step up and be the king this community needs. Not that my father isn’t doing his job; he is. It’s just…he’s old-school. Very old-school, and while all his parts are working at their full capacity, he isn’t the man he used to be. So much has changed. This isn’t the 1800s anymore, but my father apparently missed that memo. He’s budged a bit, adapted some, but he still has the same notions he had back then, and they drive me absolutely mad.

  Beyond furious, actually.

  But what do I expect? He lived in a time where a man was always right and you followed your father, your leader. After he lost his father to the plague, he became the leader and led his family. I don’t think my father meant for his life to go where it did, but it all changed when he found his grandfather’s old lab books.

  That grandfather was Dr. Frankenstein.

  The guy who made Frankenstein’s monster himself. Yes, the stories are true. But what the stories don’t tell you is that he had a son, who had four more sons, my father being one of them. With Father’s grandfather gone, and then his own father dying, I doubt anyone expected for Dr. Frankenstein’s work ever to surface again. But my father was and may be smarter than his ancestors. For when he found the books, he became obsessed with them, and soon he developed a formula that granted a man immortality.

  True immortality.

  He soon administrated the formula to his brother, Samuel. But after their mother and two other brothers died when the formula didn’t work on them, Samuel and Father were discovered. So, of course, they fled. They had no choice. But they did have a choice when they decided to come to America and make their own clan.

  A clan full of immortal people who would follow and bow down to them. Or, really, to my father. I doubt Samuel had much say in it, but my father, yeah, he was drunk with the power he had. He knew he was the best, a god in his mind, and people flocked to him. They begged for the formula, needed it, and soon my father had his clan.

  His Patchwork.

  You would think that would be enough, but it wasn’t. Soon he reached out to the other supernatural groups. The vampires were first. The main reason was the simple fact that my uncle loved to sleep with them. The vampires didn’t need anything from my father, but he offered them an alliance, a way to get them constant blood since he had turned the owner of the local hospital immortal. As long as the vampires followed my father, he would be there to help them. As creatures of the night, and being killed off almost every other night by hunters and humans, they signed on quickly.

  Next were the witches. My father promised to export and import anything they needed or wanted on his fleet of ships. In return, he would use their spells and rituals for things he was unable to fix.

  The wolves signed on for the money. My father needed lots of guards and security support, and he paid very heavily for them. At first, it was just employment. But somewhere in there, my father worked out some kind of alliance. It’s beyond me, but he did it, and now they are basically eating out of his hand.

  No pun intended.

  The shifters are a whole other story. The resisted us, only coming to us with offers for the formula itself. Father denied them, of course, but he did ask them to join us. He offered that we would protect them and even employ some of them. He wanted to make our community complete with the five strongest clans of supernatural beings. But the shifters didn’t want any part; they were independent. That was, until people started dying and they needed the protection my father offered since no one could catch who was killing off their clan. I believe my father had a part in it, that he hired people to kill them, but he denies it.

  Either way, my father got his underground clan, and soon, the rules were in place.

  Do what your clan is expected to do. All of us have a particular job to keep the Works running. The guard support the wolves offer—along with their construction work. The spells and treatments the witches provide. The political connections the vampires play a part in. And we can’t forget the connections on Wall Street that the shifters give us. It’s simple, really. Everyone plays their part and reports back to Father. Well, the clan leaders do, at least.

  Another rule is paying your taxes. For obvious reasons, if my father is protecting your group, curing diseases, providing good housing, and everything else he does, the least you can do is pay the monthly tax.

  Lastly, don’t mix clans. Father wants to keep the purest of bloodlines, to make the future children of the Works the strongest and best—my father’s words, not mine. Now, that is the rule that gets broken the most. Mostly by my uncle Samuel and his obsession with vampires. But even with his lust for the creatures, he has never fathered a child, mostly because vamp