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PROLOGUE

People liked to say that just before you died, your whole life flashed before your eyes—every memory, every mistake, every moment of joy played out like some kind of cosmic highlight reel. It was one of those ideas that sounded poetic, beautiful even, but I had always doubted its truth. It seemed like something people told themselves to make the prospect of dying less terrifying, less absolute. For me, death was just death—final, unadorned, stripped of sentimentality, with nothing symbolic about it. You existed, and then you didn’t. The world kept turning without you.

My skepticism came from the day I watched my father die, his eyes fixed on something beyond the surrounding chaos. There was no dramatic montage of memories playing across his face, no peaceful smile of acceptance or recognition. Only silence and the steady, terrifying certainty that the end was simply the end. His hand never reached out for mine. He just died. No poetry. No revelation. Just absence where my father used to be.

There were other myths too—like the one that said you always knew when someone was lying to you, that your gut would warn you when danger was near, that some primal instinct would kick in to protect you from harm. I believed none of that until now. Until someone I trusted betrayed me right under my nose, and my intuition failed me completely. The warning signs were there, but I was either too blind or too stubborn to see them. Those comforts were just ways we tried to soften the sharp edges of reality, little lies we told ourselves to feel safer in an unpredictable world, but I’d learned not to rely on them.

Trust, I had discovered, was just another word for vulnerability.

Standing here now, knowing that my last moments were drawing near and the cold reality of my mortality pressed against my chest like a weight, my mind was consumed by thoughts of her. Not regrets or missed chances, nor words unexpressed to others, but concerning her. It was always her. I pictured her radiant smile, the one that could light up even my darkest days, the vibrant cascade of her red hair as it caught the afternoon sunlight like strands of copper and flame. The way her eyes—those impossible winter eyes—revealed a love so deep it threatened to undo me with a single glance. In her eyes, I could see everything. Every devotion that I never earned, the hope that I constantly disappointed, and the promise of something greater than myself, something I was never quite worthy of. She had the power to bring me to my knees, effortlessly, with nothing more than a look or a whispered word, and yet I failed to shield her from the heartbreak that now loomed just out of reach, waiting to shatter her the moment I was gone.

As I faced the inevitable, memories of what we had endured together flashed through my mind. Every trial we survived, every obstacle we overcame, every moment we clung to each other when the world tried to tear us apart. The late nights talking until dawn. The fights that nearly broke us. The reconciliations that strengthened us. The quiet mornings wrapped in each other’s arms. The laughter that came so easily between us. Despite the pain of knowing I was leaving her behind, despite the crushing guilt of abandoning her to face whatever came next alone, I found no regret in loving her. How could I? She was and always would be the greatest love of my life, the one pure and perfect thing in an otherwise complicated existence, besides our son. If these truly were my last moments, then at least I would die with her face in my mind and her name on my lips.

CHAPTER ONE

2016, Chicago, Illinois...

The office still smelled like our father.

I noticed it every time I walked through the door. The scent of leather and the faint metallic tang of gun oil. It was a smell that had haunted me since childhood, a smell that meant power and danger in equal measure. Giovanni had changed nothing in the two years since our father’s car had exploded outside the front of our house, killing him and our uncle. He sat at the same desk with its deep scratches along the edge where our father used to tap his ring when he was thinking. Used the same chair with the worn leather armrests, molded perfectly to our father’s frame. The room held the same Venetian blinds that filtered the gray Chicago light, casting prison-stripe shadows that shifted with the afternoon sun.

Our father’s ghost lived in this room, and Giovanni wore it like a second skin. He had even taken to drinking the same whiskey, even adopted some of the old man’s gestures. The way he would drum his fingers on the desk when someone was talking too much, or the slight tilt of his head when he was deciding whether to trust you.

“You leave tomorrow,” Giovanni stated as he stood at the window, hands clasped behind his back, while he watched the street below with the vigilance of a man who knew his enemies were always lurking in the dark. He stood rooted to his spot. The back of his neck was tense, muscles taut beneath a crisp white collar. “Early flight. I want you in New York by noon.”

“I’ll be there.” I nodded as I shifted my weight in the chair across from the desk.

“Kelley’s going to fuck with you.” Giovanni’s voice was flat, matter-of-fact, like he was reading from a script he had memorized years ago. “He will make you wait. He will posture. He will parade his guys around and make sure you see how many soldiers he has on the payroll these days. He will try to make you feel like you’re begging.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” Now Giovanni turned, and I saw the weight in my brother’s eyes, the exhaustion that came from carrying an empire on his back while everyone waited for him to stumble, hoping to catch the scraps when he fell. Giovanni was only thirty-four, but he looked older. Harder. The lines around his mouth etched deeper, and gray crept into his temples, absent during our father’s life. Our father’s death carved something out of him and replaced it with steel. “Because if you go in there thinking this is just business, you will get yourself killed. Kelley is not like the guys we deal with here. He doesn’t give a damn about respect or tradition or any of that old-world bullshit Dad believed in. He cares about territory and money, and right now he thinks we’re vulnerable.”

I held my brother’s gaze. “I’m not stupid.”

“I didn’t say you were stupid. I said you needed to be on guard.” Giovanni moved away from the window, circling the desk like a predator marking territory. “Nolan Kelley is a bitter, resentful piece of shit who has spent years watching his brother-in-law run the empire that he believed should have been his. He hates us. He hates Italians. He hates anyone who has what he thinks he deserves.”

“Then why are we doing business with him?”

“Because we need access to the ports.” Giovanni’s voice sharpened. “The Feds have Newark locked down. Elizabeth is compromised. We’ve got product sitting in warehouses that should be moving, and every day it sits there is money the family is losing and exposure we can’t afford. Kelley controls access to the New York waterfront along with the Bratva and the Soulless Sinners Motorcycle Club. We need him.”

“And he knows it.”

“Of course he knows it.” Giovanni leaned against his desk, arms crossed over his chest. “Which is why you are going to walk in there and make him think he has the upper hand. Let him feel as if he is winning. Let him negotiate his percentage and his terms. And then you are going to get what we need and get the hell out.”

I inclined my head. “What’s my ceiling?”

“Twenty percent. Not a point more.”

“And if he won’t take it?”

Giovanni’s smile transformed into something devoid of warmth, giving him a chilling appearance. “Let him know that Maxim Fedorov is the next person I’ll be speaking with about this deal.”

The name hung in the air like a threat.

Maxim Fedorov. The Bloodletter. Head of the Russian Bratva in New York City, a man who had built his reputation on creative brutality and absolute ruthlessness. The Russians had been expanding for years, pushing into territories the Irish had held for decades, and Fedorov was the tip of that spear—smart, vicious, and without mercy.

Going to the Russians would be an insult to every Irish family on the East Coast. It would be a declaration that the Italians didn’t need the Irish, that they could work around them, through them, or over them. It would humiliate Nolan Kelley and undermine whatever fragile authority he had left within the Irish Clan.