CHAPTER 1
Shiloh
* * *
“Be careful, Rainman. With a name like hers, she might bite,” my mugger spat. It didn’t make a lot of sense, and I had more pressing issues at the time, but still, the insults stung.
It also wasn’t the first time I heard someone use a dog reference to make fun of my name. Nobody was original anymore. I blamed the internet. I stepped down the first batch of stairs in front of the bar’s back entrance with both hands held high—a classic robbery move.
“Gee, I’ve never heard that one. I guess after I finish kicking your ass, I’ll have to go yell at my mom for naming me Shiloh.”
Was it smart to use sarcasm on a man who held a gun to me with his finger on the trigger?
No.
But I’d made dumber choices in the past. His finger hovered over the trigger as if he couldn’t wait to shoot me but then realized I was no good to him dead. You can’t ransom a corpse.
At least if I was going to have one hell of a shit day, God put it all on the same day rather than spreading it out over the course of a week.
When life really got down, you had to think positively. However, there weren’t many positive things about being held at gunpoint in the back alley of a bar in Chicago, but I’d keep trying.
I guess all those affirmations I said every morning hadn’t paid off yet.
“What are you smiling at, bitch?” The second attacker, who stood behind the first without a weapon, sneered. For a man not holding a gun, he was rather an asshole in his own right.
“I’m just thinking about what you’ll look like dead.”
What did it say about me as a woman, when being held at gunpoint didn’t make me sweat any longer? The late September humidity caused my curly dark brown hair to frizz, not the stress.
“Are you the Grandmaster’s cousin?”
It was a stupid thing to do, but I popped my hip out after taking one more step down, putting myself closer to the barrel of the gun. Fuck it. If I was going to die, I wasn’t going down begging for mercy.
“Did you come all the way down here to kidnap me and you don’t even know for sure who I’m related to?” I made a tsk sound from between my teeth and shook my head in disapproval. “What will your boss do if I say no?”
Hopefully, he’d take the time to confirm I was indeed the cousin to Westley Richter before he shot me. If he was dumb enough to take sarcasm at face value, I was screwed.
Rainman stood beside his accomplice and held up a full sheet of paper. My image was so large on it you could probably see every pore on my nose. Didn’t the criminals in the underworld have any tact?
The first guy—I was gonna start calling him Tall Asshole since he hadn’t given me his name—used the end of his Glock to tap the printed picture.
How did I know he had a Glock? I lived in Chicago in one of the most notorious crime families in the city. It came with the territory.
He twisted his weapon back in my direction when I stepped to the side.
“Yeah, you’re definitely the Grandmaster’s cousin.”
When my cousin, Westley i.e., the Grandmaster, was tapped to take over the infamous Chicago gang, The Masters, he taught me the ropes. I’d been helping him years as he climbed the ranks, but he stepped up his game as their leader.
Chicago wasn’t normally so full of criminals. The beautiful city generally kept its criminal behavior on the south side, but I’d lived in it my entire life and had no plans to move. Chicago had everything. As long as you owned a big ass puffy coat and could get used to the words “lake effect snow,” you never needed to leave the city. Especially when your cousin practically owned it.
“The bigger question—who is stupid enough to need to ask?”
I took the last step off the stoop, putting myself at the same level as my attackers. The alleyway reeked of pee, filth, and bad life choices. It was one of those things about Chicago you just eventually learned to love.
This close, we had just enough light between us for me to spot the man’s missing side tooth when he grinned as though he was holding some super special secret and couldn’t wait to tell me. That was the other thing about criminals. They could not keep a secret.
“Haven’t you heard? The Grandmaster isn’t the only big player anymore. There are new guys in town. The Masters aren’t big enough to take on all the competition.”
