Groaning, Keane drops into a nearby armchair. “Of course, it fucking isn’t.”
“Levine has a kid.”
Oh shit.
“From your tone, I’m assuming this kid isn’t a kid, but an adult. How did we not know this?” Keane asks him, none too happy to be thrown this new curveball.
“Whoever it is, he or she is a ghost. No online presence, no pictures, nothing. Levine definitely knows how to keep his shit secret.”
Keane grabs the half-empty whiskey and drinks it straight from the bottle. “I think I know exactly who we should ask about it.”
With that, they both walk out. I know where they’re heading. The room in the basement used for extracting information from our enemies in the most gruesome way possible. It’s the room with the cage. The one Andie told us about. The one I’m all too familiar with.
Deciding I’ve wasted enough time, I slip like a shadow down the hallway and into the garage, moving past the cars and bikes. The point of all this is to get off the property without being detected. Which means by foot. I know the blind spots where the cameras are useless, and I know where the guards are stationed or patrolling and at what times. It’s going to suck traipsing through the woods, climbing over the wall, and getting into the city, but that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
Using night as my cloak, it takes me about a half hour before I’m far enough away from the Rossi estate where I feel comfortable enough to use my burner phone to call up a taxi service. One of the shadier ones I know that keeps things off the record if you slip the driver enough cash.
Another twenty minutes and I’m sitting in the back of a dingy yellow cab that smells like old vomit and stale smoke. A not so lovely smell made even worse by the cheap pine tree air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror. No words are spoken between me and the driver until we get a few blocks from my destination.
“Stop here,” I tell him, handing him a wad of twenties. “You’ll get double that if you park the car and wait. Thirty minutes, tops,” I say, getting out.
Everything in this fucking city is gray. Gray concrete buildings. Gray sidewalks. Gray smog that obscures the sky and chokes your lungs. It’s depressing as shit.
Keeping my head down and hidden underneath the hood of my sweatshirt, I make sure no one is following me, then take a right into a back alleyway. Once I walk out the other side onto a parallel street, I head over to a nondescript, black sedan that is parked along the curb next to a parking meter.
The back passenger door opens, and I slip inside, pulling the hood from my head and looking at the man seated next to me. For a long second, I reconsider what the hell I’m doing here.
You’re doing it for her.
The driver turns in his seat and hands me a thin, plastic rectangular case. I open it to see a pre-filled syringe secured in foam padding. Jesus fucking Christ.
Taking a deep breath, I close it and shove it in the middle pocket of my hoodie. Then I get out of the vehicle, not looking back. I walk away, deciding on a different route than the one I took to get here.
Maximillian Rossi—the man I work for, the don of the Rossi syndicate, and father to my dead, best friend and the only girl I have ever loved—may be a monster, but I just sold my soul to the devil. There is no coming back from this.
Chapter 1
I stand over the man, and I don’t even blink as I fire three rounds into his chest. Then I turn my weapon on Matteo and point the muzzle at his head. His skin sizzles and burns where the gun touches his forehead, but he doesn’t flinch or react in any way. He meets my murderous gaze with a stoic one of his own.
“Where is she?” He knows I’m not going to ask again.
The entire fucking thing was a setup. A distraction. It was also a betrayal, I’m quickly coming to understand. Men who were supposed to be loyal to us. Men I considered friends. They switched sides. Matteo isn’t the only one. Jax said we had a mole in our organization, but neither of us could have anticipated this level of deceit from our best friend.
“Where is she?!” Jax spits in Matteo’s face.
I’ve never seen my friend come this unhinged. I’ve never been afraid of him before until now.
Matteo smiles, blood coating his teeth. He never sees the knife in Jax’s hand. In a blind rage, Jax slices Matteo open, stabbing him again, and again, and again, until his abdomen opens up, and his intestines tumble out onto the floor at my feet. I turn my head, not able to look. Unlike Jax, I have a limit.
“Go take a shower,” I tell him. “And tell Dante to gather the rest of the men.”
Jax stands over Matteo’s dead body and smooths his blood-covered hands up his face and through his hair. He looks like a demented demon from hell.
“What’s our next move?” he asks me.
With Max and most of our upper echelon unaccounted for, the crown to the Rossi kingdom now lies heavily on my head.
“We’re going to paint the city red until we find her.”
