Four men shot out of their chairs at the poker table, cards scattering. My brother, Blake. Jace. Axel.
And Ryker.
For a beat, he looked at me like he was thrilled to see me. That same relieved expression he always wore when he found me at our friend get-togethers, like maybe I had been on his mind all night. His thoughts preoccupied with the chemistry we’d been failing to fight off for weeks now. The same way I felt when I finally saw him after days apart. That bone-deep ease,like my body had been holding itself rigid until he was near again.
But in the blink of an eye, his expression hardened. His beautiful eyes, which were normally so blue, they reminded me of a sapphire sparkling under museum lights, darkened to a midnight cobalt and widened in horror as they scanned my body head to toe.
Taking in my appearance. My disheveled clothes. My trembling body. But most of all, the blood coating my skin and hair.
For an instant, he seemed terrified that this blood must mean I’d been hurt. His gaze caught on my face, my arms, searching for the source with an urgency that made me want to run to him.
Until the blade in my hand dropped to the ground with a sickening clank.
His eyes snapped to the knife. Then back to my face. The horror in his expression shifted into something else. Something that looked almost like devastation. Something that looked like a man watching his worst nightmare come to life.
“I need a lawyer.”
2
RYKER
“Goddamn it.” Axel folded his hand and slumped back in his chair.
I smirked, pulling the chips toward me with deliberate slowness, stacking them in perfectly neat columns in the way I knew would annoy him.
Annoying Axel was always a plus.
“That’s your fifth win in a row,” Blake accused.
“What can I say?” I shrugged, shuffling the deck. “I’m having a lucky night.”
Lucky didn’t begin to cover it. These nights at the mansion with the men I considered brothers were the highlight of my week. We’d formed this bond back in college, just five guys who clicked over shared late-night study sessions and terrible cafeteria food. But that friendship became something deeper, something unbreakable, when our friend Knox was dragged away from our fraternity house in handcuffs and charged with murder.
While everyone else in our college turned their backs on Knox and demanded we cut ties without even understanding what happened, we made a vow. We’d stick together no matter what.
That loyalty had shaped all of us. Made us who we were: a group of found family, self-named the Sinners and Saints Club.
“So, how’s the new firm going?” Blake asked. “Land any new clients this week?”
“Actually, yeah. Three consultations lined up for Monday.”
“Three whole clients?” Axel arranged his new cards. “Slow down there, hotshot. Leave some innocent people for the rest of us.”
I flipped him off, but I was grinning. This was how Axel showed support—through relentless mockery.
“Hey, three consultations—it’s three more than Patterson thought you’d get,” Jace pointed out, tossing chips into the pot.
“You should’ve seen that asshole when I left Preston & Associates to start my own firm,” I said, matching Jace’s bet. “He actually laughed. Out loud. Had tears streaming down his judgmental face. Then he goes, ‘A criminal defense attorney who only takes on clients he believes are actually innocent?’” I shook my head. “Then he cc’d the entire firm on an emailwishing me wellthat was basically a masterclass in professional shade.”
“Patterson always was a prick,” Blake said.
“A successful prick,” I pointed out.
“Still a prick.”
The thing was, I knew how insane my business model sounded. Every lawyer I’d talked to, every professor from law school who’d heard about my venture, they’d all had the same reaction. Condescending smiles. Patronizing laughs.Oh, Ryker. So idealistic. So naive.
Even if any firm would take me back now, I couldn’t go back to defending people I knew were guilty. Sure, everyone—innocent or not—had the right to a legal defense, but after some shit that went down, I could no longer, in good conscience, defend people who I believed to be guilty.
