The man swallowed, caught his breath for half a second. “It’s the shipment at Pier Nine. We were ambushed. Someone tipped them off.”
In an instant, my eyes locked to Jonathan’s, the same way they had all those years ago on the streets. We’d learned to communicate just in looks, and this look sent a stone to the pit of my stomach. It was a look that said,Alex.
Alex had been leading the charge with the job tonight. He was always at the helm with the most dangerous, the most crucial missions of the Butera family.
And now our friend, our brother in the Butera family, and now in this deeper, strange connection we all shared with Frankie, was in danger.
Fuck.
16
ALEX
There was something cold and sharp in the air, an energy I recognized after I’d been born and raised in the world of organized crime.
When I was still with the Antonovs, this kind of energy spelled bad news for me.
But I’d always had a false sense of security with the Buteras, like because I’d escaped the family I’d been born into, found my own way with a different organized crime syndicate, I was invincible.
I knew it wasn’t true when I heard the first crack of a gunshot in the night.
The sound sliced through the fog rolling off the harbor, turning every shadow into a threat.
I dove behind a stack of metal shipping crates just as another shot shattered a bulb overhead, raining glass on the concrete.
Voices broke through, shouts in rough Russian I could still understand even though I hadn’t spoken it in years.
“Antonovs,” I muttered under my breath, the name tasting like rust and old betrayal.
Beside me, one of the Butera soldiers—Nico, a younger cousin of Jonathan’s—pressed his back to the crate, breathing hard.
He seemed to appear out of nowhere.
It was something the kid excelled in, something that made him valuable to the family.
“They’re everywhere,” he hissed. “Somebody tipped them off.”
I’d drawn the same conclusion myself already.
I peeked around the crate’s edge long enough to confirm that there was no easy route out of trouble here.
My former family had come prepared, fanning out along the pier with military precision.
Their silhouettes moved between the cranes and pallets like ghosts, but I knew their rhythm, their tells, their patterns. I’d been trained in the same school of brutality.
That familiarity should have made me calm. Should’ve sent me to that cold, quiet place I’d learned to live in years ago.
It didn’t. Not tonight. Because now, all I could think about was Frankie.
Frankie’s voice, soft but fearless.
Frankie’s lips when I last kissed her—I should’ve done it more, less restrained, given her everything she deserved. Frankie, who’d begun to unravel the wires holding my heart shut.
If I died here, if one of my former brothers put a bullet in me, she’d think I’d just disappeared into the night like the man I’d been before her.
No. The word carved itself into my thoughts.
A burst of automatic fire sent us ducking. Nico cursed. I raised my own trusty pistol, its barrel elongated by the illegal silencer. I aimed, fired twice.
