Chapter 1 - The Blood on the Cuff
Gabriel stopped cold.
The rain continued to hammer against his broad shoulders, soaking his expensive suit.
He stared at the frail woman shivering in the mud, his dark eyes wide with a sudden, uncharacteristic terror.
For a man who controlled the Chicago underworld, he suddenly looked like a terrified child.
“Nonna,” he whispered again, his voice cracking over the roar of the flooded canal.
Cecilia smiled up at him, her eyes completely vacant.
“You’re late for dinner, Arthur,” she murmured, reaching out with a trembling, wrinkled hand.
Gabriel did not correct her.
He dropped to his knees in the mud, ignoring the blood dripping from his own cuff, and pulled the old woman into his chest.
Leah Mercer stood frozen a few feet away, her medical scrubs plastered to her freezing skin.
She watched as three heavily armed men formed a protective circle around Gabriel and his grandmother.
One of the men turned his gaze to Leah, his hand resting casually on the grip of a pistol tucked into his waistband.
“Who is the girl, boss?” the man barked over the rain.
Gabriel looked up from his grandmother, his expression instantly shifting from vulnerable to lethal.
His dark eyes locked onto Leah, analyzing her soaked clothes, her scraped knee, and the sheer terror on her face.
“She saved my grandmother,” Gabriel said, his voice flat and commanding.
“Put her in the second car.”
Leah took a panicked step backward toward the dark water.
“I don’t want any money, I just want to go home,” she pleaded, her voice shaking violently.
Gabriel stood up, lifting Cecilia effortlessly into his arms as if she weighed nothing at all.
“You just pulled the most important person in my life out of a freezing river,” Gabriel said softly.
“You also know she is losing her mind, and you saw my face.”
He stepped closer, the scent of expensive cologne and copper blood washing over Leah.
“You are not going home tonight, nurse.”
Before Leah could scream, two massive hands gripped her shoulders and shoved her toward the black SUV.
She was pushed into the leather backseat, shivering uncontrollably as the doors locked with a heavy, metallic thud.
Gabriel slid into the seat across from her, holding a dry wool blanket around his grandmother.
The convoy sped away from the canal, running three red lights in a row.
Leah stared at the brass key still dangling from Cecilia’s neck.
The old woman had said it opened what mattered.
The three numbers stamped into the brass caught the passing streetlights.
Seven.
One.
Four.
May you like
Leah’s breath hitched in her throat as she recognized the sequence.
It was the exact badge number of her late father, a Chicago police detective who had supposedly died in a random mugging ten years ago.
