Page 1

Chapter 1

Constantine

New York, New York

I didn’t make it a habit of grabbing low-level drug dealers off street corners, but for this asshole, I made an exception.

He was trying to outrun me inside an abandoned factory in Hell’s Kitchen. And while running was my least favorite of all heart rate–raising activities, I was willing to do it. For Daniel O’Brien? Yeah, I’d do it. Run all night if I had to.

The twenty-three-year-old Dublin native (and possibly a track star back home) had no current address. Well, outside that street corner. From what I’d learned through my research, he sold drugs to trust-fund kids who were willing to pay a premium.

He was also the lowlife who’d hit one of my interns on her way home from work while attempting to mug her.

While Blair had reluctantly admitted why she’d shown up to work with a black eye, tracking him down didn’t take long.

So here we were. Daniel and I, burning calories while navigating death traps inside a condemned building, all for his high-stakes game of hide-and-seek.

Reaching the third floor, I slowed my pace, listening carefully.

Every sound reverberated around me. The walls and floors moaned as if something evil was trying to protect the bastard.

I inhaled deeply, catching the scent of cheap cologne. He was close.

“Only one of us has night vision.” I never went hunting unprepared. NVGs in place. A ghost mask concealing my face. And, of course, strapped.

“Leave me the bloody hell alone. I don’t know what you want, but?—”

“I want a lot of things, Daniel. For men like you not to exist is one of them.” I followed my green-hued path around a corner, tracking his voice.

“How do you know my name? Who are you?” The rattle of fear in his voice guided me closer. “You a parent of that kid who almost OD’d last week? I swear I didn’t know about the fentanyl in the batch of E I sold him.”

Was he trying to dig himself an early grave?

Based on the sound of metal scraping the ground, he was scrambling for an object to turn into a weapon.

I knew he didn’t have a gun, or he’d have already fired off rounds. And I wasn’t there to kill him, only to teach him a lesson, so I didn’t draw my pistol.

“What do you want?” he hollered.

Given that he kept announcing his location, he clearly had zero tactical training. He didn’t even know the basics a kid would learn playing Call of Duty . It took me less than thirty seconds to make visual contact.

He came at me swinging a pipe. He may have lacked common sense, but he had balls to try and take me on.

I knocked him out within a minute. Now I’d have to drag his heavy ass down multiple flights of stairs if I wanted to have that talk.

After taking a moment to catch my breath, I transmitted over comms, “He’s detained. You feel like helping me carry two hundred pounds of dead weight down some stairs?”

My teammate, who also happened to be my best friend and brother-in-law, responded, “Weren’t you just complaining the other day that you need to get in more cardio?”

“Sex,” I grunted. “I was talking about sex.” The only kind of cardio I enjoyed. “Now get your ass up here and help me.”

Hudson laughed. “Roger that.”

Back at our security office in Chelsea, I let Hudson kick things off with Daniel so I could shower and change. I had a date later, and with any luck, it’d end with my preferred type of cardio.

Once dressed and in the basement, I stepped inside the observation area. While Hudson did his thing in the interrogation room, I went to the bar cart and poured a drink.

I picked up the bag of pills Hudson must’ve found on Daniel. The white tablets had a green four-leaf clover stamped on them. I’d heard rumors that a new dealer was flooding the streets with E as underground raves began making a comeback. But mixing MDMA with fentanyl? That made it even worse.

Now that we knew about these pills, we couldn’t overlook there was a new guy in town, a bigger fish than Daniel, selling fentanyl-laced ecstasy tablets.

I tossed the bag in disgust, went to the window, and knocked, letting him know I was back. Palm to the glass, I sipped my whiskey while looking on.

Daniel was shirtless and barefoot, his wrists bound overhead, and his ankles tied by rope, feet touching the floor. I assumed Hudson had already given him hell for what he’d done to Blair. The stain at the front of his jeans suggested he’d pissed himself. Doubt he got his rocks off on being interrogated, but who the hell knew?

“Trust me when I say you’d rather talk to me than the man on the other side of the mirror.” Hudson stared at him through the eye holes of his balaclava ghost mask.

We were both from high-profile families, so we had to hide our faces whenever possible. His father was the governor, and my family ran one of New York’s wealthiest corporate empires. We’d make front-page headlines if word got out we took down criminals in our spare time.

Daniel twisted his neck, looking over at the mirror. “The guy who hunted me is here?” He returned his attention to his current problem.

Hudson answered him with a nod.

“You’re not cops or DEA agents. So, who are you?”

“Consider us concerned citizens.” Hudson offered a politer response than I would have. “You’ve given your word never to lift a hand to a woman again, and you know what will happen if you break that promise. Now, I need to know who you’re working for.” He unsheathed the knife strapped to the side of his cargo pants.

If Daniel’s common sense were ever to return (if he had any in the first place), now would be the time. Hudson didn’t fuck around. Same as me.

“Nah, man. I can’t talk about that.” Daniel spit out blood.

“Fine.” Hudson shrugged. “You’re just some street-corner dealer, right? I suppose your boss won’t notice if you don’t show up.”

“You have no idea who you’re messing with,” he snarled, and more blood came from his mouth along with his words.

Shouldn’t have made me run.

“Oh yeah? Why don’t you tell us, then?” Hudson kept his tone casual, circling him.

“You’re treating me like a terrorist,” he said instead of answering. “Ain’t this a little extreme for drugs and that, uh . . . other thing?”

Other thing? Hitting a woman? I rotated my neck side to side, doing my best to dial down my anger before I got blood on my clean shirt. I’d rather not change again.

“Extreme, really?” Hudson scoffed. “Tell that to the parents of the kid you said almost died last week.”

Daniel’s throat bobbed, his expression flickering between remorse and fear. “You just don’t understand.”

Hudson dragged the tip of his blade along the man’s sternum, slow and deliberate. “Then help us understand.”

A quick check of my watch confirmed I was already late for my date. Time to speed this up.

Setting down my whiskey, I knocked at the glass again, signaling to Hudson I was stepping in.

I undid the top two buttons of my white dress shirt. Spectacular color to wear for this. Then I rolled the sleeves to my elbows before covering my head and face with the same mask I’d had on earlier.

Door open, no weapon in hand, I remained standing there without fully entering the space.

Daniel’s green eyes immediately flew to my forearms, and his breath hitched. “Your scars.”

I followed Daniel’s line of sight to the jagged marks—permanent reminders of my past imprinted on my arms. Mostly along the insides where the skin was thinner, the pain deeper. The physical scars would always be there, but the invisible ones? They were the real burden.

“Is that what you plan to do to me if I don’t tell you what I know? What kind of good guys are you?”

“Who said we’re the good guys?” My voice came out calm and measured. Any trace of my Sicilian accent was buried beneath my mask. I took one step forward, the door closing behind me, and it had him breaking.

“Fine.” He’d rushed out the word as if it had been forced from his lungs. “I, uh . . . don’t know who’s running things. I’ve never met him in person.”

He lifted his head, a plea in his eyes to believe him.

“Try again.” I shoved one hand in my pocket, my voice flat. “You said, and I quote, ‘you have no idea who you’re messing with.’ That tells me you do have a name for us.”

Silence.

He was contemplative. Still fearful.

Good, just how I wanted him.

I lifted my chin to Hudson, a request to talk next.

“Let’s start with something easier and go from there.” Hudson stood in front of him, blade still in hand. “Who do you get your stash from? Where can we find him?”

A low hiss left Daniel’s mouth, and he rolled his lips inward, trying to suppress the truth I could easily drag out of him. “You going to press him for answers the way you are me?”

“A life for a life.” I accepted the knife from Hudson, swapping places with him. “What’s it going to be? Save yourself, or save the asshole who you’re selling drugs for?”

He squeezed his eyes shut, sweat rolling from his temples, streaking the dried blood on his face. His wrists tugged against the bindings.

“I just needed some extra cash,” he gritted out. “I wasn’t trying to hurt her.” His voice broke as he added, “He can’t find out I did that.”

“Did what? Find out you tried to steal from a woman?” Hudson pressed. “What, your gang have a moral code and you crossed the line?”

I exchanged a look with Hudson. Even he thought that was laughable.

Daniel’s shoulders hunched, his breath coming fast. “No one can know I told you anything.”

I leaned in slightly. “Then let’s make this simple. Where can we find your boss?”

He hesitated.

I wasn’t a total asshole. I could be amenable when necessary.

“There’s a party Friday night. A rave at a closed-down factory in SoHo. The guy I work directly for will be there.” He rattled off the address, and I made a mental note. “You can’t keep me until then, or he’ll know something is up.”

I handed Hudson his knife back. “We’ll let you go, but we’ll be monitoring your every step. Bodycam on you inside the rave as well.” Rolling down my sleeves, I buttoned them at the wrists, my voice low as I warned, “You bought yourself time with this information, but staying alive after the rave depends on if you told us the truth.”

While we only killed in self-defense now, or if left with no choice on an op, he didn’t need to know that. Fear of the unknown was a much better motivator in getting someone to walk the path of righteousness.

“Don’t make me hunt you down again. I won’t be so nice next time. Am I making myself clear?” I maintained eye contact so he could see the truth in my eyes. Read it. Believe it. Accept it as fact. His life was in my hands.

“Understood.” The word left his mouth low and bitter, but his compliance was appreciated.

Keeping my white shirt clean of blood was also a wise choice on his part.

Hudson returned his knife to its leather holder and tipped his head toward the door. “Don’t you have somewhere you need to be?”

Right. He followed me into the other room, and we both tossed our masks now that we were alone.

“I think we can handle going after his boss at the rave without calling anyone else in for help.”

“I agree.” There was no need to drag my brothers up here for an easy op. Enzo was home with his family in Charlotte. Alessandro was with his pregnant wife in Nashville. And I highly doubted we’d need to bring in the other guys we worked with for a quick grab and bag of a drug dealer from a rave.

Hudson tamed his messy hair with his fingers, and I did the same, remembering I had a date to get to. “So, was that too easy, or are we just getting too good at this?”

“You having doubts about what we do?” Was my sister’s wholesomeness starting to get into his head? While Izzy’s moral line was still much farther north than all of ours, mine no longer sat comfortably below murder like it once had. “It’s Izzy, isn’t it?”

“She works with us. She knows what we have to do sometimes.”

That wasn’t an answer. He was buying time to tell me what was really on his mind. I could only imagine the influence she was having on him.

Unfortunately, his hesitation left space for other thoughts to creep in. Ones about the room I’d once been shackled in years ago. PTSD. Fucking A, I hated when it tried to find its way back. And I couldn’t deal with it how I usually did at the moment.

“You all right?” Hudson asked, opting to sidestep my question.

No, but I’ll shake it off and try to be later. “Just need to get outta here.” Get some fresh air. “Are you okay?”

“Things have been different ever since we found out . . .” He didn’t need to finish that sentence. I was fully aware that things were no longer the same. How could they be?

Izzy and my sister-in-law had been kidnapped and nearly died last fall, and it had been a consequence of our past actions. The result of us taking justice into our own hands. Now, we were all on edge when it came to our decisions, knowing one mistake could lead to those we loved being hurt or killed.

“I know,” was all I managed out.

“Maybe we talk about this later?”

Or never.

“You have a date to get to, and I have a wife waiting for me.” He tipped his head toward the other room. “I’ll handle him. Go.”

I reached for my whiskey and finished it off. “Yeah, okay.”

“Out of curiosity, do you even like this woman you’re dating?”

I set down the tumbler as he hit me with a heavy dose of reality. Where’d that come from?

Given his history with women pre-Izzy, I knew Hudson wouldn’t give me shit for my life choices. He probably wanted me to have what he did now, but it’d more than likely never happen for me.

“It’s supposed to be my job to give advice to everyone. Tables aren’t allowed to be turned.” I was only partially kidding. “But define ‘like.’”

“Do you see a future with her?”

We’d gone on a handful of dates in the last six weeks, all resulting in sex at the end of the evening. A mutually beneficial agreement between two adults. That was all it was. We weren’t exclusive. And did I see a future outside of sex? “No.”

He didn’t have to say more. The look he was shooting me was enough.

Message received. I was wasting this woman’s time. Mine, too, like always. Break it off. No sex tonight that I badly need. Check, motherfucking check. “Roger that,” I said as if he’d been attuned to my thoughts.

Hudson smirked, lightly shaking his head.

“And here I thought it’d be Daniel ruining my plans tonight.”

We exchanged a few more words, and I took off before he could say anything else that might force me to self-reflect. I preferred battling real demons to my own.

Deciding I’d end things with Leah face to face instead of over text, I headed for her place in my Maserati and parked in the garage across the street from her complex.

Me: I just parked. Coming up to get you.

Leah: You’re the only ultra-rich guy I know who prefers to park his own car instead of using a valet.

She didn’t know about my side activities or how often I washed blood from my clothes. She also didn’t know why I’d never hand my keys over to a valet: the 9mm in my glove compartment.

Me: Can we skip going out for drinks and talk?

Leah: I was hoping you’d say that. Already dressed for the occasion.

She sent me a photo of herself wearing only underwear, waiting on her bed. Maybe one more night wouldn’t hurt?

I hesitated.

Had a brief moral debate with myself.

Damn you, Hudson.

Me: We should talk.

Leah: Oh.

Leah: No need to come up. I get it.

Before I could think of an appropriate response, a flash of movement in my rearview mirror caught my eye. Because my night needed to get worse.

I tossed my phone on the passenger seat and unbuckled. It wasn’t my car they were trying to boost, so it wasn’t my problem. But when in my life had I ever been the it’s-not-my-problem-just-ignore-it type?

When their lookout man came around to the back of the Aston Martin, I realized he was only a teenager. His hood was drawn tight around his face, but it was still obvious he was young. When I opened the door, the kid startled backward and bumped into the vehicle. He quickly warned his two buddies they had company.

“You have five seconds to rethink your actions and get out of here.” I kept my tone stern and father-like as I stepped forward. I wasn’t in the mood to play a game of chicken with three teens, but I was in even less of a mood to accidentally injure one.

The other delinquents came over and flanked their lookout man. The shorter of the three decided to play with fire, flipping open a pocketknife.

I held up the only tool I had to scare them off since I didn’t plan to fight. Thumb hovering over the alarm button as if it were a trigger, I warned, “Put down that Boy Scout knife and get out of here, and I won’t sound the alarm.” With a lift of my chin, I indicated they were on camera and security guards would notice what was going on any minute.

“How about you give us the keys to your Gran Turismo, and you won’t get hurt.” The Boy Scout decided it’d be smart to step closer while lifting his knife.

I jutted my chin forward, letting him get a good look at me. To see I wasn’t the kind of man to play a game of “fuck around and find out” with. “If you’re going to be in the grand theft auto business, you should at least know your cars. It’s an MC20 Cielo. Grigio incognito is the color. You like it?”

The kid’s blue eyes flicked to my car and back to me. A touch of fear finally cut across his face. About damn time.

“Grigio incognito. That’s asshole talk for solid gray, by the way.” I winked. “I’m trying to give you kids a chance to walk away here.” As the lookout drew my eyes, I lowered the keys to my side.

“Come on, let’s just go,” the lookout said, elbowing the Boy Scout.

Knife returned to his pocket, he flipped me the bird. “You’re lucky, man.”

“Mm-hmm.” The sound buzzed low from my mouth as I shook my head.

The Boy Scout and the other teen took off, leaving only their lookout behind. He quietly stared at me. There was something oddly familiar about him.

Please tell me you’re not having a change of heart after being the voice of reason. “Go.” I pocketed my keys, and he blinked twice, then finally moved. Of course, he opted to bump into me on the way out. I stood there and took it since I didn’t want to hurt him.

Once the exit door was closed, and I was finally alone, I returned to my car, remembering I had another mission to complete. Officially end things with Leah.

Sitting behind the wheel, I sent her another text.

Me: You sure you don’t want to talk in person?

Leah: I’ve already moved on. Nothing to say.

Damn. Okay. I let go of a deep breath, then realized . . .

My left pocket was light. My wallet was missing.

You got the drop on me.

I was mildly impressed for a few seconds until I remembered something important. Something important to me was now gone.

I called Hudson, not wanting to waste any time. I needed to get the kid’s name and location before it was too late.

“Hey, you good?” he answered after a few rings.

“Just tell me you broke it off with Leah.” Izzy. Of course I was on speakerphone. She must’ve joined Hudson at the office after I left. “How you felt about my ex is how I feel about her.”

“Sorry, I, uh . . . you know I can never keep anything from her,” Hudson was quick to remind me.

I was well aware. “It’s over.” I thought back to that kid, whose face I’d now never forget. “And someone stole my wallet.”

I told them how my need to intervene in a not-my-problem situation had just become my problem.

“Ugh, well, that’s a pain in the ass. Can’t believe he”—she cleared her throat—“managed to do that.” Not my finest moment. Also aware. “But we can get all your cards canceled. It’ll be fine.”

“No, you don’t get it. I had something irreplaceable in my wallet.” I dragged a hand through my hair, bowing my head as memories of our sister filled my mind. Our sister who’d been murdered almost fifteen years ago. “Something from Bianca.” My body tensed at my admission. “And I’ll do whatever it takes to get it back.”