Chapter 1
My fingers locked around the steel grip of the customized Beretta beneath my pillow, my thumb clicking the safety off with a sharp, familiar snick. The shadows stretching across my bedroom floor suddenly felt heavy, charged with the latent threat of a world that wanted me dead. For two years, paranoia had been my most reliable blanket. Nobody breached this room. Nobody came within ten feet of my bed unless summoned with a panic button or a gunshot.
Yet, there she was.
Emma lay curled on the edge of the mattress, her breath coming in shallow, ragged hitches. Her dark jacket was soaked through with a chilling dampness, and her knuckles were bruised purple. She wasn’t an assassin sent by the Chicago syndicates; she was shivering violently, trapped in the grip of a fever-induced delirium.
Slowly, deliberately, I lowered the pistol back beneath the pillow.
“Emma,” I rasped, my voice thick from disuse and midnight silence.
She didn't stir. A soft groan slipped from her pale lips, and she curled tighter into herself, her freezing hand brushing against my paralyzed thigh. It was an involuntary touch, a desperate reach for warmth in a house built entirely out of stone and cold isolation.
I sat up, gripping the heavy mahogany wheels of my chair and locking them into place. For the first time since the sniper’s bullet tore through my spine, I didn't reach for my pain pills or stare blankly at the moonlit wall. I rolled closer to the bed, reached down with my strong upper body, and carefully pulled the heavy wool quilt over her shaking shoulders.
As my hand brushed her cheek, I felt the blistering heat of a high fever. She was burning out from working twenty-hour days to survive a debt she couldn't outrun.
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“You idiot,” I muttered under my breath, though the biting cruelty of the insult was entirely missing.
I rolled to the door, flicked the intercom switch on the wall, and barked into the receiver with a tone that brooked zero argument. “Luke. Get up here. Now.”
