At exactly 2:13 a.m., I sat alone in a rundown Chicago bar, finishing the last sip of cheap tequila while trying to forget the worst day of my life.
I thought I was just another woman fading into the background, completely unaware that the most feared mafia boss in the city had been watching me from the shadows for several minutes.
Blood dripped silently from the edge of the polished mahogany bar, disappearing into the darkness before anyone seemed to notice.
I stared at the growing stain without reacting.
That should probably tell you what kind of day I'd had.
Seven hours earlier, I'd been fired from the accounting firm where I'd worked for nearly four years.
Three hours before that, I'd learned the landlord was raising the rent on the apartment my mother had once called home.
And twenty minutes before walking into the Cobalt Lounge, I'd stood in the rain outside a twenty-four-hour pharmacy and discovered that the last two hundred dollars in my checking account had disappeared.
Not spent.
Transferred.
To an account I didn't recognize.
I should have called the bank.
I should have gone home.
Instead, I walked into the worst bar in Chicago.
The Cobalt Lounge had the kind of reputation respectable people pretended not to know about.
It stood on a narrow street on the South Side, squeezed between an abandoned furniture warehouse and a building whose windows had been boarded up for so long that graffiti covered the plywood in layers.
Inside, however, the Cobalt was strangely beautiful.
Dark mahogany.
Old brass.
Amber lamps.
A crystal chandelier hanging above men who looked like they had buried people beneath highways.
The flickering blue neon outside cast cold light through the windows.
Rain streaked the glass.
Cigar smoke drifted beneath the ceiling.
Nobody asked questions.
That was probably why I liked it.
I ordered another tequila.
The bartender, a tired-looking man with silver hair, stared at me.
"You sure?"
"Very."
His eyes moved past me.
For the third time.
I noticed.
I simply didn't care.
"Something wrong?"
"No."
"Then pour."
He did.
His hand shook slightly.
That finally got my attention.
I turned.
The room had gone quiet.
Not completely quiet.
But quiet in the way rooms become when everybody is pretending not to watch something.
Near the darkest corner sat a man in a black suit.
He wasn't the biggest man in the room.
He wasn't surrounded by the most people.
He wasn't even doing anything.
Yet every instinct I had told me the silence belonged to him.
Christian Russo.
I knew the face before I admitted I knew the name.
Anyone who had lived in Chicago long enough knew about the Russos.
Officially, Christian Russo owned construction companies, restaurants, commercial property, trucking firms, and enough real estate to make newspaper business sections call him an entrepreneur.
Unofficially?
You lowered your voice when you said his last name.
His dark hair was pushed carelessly away from his forehead. He wore no tie, and the collar of his black shirt was open.
A silver watch caught the light when he lifted one hand toward his mouth.
Cold gray eyes remained fixed on me.
I turned back toward my drink.
"Great," I muttered.
The bartender looked terrified.
"What?"
"The scary billionaire is staring at me."
"Don't call him that."
"Which part?"
The bartender leaned closer.
"Miss, you should probably leave."
I laughed.
It wasn't because anything was funny.
Sometimes exhaustion turns into laughter because your body runs out of better options.
"Trust me. Wherever I go next will probably be worse."
He looked at me strangely.
Then a voice behind me said, "That's an unusual thing to say."
The bartender went pale.
I closed my eyes.
Of course.
I turned slowly.
Christian Russo stood three feet away.
Up close, he was worse.
Not because he looked monstrous.
Because he didn't.
He looked composed.
Controlled.
The kind of dangerous that didn't need to announce itself.
"I'm having an unusual night," I said.
His eyes shifted toward the glass in my hand.
"Apparently."
"Are you going to tell me I've had enough too?"
"No."
"Good."
"I'm going to ask why you're sitting in a place like this at two in the morning without looking over your shoulder."
I raised the tequila.
"Because nothing behind me could possibly be more disappointing than what's in front of me."
Something changed in his expression.
Almost a smile.
Almost.
Then his attention moved past my shoulder.
The almost-smile vanished.
I saw it happen.
His entire body became still.
"What?" I asked.
He didn't answer.
A man had entered the bar.
Gray jacket.
Baseball cap.
Rainwater dripping from his shoulders.
He looked ordinary.
But Christian stared at him as if ordinary were the most suspicious thing in the world.
The newcomer scanned the room.
Then his gaze found me.
His hand disappeared beneath his jacket.
Christian moved.
Everything happened at once.
He grabbed my wrist and pulled me off the stool.
I crashed against his chest.
A gunshot exploded behind us.
The mirror above the bar shattered.
People screamed.
Christian pushed me to the floor.
"Stay down."
"What the hell—"
Another shot.
Men around the room reached inside jackets.
The bartender dropped behind the counter.
Christian pulled a handgun from beneath his coat.
The transformation was terrifying.
A moment earlier he'd been a businessman asking why I drank alone.
Now he looked like exactly what Chicago whispered he was.
Two men near the entrance tackled the shooter.
Someone yelled.
Another gunshot cracked.
Then silence.
Real silence.
I lay on the sticky floor with my heart trying to break through my ribs.
Christian crouched beside me.
"Are you hit?"
"No."
He grabbed my chin gently and turned my face.
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure."
His hand stopped.
His gray eyes narrowed.
"What?"
He was looking at my neck.
I touched it.
A thin silver chain had slipped free from beneath my sweater.
Hanging from it was a small oval pendant.
My mother's pendant.
Christian went white.
Not pale.
White.
"Where did you get that?"
"My mother."
He stared at it.
"What's her name?"
I pulled away.
"Why?"
"What's her name?"
Something in his voice frightened me more than the gunfire.
"Evelyn Hart."
Christian stopped breathing.
Behind us, one of his men dragged the shooter upright.
Blood ran from the man's mouth.
"We got him, boss."
Christian didn't look away from me.
The shooter began laughing.
A horrible wet laugh.
Then he looked directly at me.
"So that's her."
My stomach turned.
Christian stood.
"What did you say?"
The gunman smiled.
"The Hart girl."
I stared.
Nobody had called me that since I was a child.
Christian crossed the room and grabbed the man's jacket.
"Who sent you?"
"You're already too late."
Christian slammed him against the wall.
"Who sent you?"
The shooter only laughed again.
Then his eyes rolled back.
His knees buckled.
Someone shouted, "Poison."
Within seconds, he was dead.
I couldn't move.
Christian stared at the body.
Then at me.
"What is happening?" I whispered.
He walked back.
"What's your name?"
"Lena."
"Full name."
"Lena Hart."
He closed his eyes briefly.
It looked almost like pain.
"You knew my mother."
His gaze found mine.
"Yes."
The answer came too quickly.
"How?"
His men surrounded us.
One whispered something in his ear.
Christian's jaw tightened.
He turned toward the windows.
Outside, two black SUVs had stopped across the street.
Men were getting out.
"We're leaving."
"I'm not going anywhere with you."
Christian looked at me.
"The man who just tried to shoot you knew your last name. Two vehicles outside are carrying men who haven't come here for a drink. You can stay and argue with me, Lena, but you won't survive long enough to win."
The windows exploded.
Christian threw himself over me.
Gunfire tore through the bar.
People screamed.
Tables overturned.
Glass rained across the floor.
His men fired back.
Christian dragged me toward the kitchen.
I stumbled behind him.
"What do they want?"
"I don't know."
"You're lying!"
"Yes."
That stopped me.
He looked over his shoulder.
"I am lying. Because the truth will get you killed faster."
We burst through the kitchen.
A cook flattened himself against a refrigerator.
Christian kicked open the rear door.
A black sedan waited in the alley.
A broad-shouldered man held the passenger door open.
"Get in."
"No."
"Lena."
"My entire life just got shot at because you recognized my necklace. I am not getting into a car until you tell me what my mother has to do with this."
Christian stared at me beneath the rain.
For the first time, I saw something behind all that control.
Regret.
"Evelyn Hart saved my life twenty-two years ago."
My anger disappeared.
"What?"
"And three days later, she vanished."
"My mother didn't vanish. She raised me."
Christian's face changed.
"Then we've both been lied to."
A bullet struck the brick beside his head.
He pulled me into the car.
The sedan launched forward.
I twisted around.
Through the rear windshield, Chicago blurred beneath rain and blue neon.
Christian sat beside me, one hand pressed against his ribs.
Blood seeped between his fingers.
"You've been shot."
"Grazed."
"That's still being shot."
He looked almost amused.
"You always argue during emergencies?"
"I've never been in this kind."
"Get used to doing what I tell you."
I stared at him.
"Absolutely not."
The driver made a sound that might have been a laugh.
Christian looked at him.
The driver immediately became fascinated by the road.
We drove north.
I watched the city pass while adrenaline slowly became fear.
"My mother died six years ago," I said.
Christian looked toward me.
"How?"
"Car accident."
His expression told me something before his words did.
"Was there an investigation?"
"It was an accident."
"Was there an investigation?"
"No."
My stomach tightened.
Christian leaned back.
"The pendant. Did she ever tell you where it came from?"
"No. She told me never to sell it."
"Anything else?"
I remembered something.
A sentence from years ago.
"If anyone ever recognizes it, run."
Christian went completely still.
"What?"
"My mother told me that when I was fourteen."
"Did she say why?"
"No."
Christian cursed quietly.
The sedan entered an underground garage beneath a glass tower.
Men with weapons opened a steel gate.
The building above was one of Russo Holdings' luxury residences.
We rode a private elevator to the top floor.
When the doors opened, I stepped into a penthouse bigger than the building I'd grown up in.
I hated it immediately.
Not because it was luxurious.
Because it felt protected.
And I suddenly understood that protection was something people needed when enemies knew their names.
Christian removed his jacket.
The blood on his shirt had spread.
"Sit down," I ordered.
One eyebrow lifted.
"Excuse me?"
"You're bleeding on a rug that probably costs more than my apartment. Sit."
The driver laughed again.
Christian pointed toward the door.
"Marco."
"I'm leaving."
Marco left smiling.
Christian sat.
I found a medical kit on a shelf.
"You know first aid?"
"My mother was a nurse."
At that, Christian looked away.
I cleaned the wound.
It really was only a graze.
Still ugly.
Still bleeding.
"You cared about her," I said.
His eyes returned to mine.
"Your mother was the only person who ever helped me without asking what she'd get in return."
"What happened?"
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Then he reached inside a locked cabinet.
He removed an old photograph.
He placed it on the table.
My hands went cold.
My mother stood in the picture.
Younger.
Maybe thirty.
Beside her stood a teenage Christian Russo.
And beside Christian stood another man.
A man whose face had been scratched out with a knife.
On the back, somebody had written:
Evelyn knows where the ledger is. Find the girl before Moretti does.
I read it twice.
Then again.
"Who is Moretti?"
Christian's voice dropped.
"The man who murdered my father."
He turned the photograph over.
"And if he's looking for you, Lena, there's only one reason."
"What reason?"
He stared at my mother's pendant.
"Because your mother left you something powerful enough to destroy half the criminal families in Chicago."
Outside the windows, thunder rolled across the city.
I looked down at the necklace I'd worn almost every day of my adult life.
And for the first time, I noticed a hairline seam along the silver edge.
The pendant wasn't jewelry.
It was a container.
Christian saw it too.
Neither of us spoke.
Then someone downstairs screamed.
A security alarm began flashing red.
Marco's voice came through Christian's phone.
"Boss, we've got a breach."
Christian stood.
"How many?"
A pause.
"Enough."
He looked at me.
I gripped the pendant.
The worst day of my life wasn't over.
It had barely begun.
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