CHAPTER ONE
Christopher
This place used to be as familiar to me as my own home. More so. Now, it felt like staring up at a stranger’s house.
I guess, in a way, it was.
I’d been gone for a long time.
I’d been so busy that I’d barely even kept in touch.
All these people I used to know as well as I knew myself might as well be strangers. Hell, I knew I was going to be just as much a stranger to them. So much had changed. I had changed. In more ways than I could even count. Sometimes, I barely even recognized myself.
The man I’d been the last time I stood looking up at this brownstone was so much younger. Hardened, yes, by this life, by the instability of the previous leadership. But lighter. Less weighed down by life.
I barely even knew what had gone down with the family since I’d been called away. I got the marriage and birth announcements. For women I’d never met. Whose stories I didn’t know.
I was still part enough of the organization that I got highlight reels here and there, mostly from the boss’s wife, Gigi, but that was it. I didn’t know shit about what had gone down with the business, who the major players were, or, it seemed, who some of the new members of the organization were.
Because I had no fucking idea who the guy standing guard at the door was.
He was a good-looking kid, everything about him screaming ‘mobster’: tall, fit, black hair, brown eyes, classic bone structure, and put together in a nice suit.
My own suit felt heavy and itchy. I once lived in them, wore them like a second skin. But it had been so long since I’d worn one. I felt like everyone could tell they didn’t quite belong on me anymore.
Finally clocking that I was looking a little too long, the guard glanced at me. “You got business here, get about it. Otherwise, get gone.”
My lips curved up slightly, remembering how things like that used to come out of my own mouth.
Fuck, it felt weird to be back.
“I need to see Lorenzo.”
“Yeah? I need a long weekend on a beach with Megan Fox. But that ain’t happening either. Fuck off.”
I stepped closer, watching the way his hand slipped into his jacket.
“Tell him Christopher is here to see him.”
“Christopher? That supposed to mean something?”
“It will to him.”
He watched me for a second before reaching to open the door, keeping his eye on me until he was inside.
It was maybe ten seconds later when the door flew open.
And there he was.
Thecapo dei capiof the New York mafia.
The last time I’d seen him, he’d just taken over for his old man.
He looked older, with some gray threading into his dark hair. Then again, I didn’t look the same either.
“Holy shit,” Lorenzo said, a smile breaking across his face. “I didn’t believe Nero when he said a Christopher was here. Man, what the fuck?”
He jogged down the steps toward me, then wrapped me up in a bear hug.
