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PROLOGUE
Hawk McGregor cracked open the beer in his hand and straightened, his gaze traveling across the sand, over the volleyball game in progress and the other Imperium employees eating and drinking and talking, to the waterline where his mom and sister walked with the love of his life.
He still couldn’t believe she was his, couldn’t believe he’d pulled his head out of his ass long enough to recognize the once-in-a-lifetime woman that was Laurel Bancroft.
His chest still constricted at the sight of her, flaxen hair cascading down her back in waves, her loose dress fluttering around her pregnant belly. Only two more months until their baby would be born.
He felt like a fucking kid waiting for Christmas.
The trio made their way carefully along the beach, the waves rolling ashore and washing over their bare feet as they walked. His sister Willow, her dark hair pulled into a ponytail, stood on one side of Hawk’s mother while Laurel stood on the other. Hawk noted the way she linked her arm with his mom’s in a gesture that was equal parts a show of affection and an attempt at keeping Sarah McGregor from stumbling.
Her Multiple Sclerosis was stable for now, but they knew from experience her condition could decline on a dime. Balancing that knowledge with her need for independence was a challenge Laurel had embraced with the same grace with which she did everything else.
Hawk’s mom and sister adored her, and they weren’t the only ones. The entire Imperium family had embraced her, and for the first time in his life, Hawk was starting to believe he might actually be worthy of a happy ending.
His phone rang and he pulled it out of his pocket and looked with surprise at the display. His eyes automatically went to his best friend and partner, Logan Bane, leaping into the air on one side of the volleyball net to spike the ball to the other side.
Hawk hesitated, then paced away from the group.
She wouldn’t call if it wasn’t important.
“Gabriella,” he said. “What a nice surprise.”
Gabriella Perez’s chuckle, warm and rich, filled his ear. “It has been awhile.”
They’d been best friends as kids — him, Logan, and Ella, all of them trying to make it in a neighborhood where surviving without ending up on the street was an accomplishment. They’d managed it together, and Hawk hadn’t been all that surprised when something more than friendship blossomed between Logan and Ella in high school.
What had surprised him was the way Gabriella had left, taking her scholarship to Duke and running so fast there had barely been time to say goodbye.
“It has,” he said into the phone. “How are you?”
They’d stayed in touch over the years, but it had always been light and perfunctory: a text to congratulate him on an article about Imperium, a wedding gift sent to her in Chicago when she got married, another when she had her son, followed by a note of condolence when she got divorced.
“I’m…” She sighed into the phone. “I’ve been better, Hawk.”
“What’s up?” he asked, turning back to face his and Logan’s employees. The beach cookouts and volleyball games had become company traditions, and at least once a month they all descended on the beach at Malaga Cove, just below the Imperium offices on the Palos Verdes Peninsula west of Los Angeles.
“I think I’m in trouble,” she said.
“What kind of trouble?” Gabriella didn’t get into trouble. She never had. That had been Hawk and Logan’s department, or more specifically, Hawk’s department.
Logan only found trouble when he was trying to get Hawk out of it.
He heard voices in the background and a moment later it got quiet, as if she’d left a crowded room. “I’m working a case. It’s… mob-related.”
He inhaled slowly. Gabriella hadn’t squandered her opportunity. She’d worked her ass off in law school and taken a job in Chicago with the prosecutor’s office, rising through the ranks to become one of their best criminal prosecutors, a high-profile public servant who’d been featured in publications ranging from Forbes to Vanity Fair.
He’d read about the case: Chicago V. Yakov Vitsin. Everybody had. He just hadn’t pieced it together that it might be dangerous for Gabriella to prosecute it.
He sat on a large boulder at the edge of the crowd, his gaze going again to Logan. “Tell me.”
1
Gabriella put down the phone and doubled over at the waist, glad she was in the stairwell where no one could see her. She hadn’t expected Hawk to answer, which was probably why she’d called him.
Then she’d heard his voice, and it had all come rushing back — warm nights in the old neighborhood, the smell of hot asphalt laced with the distant brine of the ocean, too far away to be much use to them until Logan had gotten his driver’s license.
And him. Logan.
