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This isn’t my first time behind bars, but it’s the first time I’ve earned it.
Call it penance for keeping the truth from Aiden for all these years.
Call it the start of my Endgame.
Whatever the hell it is, Tommaso Zaccaria is finally dead, and the chains around my wrists and heart just got blown apart.
My ride is waiting for me beyond the silver mesh fence. He’s leaning against the side of his Maserati and messing up the lines with his same-old sin. He’s a bird too, but he bought his own freedom a long time ago.
Aiden the Raven.Mr. Black Skies himself.
“Stay out of trouble, Lastra,” the guard behind me mutters, his spiky French accent piercing my surname with scorn as the gates swing open. “Your criminal friends can’t buy you out of every damn jail cell in Europe.”
I hold his gaze without answering, my six-foot-four cowering him into submission before my reputation finishes off the job. His face flushes and his eyes drop, and I’m left staring at a greasy patch on his forehead. Words are a delicacy not to be wasted, and this man doesn’t deserve a single one of mine.
As I approach the car, I release the top button of my crumpled white dress shirt and rip the bow tie from my neck, sliding it into my jacket pocket before taking Aiden’s outstretched hand. Right away, the weight of our history is crushing a pleasant afternoon into something boxlike and unwanted. From his expression, it’s clear he's pissed at me, but not enough to leave me stranded with my balls hanging out by the side of the road.
“I owe you for this, Raven.”
He studies me for a moment. Our handshake lingering. We’re both British, which means there’s more bite to our silences than our bullets.
“You should have told me about her.”
“I had my reasons.
“You should have told me what Zaccaria had over you, too.”
I pause. “How did you find out?”
“Went looking for the truth after you petitioned so hard to end up in the same prison as him.”
“Had to grease a thousand palms with shit to slip the situation, Raven. Yours just happened to be one of them.”
He breaks the handshake first, and it feels significant. “Is it true your surname’s Lastra, not Adams? You a mafia man, Frankie?”
I nod, and some of his anger escapes through clenched teeth.
“You kept me in the dark for fourteen years forher? Why?”
“You know why.”
He mulls this over for a moment, tilting his handsome head to one side as a car rumbles past, kicking up dust and regret in our faces. Men like us don’t understand love. We defer to it like it’s a trend with a mild case of influence, until it sneaks up and consumes us.
In that respect, we’re both addicts. He’d walk through the same fire to protect his new wife, Issa.
“Is she the girl from the library?” He narrows his eyes as he says it. Dragging us both back to the past.
“Yep.”
“Jesus Christ,” he mutters.
He changed since I’ve been inside. There’s a new looseness about him. He’s already fought his monsters and won the girl. His casinos up and down the French Riviera generate him a hundred million euros a year, and the amount of dirty money he now launders through his businesses nets him almost as much.
All this, and he lives on a superyacht in Monaco.
“Heard Zaccaria was found dead in his prison cell this morning.” He leans back against the car and stretches out his legs. “Heard someone ripped thecapo dei capi’sthroat right out of his neck.”
One down, three to go.
