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CHAPTER ONE
Kieran
Mypalmssweat,andthe veins below my knuckles feel ready to burst. I fucking hate funerals. Not that anyone loves them, except undertakers who rake in the cash. After burying the love of my life seven years ago, I’d rather set myself on fire than go to these things.
Outside, the acrid smell of smoke lingers in the air, making every corner of Astoria unbreathable. The Parisi mansion and surrounding compound’s cottages still smolder from last week’s explosion.
Gabriel Parisi survived. His wife didn’t.
The church is packed with mourners. It’s easy to tell the difference between grievingfamilymembers and the rest of us.
The rest of us being my younger brothers, who help me manage the Irish crime syndicate, and the Koslovs, Astoria’s Bratva. Our expensive three-piece suits and the smell of our cologne drown out the candles perfuming the warm air.
“What balls they have showing up here,” Riordan, my underboss, whispers to me from my right. “Balor has Alexei’s death squad on tape speeding away from the house right after the explosion.”
“Fucking brilliant, if you ask me. Reminding old Gabe they’re watching him.” Lachlan, my enforcer, sitting on my left, would see the cruelty as brilliant since he’s our resident psycho brother. “In death and in life.”
This was different, though. Rarely does a Cosa Nostra don’s twenty-five-thousand-foot mansion fucking explode with his wife in it. Not in Astoria, anyway. The three power families have lived here in peace for decades.
Leaning forward with my head in my hands, thinking of Norah, as I do most days, I wish this church mass would end already. My brothers continue to bicker over my head. I came here just to show my face, even though it’s killing me.
“That’s enough,” I snap at them. I push Lachlan out of the way to get the hell out of the pew.
I don’t care how many eyes are on me as I storm down the middle aisle, glaring at Bratva pakhan Alexei Koslov. He quirks a forced smile and a nod.
Forced because six months ago, his oldest daughter, Stasia, went missing.
We don’t have her—my family or my organization. We’re not fucking stupid.
I push open the heavy ornate door, and the smell of putrid death hits me again. I swear, I can taste burnt flesh on my tongue. Norah asked to be cremated. Something her parents were dead set against, being Catholic. Her brother, Ewan, took her ashes home to Ireland, where she was born. Where we were all born.
I’d rather her be in the ether, where I can look up and smile at her, instead of sitting in front of a piece of stone in the dead of winter or on a sweltering summer day like today, with her rotting in the earth beneath me.
“Are we going to the cemetery?” Riordan, who followed me out, asks.
“No,” I say easily.
“I have to go to the gravesite.” Lachlan unbuttons his suit jacket, as if that will help against the brutal August heat. “You get to be moody and busy. I have to keep the line of defense present at all times. That means reminding these motherfuckers—”
I grab his arm. “Lach, we’re in front of a church. Havesomerespect.”
Ushers in cheap suits working the funeral mass prop open the double doors, and people start pouring out.
“I heard you can tell who’s guilty by their behavior at the funeral,” Riordan says, standing tall at my side. “Nine times out of ten, they show up. All of our suspects are probably right here.”
“Did you learn that by watching those crime shows you binge?” Lachlan rags on him.
“I learned that in my criminal psychology classes at fucking Columbia, asshole,” Riordan curses back at him.
We’re monsters with blood on our hands, but my brothers and I are well educated. Except Lachlan, who got kicked out of Fordham his freshman year, when I was a senior. I’m forty now, and that feels like a lifetime ago.
“Speaking of guilty,” Lachlan says, not even trying to keep his voice down.
Alexei Koslov leaves the church through a side door and trudges into the courtyard. I’m positioned on the expensive stone walkway I paid for that leads to the only street entrance. The pakhan makes eye contact with me, and I step into his path.
“You did this,” I say, getting up in his face. “We have you on tape.”
“You have nothing,” Alexei spews in his thick accent, beady, ice-blue eyes drilling into me. “But I will do whatever it takes to find out who has my Stasia. When you have a child, you will understand.” He says that like it’s an insult that I don’t have kids yet.
