The mossy earth sank beneath my loafers as I buried my fists inside the pockets of my black pea coat, strolling toward the tombstone—smooth, fresh, and shiny, a memorial to my broken childhood.

I stopped when I reached it, smirking grimly when I noticed Sparrow had omitted the word ‘mother’ from Cat’s short list of titles. Guess it was petty o’clock when she placed the order for it.

The air was bitingly cold, unusually so for Georgia, the wind lashing against my face. I lit a cigarette between numb fingers, smirking around it as I used the tip of my loafer to smear a smudge of mud over the glossy stone, dirtying it up a little.

“Good riddance, sweetheart.”

I crouched down, touching the gravestone with the hand that held my cigarette, marveling at how brief human life was. One century at best was hardly enough time to enjoy what this planet had to offer.

“You know, Cat, I thought about killing you often enough. Every other month, maybe. There is something poetic in taking a life from the person who gave you one,” I tsked, surprised to discover I wasn’t as happy as I thought I’d be about her finally being gone. “But then it all boiled down to the same thing: killing a person is taking a risk. You were never worth the risk. That’s your life story in a nutshell, isn’t it, Catalina? Never more than an afterthought. So many lovers, and fake friends, and fiancés, and even a husband, yet no one has ever visited your grave. Only an eighty-five-year-old neighbor who would find Stalin lovable. I guess it’s goodbye.” I stood up, taking one last drag from my cigarette, flicking it over the tombstone then spitting on the lit ember to snuff it out.

I turned around without looking back.

Another one bites the dust.

“Do not let this spin out of control,” Troy warned the following day while we were sitting in my office in Badlands, enjoying a hot toddy—heavy on the whiskey—and the blissful sound of my workers running around in the hallway, fulfilling my orders.

He rifled through the stack of call logs between Catalina and Gerald from decades ago that I handed him a few minutes before. His fingers were still tinted blue from the outdoor cold, his pale face tinged pink by Boston’s winter’s bite.

“How did you even find this prehistoric piece of evidence?”

“I’m a very resourceful man,” I drawled.

“No shit.”

The first thing I did when I got to Boston was dig deeper into the Cat/Gerald affair and find out more about their relationship. From the calls they’d made to each other, the two had begun bumping uglies when I was four years old and ended on the cusp of her leaving when I was nine.

It was unbelievable and yet completely logical that the first and only time Catalina had said the truth was also the time she confessed to something as appalling as an affair with the man who paid me thirty million dollars annually to make his problems go away—and to never touch his daughter.

Catalina was a fucking headache, even after her death, but Gerald was the real villain of the story because his drug wasn’t crack cocaine. It was pussy, and he should have known better.

“Remember your sister is married to Gerald’s son. We’re family.” Troy smoothed a hand over his blazer, his expression loaded with hostility. Everything about him was cocked and ready to detonate like a loaded pistol.

We sat across from each other, me and my adoptive father, looking like a mirror image of one another. Same black Armani slacks, tailor-made for our gigantic size. Same Sicilian handmade loafers. Same black dress shirt—or navy blue, or dark gray, but never white; pale colors were highly impractical when part of your job description was drawing blood by the gallons.

Even our mannerism was comparable. He had an oral fixation he soothed with a toothpick that he stuck to the side of his mouth, and I used cigarettes.

But what it boiled down to was this: Troy and I weren’t blood-related.

He had frosty, alabaster blue eyes. Mine were gray, like Brock Greystone’s.

His hair was jet-black, peppered with gray at the temples and his widow’s peak. Mine was toffee-brown.

He was pale. I was tan.

He was built like a rugby player. I was built like a rugby field.

And he was born into money, while I’d had to adapt to it.

The phrase ‘eat the rich’ always amused me. I’d learned from a young age that it is the rich who eat you. That was why people hated them so much.

If you can’t beat them, join them.

I was never going to be poor again, which was why touching Aisling Fitzpatrick was unwise. The Fitzpatricks made me richer. A whole fucking lot richer than I was when I started out with this gig, breaking legs for congressmen and stashing mistresses on exotic islands.

“This is not going to touch Sailor, Hunter, Rooney, or Xander,” I assured him, referring to my sister, her husband, and her children. I flipped my Zippo back and forth between my fingers, losing interest in the conversation.

“Hunter’s gonna blow a gasket,” Troy noted.

“Hunter’s too busy creating his own family to give a fuck about the one who turned their back on him when he was in boarding school,” I snapped, baring my teeth.

It wasn’t like the Fitzpatricks were winning any Brady Bunch awards anytime soon. If anything, they gave the Lannisters a run for their money.

“I’m not going to spare the feelings of every motherfucker I’ve ever had a beer with. Hunter’ll survive. Gerald has earned my wrath.”

“As far as I’m concerned, Gerald can get your wrath, too. I have no dog in this fight, Sam.” Troy’s nostrils flared, and I could tell he was measuring his words carefully. He’d oftentimes tried to diffuse situations I’d stormed into, mainly because he knew the potential of my exploding was high to almost fucking certain. I liked breaking things and watching them shatter. Call me nostalgic, but chaos reminded me of my childhood. And I was always ready for a bloodbath.

“I just want to make sure you don’t do anything too impulsive. I know you, son. You’ve always been trigger-happy.”

“Not as happy as I’d like to be.” I dropped the Zippo, fingering my St. Anthony charm tied to my neck by a leather string. “Which brings us to the next topic. I caught the Russians smuggling a hundred and thirty pounds of hashish into one of their delis. Whatever Vasily Mikhailov sold—and it was not fucking pastrami—he didn’t hand over a cut from the earnings.”

So I cut his face. An eye for an eye and all that.

Perhaps cutting the Bratva boss’ face wasn’t the most calculated thing I’d ever done, but it sure brought me pleasure to see him screaming in pain as he writhed beneath me.

Troy snarled. “Don’t get me started about the Russians. You had no business taking over their territory in the first place. Back to Gerald Fitzpatrick.” He spun his index finger in the air, rewinding the topic. “I want you to sit on this information until we confirm it. I know it looks bad—”

“It’s airtight,” I lashed out. “I have proof. Hard facts.” I slapped the papers between us.

Not everything Cat had said was true, but most of it was. Enough to warrant my need to wring Gerald dry. The guy murdered my baby brother. My only biological family in this world. Brock was gone. Cat was gone. I could have had something. I could have had a person to take care of.