He's her enemy. Her obsession. And the only man who has the power to destroy her.
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My name is Frank Monroe, and I am the most dangerous woman in Chicago. Not because I kill, but because I make it legal. I'm the lawyer the Irish mob calls when...
"There is no such thing as justice, all the best that we can hope for is revenge."
- Emilie Autumn
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Benjamin Allen-Uncle Ben-had never been only my father's best friend.
He was family in every sense of the word. He and my biological father, John Hansley, were partners on the police force, bound so tightly together that the line between duty and life never separated them.
Uncle Ben had been a constant presence, the man my brothers and I leaned on without question. When my father was brutally murdered, it was Uncle Ben who took us in, who became the father we had been robbed of.
Until they destroyed him. Until they accused him of the very crime that tore our family apart.
For over twenty years, he endured a prison sentence for something he never did, his life stolen by the same men who had murdered my father. And when I had finally begun uncovering the truth, piecing together fragments, refusing to let the case stay buried, they came for him again.
The stabbing wasn't random. It was a message. A warning. An act of cowardice meant to remind me that the past was meant to stay in its grave.
But I knew better. I knew who they were.
The drive to the hospital barely registered, everything beyond the pounding of my heart dissolving into blur. The thought of losing Uncle Ben; the last true anchor my brothers and I had left, suffocated me until my lungs fought for air.
Jamie was slumped in a chair when I arrived, his body bent forward, his hands covering his face.
"Jay," I called, my voice broken, so faint I barely recognized it as my own.
His head snapped up, his eyes red, rimmed with exhaustion and grief. In an instant, he was on his feet, closing the distance, his arms crushing me in a hold so desperate it pulled the breath from my chest. And then he broke.
He wept. Not the restrained grief he always tried to mask, but deep, racking sobs that tore through him, exposing pain he couldn't contain. His body shook against mine, and every sound that left him cut straight into me.
I clung to him, my own emotions surging, colliding with each other; relief that I had him in my arms after so many years again and terror that Uncle Ben might not survive.
"Talk to me," I whispered, forcing the words past the ache in my throat.
"They don't know if he's going to make it," Jamie managed, his breath uneven, his voice fractured.
No.
The word crashed through my mind like thunder. The thought of Uncle Ben's life ending in that hospital bed was unbearable, unthinkable. He had carried us through so much; losing him would dismantle everything that still held us together.
