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...
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An hour had passed since I had texted Frankie, and the silence from my phone felt like a deliberate provocation.
The city outside my window held a low hum, but the quiet in my penthouse was absolute. We hadn't spoken since New York, each of us swallowed by the aftermath, by the grim business of hunting the bastard who had turned Gianluca Capano's wedding into a bloodbath. The distance felt less like miles and more like a chasm, and I was tired of shouting across it.
Then my phone finally rang, and for a glorious second, I thought it was her. Instead, Logan's name illuminated the screen.
I answered, my voice flat. "Tell me he didn't find a new way to embarrass the family name."
Logan's sigh was heavy, a man weary of delivering the same bad news in different packaging. "I'd be lying, boss."
I closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose. "What flavor of idiocy did Daniel serve up this time?"
"He went looking for trouble."
"He's always looking for trouble. Be specific."
A beat. The kind of pause that said you weren't going to like what came next. "Your cousin... he rounded up his usual band of misfits and jumped that detective from Bob's."
My hand tightened around the phone. The claim was so profoundly idiotic it needed a moment to process. "You're telling me a bedtime story, Logan. A scary one."
"I wish I was. Seven against one. It was a full-on ambush."
A cold, thick rage began to uncoil deep within me. It wasn't a hot temper, but something more insidious, more disgusted. Seven on one. The math of a coward, a pathetic attempt to rewrite the humiliation of his one-on-one loss. I hurled the crystal glass of scotch against the far wall. It detonated with a sharp, satisfying crash, leaving a dark stain like a Rorschach test of my fury.
"And where is the star of this shit-show currently residing?"
"Hiding at Nathan's," Logan says, and I can almost see him shaking his head. "He knows you're gonna be... displeased."
Displeased. That's one word for it. My cousin, still smarting from the fact that Detective Hansley bruised his ego at Bob's, had decided that the appropriate response was a gang assault on a police officer. He wasn't a man seeking justice, but a child throwing a tantrum with catastrophic consequences.
"He's an embarrassment," I muttered, anger coursing in my veins. "He couldn't win a fair fight if his life depended on it. Seven on one... he could never be half the man I keep hoping he'll somehow magically become."
Logan's tone shifted, entering the grim territory of material consequences. "The detective's in the hospital, boss."
I drew a slow, measured breath. The situation had just escalated from a familial annoyance to a professional crisis. "How bad?"
