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 are four kinds of homicide; felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy."
- Ambrose Bierce
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Heartbreak, I had come to understand, wasn't a fleeting emotion.
It was a permanent condition. It was a tenant that moved into your ribs, paid no rent, and played nothing but sad songs on a broken radio at three in the morning. It was a constant, dull throb, a reminder that something essential had been cut out of you with a dirty knife.
It was like standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon of misery, knowing one step would shatter you, but you were too frozen to do anything but stare into the void.
That was my world the day Hector walked out of it.
What we had was never a gentle thing. It was a street fight. A beautiful, brutal, all-consuming war that left its trenches dug deep in my soul. And when he left, he took a piece of me with him, leaving a ragged, bleeding hole that every memory poured out of.
His scent was still on my pillows. I could still feel the ghost of his hands on my skin, a brand I would never lose. I would close my eyes and see the look on his face in that parking lot, the moment he saw the con for what it was. I would open them, and the emptiness in the room was a physical weight, suffocating me.
I was laid out on my bed, staring at the ceiling like it owed me answers. The tears weren't even a storm anymore. They were a leaky faucet, a slow, pathetic drip of proof that I was still broken.
A knock at the door, firm and unmistakable, broke the silence. Sawyer.
"Frankie. Can I come in?"
I swiped a hand across my face, a useless gesture. "Yeah," I managed, but the word was cracked and wet.
The door opened. And the second I saw his face; pale, drawn, his eyes holding a truth I knew I didn't want to hear, my whole world tilted on its axis. My stomach did a nosedive straight into my shoes.
"What?" It was less a word and more a breath of dread.
Sawyer swallowed, like the words were barbed. "It's Hector. His car... it was bombed."
The room dissolved. The walls, the floor, the air.. it all just ceased to exist.
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't form a thought. Air became solid, impossible to draw into my lungs. My heart detonated; a silent, internal explosion that left nothing but dust and debris.
No.
The word was a prayer, a denial that echoed in the hollowed-out chamber of my chest.
A sound escaped me; a sharp, ragged gasp as I clutched at my sternum, like I could physically hold the fragments together. But Sawyer's face. That grim, final look. It was the truth. The ugliest truth of all.
