Prologue
2017
ANVIL
We’re under fire. I’m crouched behind a headstone in the church graveyard. We were cutting across the property when we got ambushed. We know every made guy in this town, and these guys aren’t any I’ve seen before. What’s more there’s only one syndicate in town, and we’re in it. Coynston is fifty miles from Boston, and we’ve normally got the place locked down.
I look over at C. He’s our boss’s right hand, and C seems to be the target of this attack since we’re not even on Frank today. Another guy’s bodyguarding the boss. C and I were headed to get his daughter when all hell broke loose.
I lean against the headstone in the shadow of the school where C and I met. This neighborhood, one of the toughest around, turned us hard. That’s why Frank Palermo, king of the city and head of a syndicate that rakes in millions a month, took us on. Now no one picks a fight with us. Until today.
These guys came heavy, outnumbered us by three to one. They needed to. I’m six-six, two seventy. If someone’s coming for me, he better be loaded for bear.
“Hired guns?” C says, spitting in the snow.
I nod.
“I’d like to take this last guy alive. Find out who paid them,” C says.
I nod, but I doubt it’ll be an option.
Stone chips explode off the edge of the headstone when a bullet meant for me hits it. I don’t return fire. Not yet. I’m down to my last clip, and I plan to make my last shots count.
Steam rises from where my blood drips onto the slushy ground. I’m hit in the side. I thought it was a flesh wound, but there’s a hot steady stream of blood running down my leg that says different. My head swims, and I grip the edge of the headstone.
I can’t afford to pass out. I need to end this or I’ll bleed out, just one more dead body here.
We’ve killed five shooters. I know where the last guy is. He’s within range, but behind a tree.
“Gotta move on him,” I say. “Cover me.”
Saying those words to C are the last thing I remember of the firefight.
* * *
ANVIL
When I wake up I’m on my bed with gauze duct-taped over the wounds on the front and back of my right side. I’m dizzy and feel like puking. The pain is bad. Like my flesh is burning from the inside out. In the distance, just above the ringing in my ears, I hear voices arguing. A girl says I have to be taken to a hospital. Our boss, Frank, says no.
I turn my head. The little raven, Frank’s teenage daughter, is being held back by C’s grip on her arm. This is off. The girl hates me. She’s put a winter chill on Frank’s place since her mother disappeared and Frank brought her here.
“Let go,” she tells C, trying to pull free.
C releases her, and she stalks over.
“See. He’s conscious. I’m calling an ambulance.”
“No,” I say.
She scowls. “Sasha,” she says. “We have to.”
It surprises me to hear my first name. It’s been a long time since anyone used it. These days, everyone calls me Anvil.
“We have to,” she repeats, her dyed blue-black hair falling over the side of her face. Made up for pictures, she’s a stunner. In the flesh, she’s crazy small, but flawless. Except for the goth hair, she’s like one of those priceless porcelain dolls with the freakishly perfect features. I guess her extreme look does it for the masses because she definitely rocks the Instagram account the boss started.
“No hospitals,” I say because everyone knows us. The police will be summoned to the hospital immediately for a gunshot wound, especially because I’m the one who’s shot. There are dead bodies in the graveyard. And other places. I can’t go to a hospital. None of Frank’s enforcers ever can. Not even C.
“You’ll die,” she says.
“So I’ll die.”
I’m pretty sure I’m almost dead already. The room tilts around me, like I’m on a rollercoaster or a boat. I turn my head and vomit, and the burning pain in my stomach is so bad I break out into a sweat that drenches me.
Was it a gut shot? Feels like it. That’s as bad as it gets. I’d rather bleed out clean and fast than die from a slow, sickening infection.
I’d rather…
* * *
RACHEL
Sasha Stroviak is burning with fever. I can’t get over seeing him like this. He’s massive, and normally so intimidating that people take an unconscious step back when he enters a room. As beasts go, he’s good-looking. I don’t like him, but it’s impossible not to notice him when he’s around, acting as my dad’s bodyguard or mine.
I grimace, thinking of my father’s men. There are some who’ve been in his organization for years. And then there’s his trio of street-hardened ‘youngbloods,’ C, Sasha, and Trick.
I look at Sasha’s bulk passed out on the queen-sized bed in a guest room. Right now, he’s as far from physically intimidating as any of these monsters get.
I mash up antibiotic pills I have left over from when I had a bladder infection. He’s more than twice my size, so I’m giving him a double dose of what I was supposed to take. He needs more medical care than this, but it’s the best I can do.
I glare at his friends and my hypocrite of a father whenever they come into the room or appear in the doorway. Sasha is a brute, but I wouldn’t let a wounded animal suffer this way, let alone a human being. Their codes of conduct are so messed up, and I tell them so every chance I get, trying to pressure them into taking him to a hospital. The down-low doctor his friends brought in said Sasha needs surgery. A hospital is his only chance. But they won’t take him and they’ve taken my phone away so I can’t call an ambulance either. We’re all trapped here, watching him die.
His occasional mumblings are incoherent, but on and off I can get him to drink. On and off, his gaze seems to sharpen on me and he relaxes. I don’t know why, but when it’s my face that appears over him, it seems to calm him because he says “all right” and goes limp.
“Drink this,” I keep repeating, putting the straw against his lips.
After ten minutes of coaxing, he finally sucks the medicine in. I watch it rise up and pass his lips. He grimaces. I shove my small hand over his mouth to keep him from spitting it out.
“Swallow! Sasha, swallow it.”
He does and then drifts off again.
The door opens and C, born Connor McCann, comes in. Despite his age, he rose like rocket to become my father’s right hand. He’s good-looking, smart and ruthless. He was still a teenager when he joined my dad’s operation and he brought his closest friend, the massive, stone-faced Sasha with him. When C and Sasha first started coming to my mother’s house as my dad’s bodyguards, I never heard Sasha say anything. I didn’t think he spoke English. It was only later when I was forced to move into my father’s house that I’d catch bits of conversations and knew he could talk after all.
I learned that my father, Frank Palermo, had ordered his men to keep their distance from me. They were to protect him, and later me, with a minimum of interaction with his bastard daughter. My father is king of our city, and he has plans for me that don’t include flings with his enforcers.
My dad came up through a branch of the New York Mafia before moving to Coynston. We’re about an hour outside Boston, so pretty far from a lot of the main East Coast action I suppose, but my father still does business with the New York mob and others. Some people wonder what he’s doing here. I think I know. In New York, he wasn’t in charge. Here, he’s the big boss.
“Come out, Rachel. Trick and I will do turns sitting with him,” C says.
“Did you get it?” I demand. I sent him to lie to a doctor to get medicine for Sasha. I looked up medicines that can be used for abdominal infections and told C he’d better not come back without them. I don’t have any power in my dad’s house, but because his friend seems to sleep easier when I’m the one taking care of him, C’s indulging me. He holds up a small paper bag.
“Look at him, though, and this room,” C says. “It reeks in here. Smells like he’s already dead.” There’s pain etched on his face. I know it’s hurting them to see Sasha like this. “He’s in a lot of pain. We should do what he asked days ago and shoot him up with H.”
I glare at Connor and grab the bag from his grip. “Get the hell out. No one is coming near him with heroin or morphine. That would kill him and you know it.” I’m ragged from sleeplessness. Sasha’s always seemed invincible, from the first time I met him. I think he was nineteen, but he was already gigantic, especially compared to my schoolgirl self.
His big hand scratches the angry red area that’s developed around his wound. It’s scabbed over, but infected, and I know it hurts him badly.
I push his giant hand away. It’s not easy. Even deathly ill, his arm is strong.
I dump a couple of the pills Connor brought into the bottom of a cup. I crush them against the side with the blade of Sasha’s knife. I pour some water over the broken pills and swish it around, dissolving them as well as I can. I drop in a new straw and put it against his lips.
“After you give him that, come out. You need sleep. Frank’ll be pissed if you faint and fall on your face and bruise it,” C says.
“Screw the goddamned instagram,” I say, so exhausted I want to cry. I’ve kept an around-the-clock-vigil and I am in danger of falling down. But I can’t leave Sasha because I don’t trust him not to die.
Normally, I wouldn’t fight C. And normally, C wouldn’t let anyone ignore his orders either. But things are not normal. This is hard.
I don’t answer C, but I know he’s right and I do plan to lie down to try to rest for a little bit. I have to pace myself. I don’t know how long this will go on. Weaker guys would already be dead. He’s not weak. Or at least he never has been before.
“Drink this, Sasha,” I say.
He’s unconscious, but I don’t leave him alone. I nudge him and pinch his arm.
Moments pass, and his lids flutter.
“Drink, Sasha. Please.”
Through a heavy-lidded gaze, he seems to recognize me.
“Raven.”
He’s called me that once before. I’ve got a Poe obsession, and because I’ve been in a dark place, I’ve started dying my hair black. I didn’t know Sasha read Poe. I didn’t know Sasha read anything.
“Drink this,” I insist, pushing the straw past his lips.
He sucks on it. The bitter solution of watered down pill fragments rises and enters his mouth. He swallows.
“More,” I say.
It goes on like this. I’m relentless. For close to an hour, I badger him until there is no medicine left. Then I pour Gatorade into the cup and start again.
His body is a furnace. I wipe him down with a damp soapy cloth and speak softly to him. I know he doesn’t comprehend any of what I’m telling him. He’s in a shadowy place, halfway to the grave. He probably deserves to die for all the bad things he’s done.
But I don’t care what he deserves. I whisper the same things into his ear over and over. “Fight. It’s what you do, so fight. And stay here, Sasha. Stay.”
He settles, and I rest my head on the mattress next to his.
I don’t know him well and don’t really like any of them, but he’s acted as my bodyguard a lot recently and I’m not letting him die without a fight. I can’t because I have a secret that I’ll never admit to anyone.
I’m the reason he got shot in the first place.
