Break For Me (Violent Vows #2)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

ROCCO

His fist catches the hinge of my jaw.

My head snaps back. My teeth grind together, the vibration rattling my skull.

Good.

I lean into the next one, wanting the sting.

It lands on my cheekbone, the skin parting wetly against the hard ridge of bone.

The crowd is a wall of noise, a warehouse in Red Hook thick with the stench of cheap cigarettes and the sour sweat of gamblers.

They paid to see a man get unmade. I’m here to collect.

The kid across from me is fast. Twenty-five, max. He has the kind of lean, cut physique you build with a personal trainer and a clean diet. He bounces on his toes like a dancer. He thinks this is a game. He thinks there are points to be scored.

He goes for my ribs. The impact is heavy. A dull thud that echoes in my lungs. Something in my torso gives—a sharp, splintering crack deep in my gut.

Pain is the only thing that works. Cleaner than whiskey. More honest than the lies I tell myself.

He grins, seeing the blood. He thinks he’s winning. He’s young. He hasn't learned that some things don't go down just because you hit them.

I catch his next jab. My right palm smacks against his fist, stopping his momentum cold. His eyes go wide. I close my fingers around his hand. I feel the small bones in his metacarpals crunch.

I don't wait for him to scream. I bring my forehead down.

The bridge of his nose gives way with a wet pop. He staggers, hands flying up to his face, blood spraying the concrete. I step into his space. I throw a right hook from my hip, putting all two hundred and forty pounds of my weight behind the hit.

His head snaps sideways. His legs quit. He drops.

I stand over him, chest heaving. I spit a mouthful of copper-tasting saliva onto the floor. The ref grabs my wrist and yanks my arm into the air. The crowd roars, a hungry, ugly sound.

I feel nothing.

The locker room is a concrete tomb. Exposed pipes sweat overhead. A drain in the center of the floor smells of iron and rot. A single yellow light flickers.

I turn the tap. The water runs brown and cold. I splash my face. I watch the pink water swirl down the drain. I press a thumb into the split on my cheek. The sting is sharp. It’s the only part of the night that feels real.

The mirror above the sink is cracked, a spiderweb of lines dividing my face into jagged pieces.

I see a weapon.

I’m thirty-four but I look ancient. My head is a roadmap of scars.

My beard is coming in grey at the edges.

My neck is a column of thick muscle, my shoulders a broad slab of meat.

My body is covered in prison ink. The Madonna on my chest is fading.

The Falcone eagle on my right forearm is still dark, etched with a guitar string and ballpoint ink in Dannemora.

No clean skin left. No part of me hasn’t been used for someone else's war.

I press a rough towel against my face. In the glass, a monster stares back.

My phone vibrates on the bench. Alessandro. Not “Sandro.” That name died with our father. The man calling is the Don. My brother, but the boss.

I swipe the screen. "Yeah."

"Where are you?" His voice is a flat line. A flat voice. No volume. No need for it.

"Out."

He pauses. I can hear him breathing, slow and rhythmic. He doesn't ask if I’m okay. He doesn't tell me to be careful. Those days are gone.

"I need you at the house. Forty minutes."

"I just finished a—"

"Forty minutes, Rocco."

The line goes dead.

I stare at the black screen. My jaw is on fire. My ribs send a deep, nauseating throb through me with every breath. My hands are so swollen I can barely grip my duffel bag.

But Alessandro said forty minutes.

I pull a black henley over my head. The fabric catches on the scabs across my knuckles. The smell of the ring stays on me—copper, sweat, and the acrid scent of the kid’s panic. I don't have anyone to stay clean for.

The drive to Mill Basin takes thirty minutes. I run every red light. My truck is a black F-250 that smells of gun oil and old coffee. I keep the radio off. Music makes me think, and thinking is a liability.

The compound is a limestone fortress behind a twelve-foot wall. A monument to our father’s ego. He wanted a palazzo. He ended up with his brains on the library wallpaper. He left his empire to a strategist and a pit bull.

I’m the one with the collar.

The guard at the gate nods and waves me through. I park and sit in the cab for a second. I wipe a streak of dried blood from my temple and head inside.

Alessandro is in the study. He gutted the place after the funeral. New paint. New carpet. He erased our father’s death with the same efficiency he uses to run the docks.

He’s sitting behind a mahogany desk, jacket gone, sleeves rolled up. He looks like a man who has never felt a fist hit his face. He looks like he belongs in a boardroom, not a war.

He looks up. His eyes track the damage on my face—the swollen cheek, the blackening jaw. He doesn't ask about the fight.

"Sit."

I sit. The leather chair groans.

He slides a folder across the desk. "Killian Kavanagh was shot four hours ago."

The words hit me like a kick to the gut. Killian. That Irish bastard. He married my brother a year ago in a deal that felt like a hostage swap. I didn't like him, but he was the only thing keeping the peace.

"How bad?"

"Two rounds. Shoulder and abdomen." Alessandro’s voice is tight. "He’s alive. But the gut wound is the problem. A bowel perforation. If he doesn't get surgery in forty-eight hours, he’s a corpse."

"Take him to an ER."

Alessandro’s jaw sets. "If he shows up in a hospital, every fed in the city will be in my bedroom by morning. The truce is failing. If word gets out that the Kavanagh Underboss is down, the Russians will move. It’ll be open season on both our families."

I rub my jaw. It clicks. "What do you need from me?"

He slides a second, thinner folder over. I open it.

A photograph. A man leaving a medical building. Tall. Thin. Silver hair at the temples, wears glasses. His face is all sharp angles. He looks like he’s made of ice and wire. He carries a briefcase and moves with a stiffness that suggests he’s forgotten how to relax.

Dr. Adrian Sterling.

I read the sheet. Trauma surgeon. Trained at Johns Hopkins. Lost his career three years ago after a kid died on his table. The medical board stripped him. The world threw him away.

Then the Russians found him.

He’s been their ghost surgeon for two years. Private clinic, Upper East Side. Armed guards. Discretion.

"He’s Russian property," I say, closing the file.

"He’s the only one who can save Killian without a record."

I look at my brother. "You’re a surgeon, Alessandro. You did the time. You’ve patched him up before. Why aren't you doing it?"

Alessandro looks at his hands. They are steady, but I see the tension in his fingers.

"I tried," he says quietly. "I prepped the kit.

I had the scalpel in my hand. But when I looked at the wound, I didn't see a patient.

I saw my husband dying." His voice drops.

"My hands wouldn't stay still. I couldn't cut him, Rocco.

I need someone who doesn't give a damn about him. I need a butcher."

The word hangs in the room. A butcher. Someone who can look at the gore inside Killian Kavanagh and see a problem to be solved.

I look at the photo. The doctor’s face is a closed door. He looks like he thinks he’s better than the men who pay his bills.

"You want me to ask him?"

Alessandro doesn't blink. "I want you to take him. Quietly. Get him to the safehouse in Garrison. The medic is holding Killian there until you arrive."

Take him. Like he’s a crate of whiskey. That’s my job. I’m the tool.

"And if he says no?"

"Make him."

Two words. Cold. Final. My little brother, the boy I used to protect from our father’s belt, is giving me permission to destroy a man.

I spent my life in the mud so he could stay clean. I went to prison so he could go to university. I became the monster so he could be the prince.

The prince is the one giving the orders now.

"Forty-eight hours," Alessandro says. "The clock is running."

I take the file and walk out.

The clinic is on East 72nd. Nestled between a designer boutique and a high-end skin care joint. The part of the city where doormen wear gloves and the dogs cost more than my first apartment. No signs on the building. Just a brass number and a camera watching the door.

I park my truck in a loading zone across the street. I kill the lights and wait.

Two hours crawl by. A black car pulls up at 9:10 PM. A man gets out, shoulders wide and blocky like a Russian soldier. He punches a code into the door and disappears inside.

Thirty minutes later, the door opens again.

Adrian Sterling steps out.

The photo didn't get it right. It didn't show the way he moves. Precise. Every step measured. His coat is charcoal wool, buttoned all the way up. His leather bag is slung over a shoulder. His hands are at his sides, fingers slightly curled.

He stops on the sidewalk and adjusts his glasses. He looks up at the sky. For a second, the mask slips. I see the hollows beneath his eyes. The way his mouth is pulled tight with a weariness that goes to his marrow.

He looks like a man who has accepted he’s never going home.

He turns east and starts walking. He doesn't look back. He doesn't check the shadows. He walks like a ghost through the city.

I have the security layout in my head. I know the guard rotations. I know the car he uses.

But I can't shake the look on his face. That one second of pure, raw exhaustion.

I open the file on the passenger seat. I look at his cold, clean face. Those surgeon’s hands.

I’m going to drag him out of his life. I’m going to throw him in this truck and force him to cut into a man who is currently leaking his life onto a safehouse floor. And if he fails, or if his hands shake like my brother’s—

I close the folder.

My knuckles throb. My ribs ache. I have blood on my shirt and a job to do.

I’m going to break him.