Chapter 1
Callahan
ONE YEAR LATER
I REALLY DIDN’T HAVE to lose her number: I saw her sparingly over the course of the following year because of the meetings her uncle wanted to have with the Diamonds.
His empire was crumbling, and he continued to make moves that made it worse.
It only took twelve months for Paolo to show his hand—he tried to get ports for the East Coast, failed; tried to make nice with the Irish, failed; essentially attempted to go to war with the government over their illegal drug trade, failed.
Then, he tried to get us to partner with him, to give him access to the ports, to force the Diamonds’ hand. We were the most powerful secret society in the world.
We didn’t allow for that sort of pressure.
I didn’t end up being her savior or her knight in shining armor.
To her, I’d become the devil.
The man who tore her family apart. And I didn’t regret it.
Her uncle deserved to die.
I stared at her number in my phone while we discussed the East Coast in the boardroom underneath our city hall in Paradise Grove.
The air was thick with tobacco and tension like always when the governor, along with investors, came to discuss Diamond plans.
Some of them were old school, some of them not.
Some of them liked the way we handled things, some of them didn’t.
Specifically, the topic of conversation was divisive.
“Your father had a soft spot for the Ruizes,” my mother said, like I should care.
“Father had a soft spot for anyone who was making him money,” Jameson grumbled, unimpressed, and rolled his dark blue eyes. I watched his shoulders tighten beneath his suit, but it was the tick in his jaw that caught me. That tick was the same one I had when I was frustrated.
“That’s why he’s dead too,” I reminded her, in case she’d forgotten that we’d found our father to be a traitor who had made dirty deals without informing us. He’d paid the ultimate price for it.
My mother sighed and looked to the governor and then Lucille.
Lucille was a steely, brash woman who had befriended my mother years ago.
She was a Diamond and a woman who’d taken out her own husband when he’d proved to be disloyal too.
I didn’t underestimate her in her woven wool dress, and no one else should have either.
When my mother assembled her support group and Lucille was a part of it, I knew it would be a struggle to sway them away from their goal.
“A distant relative of his reached out. Said we need to do our due diligence with a trust that may have been set up.”
“What do we care about a trust?”
“It’s the only way for the Ruizes to keep hold of the East Coast. They’re making money, but not enough to stave off other enemies. Their territories are feeling heat.”
“I don’t especially care if they lose men, Ma.
” I took a sip from the crystal tumbler of whiskey I had.
I knew there was a drug war going on. It’s why we’d made sure the Diamonds stayed out of it.
We’d legalized our revenue, had business partnerships that brought in billions, and we were doing quite well across the nation. “Let them crumble.”
“Fitz took ten of their men last night, tied them up and threw them out to sea. He threatened the Ruizes right after.” Her sharp gaze met mine, and I knew that look. I learned negotiation and compromise from her.
“Not our problem, Mom,” Jameson offered, but he was looking at his phone, no doubt texting the woman he loved rather than listening. He didn’t need to. We handled most business the same and he knew I had it under control.
“It is our problem, though. Fitzpatrick is volatile. He takes the East Coast, and it gets messier. I want it cleaned up, Callahan. Don’t you?”
I didn’t so much as move as I glanced around the oak table.
I could see a few of our investors lean in, could see the governor tapping his finger like he was considering what it would mean.
The Diamonds in this room … they had a lot of money tied up on the Eastern seaboard.
Some of it in legit businesses. Others … less so.
“I agree. We’ve made sure our ports are stable,” the governor said, his voice dropping to a gravelly low.
“But the transit corridors are a massacre. Fitzpatrick’s cells aren’t trying to take the docks; they hit convoys coming out of Queens and the Bronx to prove a point this last week.
They hijacked the pharmaceutical shipments we’d already cleared through customs. It’s making our ‘secure’ ports look like a joke. ”
One of the investors leaned forward, his eyes locked on mine.
“And I’ve lost four shipments this month.
Whether it was to the Ruizes or Fitzpatrick, I don’t give a shit.
My insurance premiums are tripling, and buyers are starting to look at West Coast alternatives.
We have the entry points, but there is no control of the streets between them.
That mess is costing us ten percent of our net revenue every week. ”
“What’s the angle then, Mother? Be frank.” I didn’t need her trying to sell me on something before she told me what it was.
“Apparently Paolo’s father, Jesús Ruiz, truly may have left a blood trust,” my mother said, sliding a gold-embossed file across the mahogany table.
“He was dying, and he wanted to ensure the Ruiz legacy couldn’t be squandered by his sons, who he thought were too competitive to do right by the bloodline.
The assets are only to be released to his biological grandchildren upon the conception of a direct heir so that he’d have biological great grandchildren. ”
I scoffed and shook my head, taking the papers to look over. “Old-world paranoia meets modern banking.”
My mother shrugged because she probably would have done the same if she could have. “And his son, Sanchez, was the only one with the authority to move capital into said fund.”
“Jasmina’s father?” I asked before I could stop myself. I didn’t really know the story, just that he was killed and Paolo stepped up.
My mother and Jameson looked at me with curiosity. I wasn’t supposed to know her by name, let alone be on a first-name basis with her. Had I run a few searches on her and found out what I could? Sure. She was a wild card and I didn’t like those, so I did my homework.
“Yes.” My mother dragged out the word. “Jasmina Ruiz’s father and mother were killed twenty years ago.
Monte and Paolo took her in. Monte looks at her as one of his own.
She’s good with laundering like her father was.
Not that it matters. To unlock and manage the fund we think may actually be there, one of you would have to marry into the Ruizes, and—”
“No,” Jameson barked right away, cutting her off, standing as if the meeting was over. “Not happening. I love Mia, and Callahan … well, he loves all the women he sleeps with too much.”
“Hear her out, Jameson,” Lucille said. “My God, look at the math. Maybe it won’t be so bad.” Jameson gave her a look of shock, and she scoffed. “Not for you. Mia is here to stay, obviously. But Callahan? What’s so bad about it?”
It was all fun and games when it wasn’t her name on the chopping block. “I’m in my prime, Lucille.” I winked at her. “I don’t need a kid.”
She tsked. “I think you do. You’ve run wild long enough. Plus, if we play our cards right …”
My mother hurried to continue, “A marriage partnership just for a few years would allow us to move men into those territories with no bloodshed. We could restructure the East Coast the way we want it rather than let the drug trafficking continue. And if there’s a trust, upon conception, we’d control the money rather than letting the Ruizes fund a drug trafficking war with it, because you know that’s what they’ll do.
By ensuring the heir is a Diamond, we decommission their money, Callahan.
We get the East Coast, choke out their cartels, and gain control of Fuerte Firearms.”
She dropped that last tidbit like it was the icing on the cake she needed. “Fuerte Firearms?” It was a corporation we’d wanted a part of for as long as I could remember.
She smiled because she knew she had me. “I talked with Monte Ruiz—”
“You what?” My voice sliced through the room this time.
“I did what I had to as a member of this Diamond Syndicate.” She gave me a look a mother only gives her son. “I won’t sit here useless when I know your father and I built connections that can help. Monte and I have a history, and he was honest with me.”
“None of them are honest,” another syndicate member grumbled. I agreed with him.
“He was honest about the trust. He admitted that he doesn’t know if there is one. He can’t be sure. But I trust my source. Plus, their family is struggling after what happened between Jameson and Paolo.”
There were murmurs and grumbles around the table.
“Monte’s proposition for us is an arranged marriage of sorts for protection.”
“Arranged marriage.” The words almost felt foreign in my mouth.
She rushed on. “Just for two or three years to protect his territories and men while he gives us a foot in the door with Fuerte Firearms, which, you know—”
“We’ve wanted their manufacturing and international connections for long enough,” I said softly, knowing I shouldn’t. That offer was a tempting one. Not because we needed it. But because I wanted it. The ambition in my chest was a living, breathing animal that I could barely tame.
I wanted the sovereignty.
I wanted the world to be an empire controlled by Diamonds—civilized, strategic, and absolute. Not run by impulsive cartels. Not Ruizes. Not the Chinese.
No one but us.
The world was safer that way.
Lucille produced a document. “The Ruizes are scrambling. They can’t provide port access like they promised the Irish, and they know their only legitimate business is Fuerte Firearms Corporation.
It’s what keeps them afloat. Monte Ruiz is desperate.
He’s agreed to vouch for us at a shareholder meeting.
He’s offering us a seat at the table just to stay alive. ”