Chapter 1 #5
“Your father. Your uncles. Your cousins.”
He let the silence linger for a moment before adding,
“And your brother.”
The last two words struck like a match against dry tinder.
“They’re having one of their extravagant family dinners at Flynn Manor tonight,” he continued. “From what our people have learned, they’re celebrating another business deal.”
His smile widened.
“They have no idea Ravencliff released you this morning.”
A quiet laugh escaped him. “And they certainly don’t know you’re coming home.”
I stared past him toward the horizon.
Good.
Surprise had always been the deadliest weapon.
Let them eat. Let them laugh. Let them drink the finest whiskey Florida has to offer while convincing themselves that the bastard son they condemned to prison is either dead or rotting behind Ravencliff’s walls.
I smiled without warmth.
None of them knew death was already driving toward their front door.
Keegan hurried ahead, opening the rear door of the armored Bentley waiting at the center of the convoy.
The vehicle gleamed beneath the grey Irish sky.
“This way, Boss.”
I slid into the rear seat without another word.
The leather smelled new.
Nothing like the damp concrete I’d called home for the last decade.
Bodgan climbed into the front passenger seat.
Keegan settled behind the wheel.
The door closed with a heavy, reassuring thud.
Outside...
Engines awakened. One after another.
Seventeen black vehicles rolled into formation with military precision.
The Bentley eased forward first.
The others followed instantly.
From above, we would have looked like a great black serpent slithering through the Florida countryside.
Power rolled through the convoy like electricity.
The roads cleared almost instinctively.
Drivers pulled onto the shoulder. Pedestrians stopped to stare. Even police cruisers kept their distance.
Florida knew what a convoy like this meant.
Someone important was moving. Someone dangerous.
Inside the Bentley...
Silence settled over us.
I leaned back against the leather seat, watching endless green fields slide past the darkened windows.
For the first time in ten years...
There were no walls around me.
No bars. No guards counting my every breath.
I should have felt free.
Instead...
My thoughts returned to a broken window. To blood spreading across ancient stone.
To a seventeen-year-old girl who had trusted me to protect her.
The ache never faded.
It simply learned to wait.
The silence broke when Keegan cleared his throat.
“Boss...”
His voice carried an unfamiliar hesitation. “We’ve received another report.”
My gaze shifted toward the rear-view mirror.
“Speak.”
The single word came out like a growl.
Keegan met my eyes through the mirror. “Yarina’s at Flynn Manor.”
Everything inside me stopped.
The rage. The memories.
Even my breathing.
“...What?”
My voice became dangerously quiet.
“Our people confirmed it two minutes ago.”
Keegan swallowed. “Your brother personally invited her to tonight’s family dinner.”
Blood trickled between my fingers.
I hadn’t even realized how tightly I was clenching my fists.
Yarina.
Her name alone reached into the deepest part of me and tore open a wound I had spent ten years trying to bury.
She had been mine long before the prison walls swallowed me.
The fierce Russian woman who had stormed into my life like wildfire, refusing to fear my name, my family, or the violence that surrounded us.
She had loved me when I was nothing more than a troubled nineteen-year-old desperate to escape the life I’d been born into.
And when the Flynn family buried me alive inside Ravencliff...
She hadn’t walked away.
While the rest of the world wrote me off as a murderer, Yarina never did.
When everyone else believed my life was over, she held on to the impossible hope that one day I would walk free.
Ten years.
Ten years of unwavering loyalty.
Ten years of loving a man the world had already forgotten.
Every plan I had made since leaving prison had included her.
It was my turn to give her the life she had waited so patiently for.
And now...
The Flynn family had invited her into Flynn Manor.
Into the very house where Sarah had been murdered.
Into the nest of vipers that had poisoned every part of my life.
The thought of them speaking to her...
Looking at her...
Breathing the same air as her...
A cold, murderous fury settled over me.
It wasn’t the blind rage that had consumed me as a boy.
It was something far more dangerous.
The temperature inside the Bentley seemed to plummet.
I leaned forward slowly, resting my forearms on my knees as I fixed my eyes on Keegan’s reflection in the rear-view mirror.
When I finally spoke, my voice was scarcely louder than a whisper.
“Those Flynn bastards...”
Every syllable dripped with quiet menace.
“...have no right to drag Yarina into their filthy little circle.”
Neither Keegan nor Bodgan spoke.
They had heard that tone before.
It was the voice I used when a man’s fate had already been decided.
I held Keegan’s gaze for another moment before giving my next order.
“Drive faster.”
“Yes, Boss.”
Without another word, Keegan pressed the accelerator to the floor.
The Bentley lunged forward, and the convoy thundered after it like an army marching toward war.
Engines roared across the countryside.
Trees blurred into streaks of green.
I watched the landscape race past without truly seeing it.
Instead...
I saw Sarah, her broken body lying motionless beneath the eighth-floor window, her skull crushed against the unforgiving ground below.
I heard my father’s voice, cold and unwavering as he condemned me without a moment’s hesitation, calling me a murderer while I begged him to believe the son he had spent a lifetime refusing to love.
Then came Sergei.
I saw the faint smile that had curled at the corner of his mouth.
The smile of a man who knew he had won.
He had murdered my sister. He had framed me for it.
And he knew no one would ever believe my side of the story.
Now...
Yarina was standing beneath the same roof as those monsters.