Chapter 1
One
We should have a national quiet day. Where everyone just shuts the fuck up for twenty-four hours.
—Sage’s secret thoughts
Sage
Five years later
I wrote another letter that I knew would go unanswered.
I told him about my day—which wasn’t good.
I told him about what was up next for me—a nursing job in the ICU.
I told him about Neo—the Belgian Malinois that he’d brought me the day before he’d gone into prison.
I told him about my plans for next week—nothing with a side of work.
I told him about how I saw this week’s family dinner going—not good.
I poured my heart and soul into the letter, because he was the only one that I could do that to.
Everyone else wouldn’t care.
I was the pariah of the family.
My dad hated me because I’d defied him—apparently getting married to the man who killed your so-called fiancé was a no-no in the mob world.
My mother hated me because it was her duty to hate me if her husband told her to.
And then there was my brother, Devin.
He had a special place for me in his heart.
And it wasn’t a good one.
His heart was evil and black, and there wasn’t a single piece of his heart that wasn’t decaying from the evil that he lived and breathed on a daily basis.
Plus, he still hated me for getting Mario, his best friend in the whole wide world, killed.
In the Irish Mafia world, you did what you were told. You gave when it was expected of you. And you did not fight the man that was to be your husband when he wanted sex from you.
Something that I’d been unwilling to give to him.
Ever.
That was where this entire mess started.
I’d been leaving school, heading to my car, when Mario and his brother had spotted me.
Dario had dropped Mario off right in front of me, and I’d had nowhere to go to hide.
I’d been in an almost-empty parking lot in the middle of a deserted school thanks to a late-night makeup test that I’d had to take in the school’s computer lab. I cursed myself for stopping to get coffee after I was done, making it possible for Mario to find me.
I froze, my limbs going numb as terror struck like bolts of lightning through me.
I had nowhere to go.
My car was too far away.
And I couldn’t run back into the computer lab because it locked behind me when I left before I’d gone to the coffee shop.
The closest building that might have some people in it was half a mile away—a frat house that was likely full of men who would help Mario and Dario instead of me.
Fingers and lips numb, I came to a stop and stared at the two men through the window of their car.
I could see the laughter in Mario’s eyes as he saw the terror in mine.
He enjoyed the terror.
It made him happy.
“Get in,” Mario said as he got out of the car and held the back door open for me.
“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t leave my car here overnight or I’ll get a ticket.”
Which was the truth.
I’d gotten one the last time he’d forced me to go with him.
Not that I had my car this time, but he didn’t need to know that.
“I’m sure that your daddy will pay the fine.”
He would.
But he’d punch me in the face for getting one in the first place.
Why did I know that?
Because the man that I called father had done it the first time.
“He’ll hurt me,” I tried.
Mario’s eyes gleamed. “I’m sure he won’t.”
I’m sure he would…
“Can I follow you?” I asked. “I swear I’ll go wherever you want to go.”
Lie.
We both knew it to be a lie.
If he let me get into my car, I’d drive off and not look back.
“Get in.”
I swallowed hard.
“No.”
I could practically see the adrenaline flood Mario’s system.
I’d watched it happen so many times that I knew exactly what would happen next.
He didn’t disappoint.
He moved fast, like lightning, and launched himself at me.
I got maybe two steps away when he caught me around the waist and threw me bodily into the car.
Small and curvy, I wasn’t necessarily a doll to be throwing around.
Yet, Mario picked me up and launched me inside the car like I weighed nothing more than air.
I hit the other side of the car door on the inside with a solid thud, my head connecting with the armored glass.
I cried out in pain as Mario climbed into the car on top of me, yanking me down so I was lying flat across the back seat.
I screamed and punched, kicked and bit, scratched and fought all to no avail.
He was bigger, stronger, and he’d done this before.
He knew what he was doing.
He knew how to subdue a fighting woman.
He knew what he needed to do to make me obey.
He caught my wrists and held them up high over my head.
I glanced a look to the side to see what Dario was doing and found him scrolling on his phone, bored.
As if he couldn’t care less that his brother was about to rape someone in the back seat.
I heard him turn on a video and laugh.
Anger surged inside of me, and a punch of adrenaline rocketed through me.
“Stop!” I screamed and pushed as hard as I could.
He went backward slightly and hit his head on the roof.
When he came back down, he was grinning and reaching for his pants.
“No!” I screamed. “Stop! No!”
His body was viciously yanked backward out of the open car door behind him. He hit the ground with a solid thump, and I gasped in shock at the large man standing over Mario’s prone body.
Coffee shop guy.
Dario, finally realizing something was wrong—well, wrong for him in terms of Mario not hurting me any longer—turned and surveyed what was going on outside the car.
He reached forward and caught his seat belt.
I don’t know what came over me.
I seriously don’t.
But I reacted before I could think too hard on it.
The moment his belt let loose, I reached for it and wrapped it around his head twice.
He wasn’t expecting it, so I was able to loop it twice before I hauled it backward with every ounce of strength that I had, pulling so hard that the edges of the belt started to make my hands bleed.
I pulled and pulled.
Dario struggled and struggled.
The stupid video that he’d been watching played in the background on repeat.
His struggles started to slow, and soon he wasn’t doing anything but sitting there limp.
“Hey,” a calm male voice in the middle of my deep, dark, turbulent sea said. “You okay?”
I pulled myself viciously from that flashback, cursing myself for letting my mind go there.
It’d been five years, and that night still gave me terrors.
It didn’t help that my brother never let me forget it.
And tonight I had to have dinner with the asshole.
A mandatory dinner that I would never hear the end of if I didn’t attend.
I didn’t know why they wanted me there.
It wasn’t like it was pleasant for anyone.
My dad thought that I was a failure.
My mom went along with it because it was easier than getting her face bashed in for supporting me.
And my brother? Well, he actually liked me being there. But only because he got to torture me in person instead of leaving me presents to find. Or making it hard for me to find a job in this town.
I’d already been let go from the hospital, a doctor’s office, and an outpatient surgery center.
Though my brother let me get established, make friends, before he went and ruined it for me.
My brother, the Irish Mafia’s bitch boy, thought he had a lot of pull.
He didn’t.
He just knew how to annoy people enough that they found it easier to let me go than deal with him.
I stood up, scrubbed my fingers along Neo’s jowls, then went to my bedroom and searched for something appropriate to wear.
I always, always wore pants.
Dresses and skirts were too easy access.
I also made sure to wear layers.
No way would I be caught dead without wearing something underneath.
Whether it be a bra and a camisole, or boy shorts over panties.
Today I wore a skin-tight pair of leggings under a pair of sweatpants.
It wasn’t cold enough for what I was wearing, but I didn’t care.
I was always prepared when I went to my father’s house, just in case he showed up.
And wouldn’t you know, when I got to my parents’ house an hour later, there was his car in the driveway.
I didn’t kill Dario the night that his brother tried to rape me.
What I did do, however, was cause him to pass out from lack of oxygen.
Even worse, the lack of oxygen he’d suffered through had warped his brain.
He was no longer rational in any way.
When I’d married Ramsey Kelly—though I called him Gentry after his favorite baseball player—I’d done it for two reasons.
One, to make sure that Gentry would have the protection of my name.
I may not be liked by the Rice family, but the world didn’t know that.
And two, by marrying Gentry, I’d also taken away my father’s ability to force me to marry Dario.
Which had been on the docket after Mario’s death.
And since the Irish were all about the sanctity of marriage, they wouldn’t make us divorce.
In the eyes of God, Gentry was mine.
Not even my father would mess with that.
At least, that was what I thought.
For five years, it had been enough.
It had saved the both of us.
But as I walked into the kitchen that night and saw the divorce papers in the spot where I normally sit to eat, I knew this was it.
My dad had finally had enough.
Dario sat next to those papers with a grin on his stupid, smug lips.
I wanted to pull the forty-five in my bag out and shoot him in the face.
But I knew I wouldn’t be able to get that far.
My brother was watching me like a hawk, his hand on his own gun that sat on top of the table.
He would shoot me if I made any moves for his remaining best friend.
“Sit,” my father ordered.
I snorted. “No thanks.”
I walked away and left, knowing this wouldn’t be the last time I’d be seeing those divorce papers.
Or the man sitting next to them with a sinister smile on his face.
Devin
“Did you intercept the latest letter?” I asked.
“Sure did,” the post office worker said. “What do you want me to do with it?”
“Throw it away,” Dario said. “Did you get anything from him again?”
We both knew who “him” was.
The “convict.”
She nodded to the letter that was sitting on the table. “There.”
I took it and shoved it into my pocket.
I used to read the letters that my sister sent to her husband, but there was only so much I could hear about her day, her dog, or how much she hated me.
Eventually I just started throwing them away.
Now her husband’s letters?
I had no issue reading those.
They were informative.
Like today’s, he talked about what had happened. Who had tried to kill him today. What information he’d heard on the inside that might help Sage escape from us.
Tucking the letter in my breast pocket, I took the divorce papers that I’d just had notarized with Sage’s forged name—my mama had helped with that—and I headed for the prison.
It was a four-and-a-half-hour drive from home to Kentucky, but it would be worth it.
I nodded at the security guard that I paid weekly to give Ramsey a shakedown, and he allowed me in with my knife and my papers.
He led me to a room where I would be meeting Ramsey in and then said, “I’ll go get him.”
He arrived within five minutes, a fresh bruise forming on his face, likely courtesy of the life that I saw that he lived in here.
He saw me and rolled his eyes. “Of course it’s you.”
I waited for him to sit down, but he never did.
So I gestured at the papers in front of me. “My sister wants a divorce.”
His eyes flared. “Does she?”
I nodded.
His smile was smart as he said, “No.”
“No?” I asked. “You say no to me?”
Ramsey rolled his eyes. “You’re the fuckin’ pinky toe of the Mafia. You’re just a right hand, of a right hand, of a right hand, of another right-hand man. Don’t act like you’re anything special.”
My brows rose to my hairline. “You don’t think I’m anything special?”
His eyes went glacial. “No. I don’t.”
I stood up and straightened the lapels of my suit.
I might not be the big boss.
Hell, I might not be the underboss.
But I still had connections.
And Dario.
Dario was the nephew of the big boss.
If Dario wanted my sister, he would have her.
I didn’t care what it took.
“Either sign these papers or die,” I said. “Either outcome works.”
The only thing that saved the man as long as it had was the fact that he got into enough fights that he had to go into solitary once every other week. The man barely spent any time in the yard.
“Have a good day, Devin. Make sure you do what Daddy says today.”
I gritted my teeth.
This little prick.
Walking to the door, I banged on it twice.
A guard opened the door and let me out.
I waited until we were out in the lobby before I stopped him.
“Make his life even more miserable,” I ordered.
I slipped the guard a hundo and walked away, my gaze snagging on a man in the parking lot on his phone.
He didn’t look up as I passed him, but I swear to Christ he looked familiar as fuck.
With one last passing glance, I got on my phone and said, “Hey, make sure he signs those papers. I want it done before my sister realizes what’s happened. Lean on whatever you need to to make that happen.”
My right-hand man, Everett, grunted. “You got it, boss.”
I hung up and called Dario.
“You get it done?” he asked without greeting me.
“Done,” I confirmed. “Kind of. He needs a bit more convincing. But I bribed the guard again. They won’t let up on him until he signs.”
“Good,” Dario grumbled. “Did you get the kid moved?”
“Tired of fuckin’ doing it,” I grumbled. “Stashed them in some middle-of-the-road town in Montana. They’ll never find them there.”
“Good,” Dario said. “They better not ever be found. I don’t want my new wife knowing.”
I snorted. “She’s too dumb to ever figure that out.”
“Don’t underestimate her, Devin,” Dario said. “You do know that she’s outsmarted us for seven years now, right?”
“She’s done, though,” I pointed out. “It was all luck, anyway.”
“Luck or not, she managed it.” He laughed a bit manically. “But you’re right. She’s done now.”