Four
When you look back on your life. What will you see? I’ll see all of my fuck-ups.
I glance around the room, taking it in. My brothers. My blood. My family. That familiar warmth settles in my chest… right before my phone buzzes in my pocket.
Heather .
Of course.
I don’t even open the message. I already know it’s full of nagging bullshit. Probably some dig because I walked off earlier. She’ll be pissed. Again. Let her be. I drop the phone on the table, eyes scanning the room as it lights up again. This time, it’s the Prospect at the gate.
Barone guy’s here.
He arrived with a fucking convoy .
There’s even a video. I click it and narrow my eyes. Three SUVs. That’s not a meet-and-greet. That’s a goddamn show of power.
What the hell is going on?
I scan the room—no sign of Axel. I text him quick to make sure he’s the one greeting them.
I turn to Nitro, tell him what's up, and he nods to a few brothers who file out to meet Axel. This wasn’t how I planned it.
Axel alone was supposed to handle it. But now?
This feels like a pissing contest. And I’ll be damned if anyone comes into my house and tries to swing their dick without me checking them.
I’m not meeting them out front. I don’t give a damn if it looks like I’m making a power move of my own. It is one. I want them to know where they stand. Let them walk through my house, through my men, and feel that weight. They don’t get to roll up on me like they own something.
Until today, Luca’s always been our Barone contact. Cold, efficient, didn’t fuck around. Now suddenly, there’s someone new? No heads-up? Not even a whisper of a change? Something smells off . I don’t like it.
The door opens. And what walks in—
Christ.
He’s a fucking giant . Big bastard in a tailored suit, built like a tank. Had to duck to fit through the damn door. Axel follows behind him but hangs near the door, and the look on his face... That tight jaw. The shake of his head. Then, he flashes four fingers.
Four.
I lock eyes with the big motherfucker. He doesn’t sit. Don’t talk. Just leans against the wall like he owns it, arms crossed, scanning the room like he's memorizing targets. Cold blue eyes, unreadable face. Quiet. Calculating. Dangerous.
Yeah. Killer. Stone-cold. Worse than Luca ever was.
Then Axel speaks.
“Right this way, Miss Barone.”
Miss.
What?
No.
My eyes snap to the door. And there she is.
Gliding in like she owns the fucking floor.
Brown skin. Beautiful. Powerful. Her presence alone makes the room sit still.
Form-fitting skirt, red top hugging tits that shouldn’t be legal, dark curls, oversized glasses.
I hate those glasses. Heather wears the same stupid kind.
But this woman—this woman commands the room without a word.
My heart kicks. My cock twitches. My soul fucking stirs.
No.
Naw. It can’t be.
She sits down calmly, places her purse on the table, and two young men follow her, flanking her like goddamn sentinels. Then the giant sits beside her.
She removes her glasses.
And my entire world shifts.
“Hello, Talon.”
Those two words hit me like a goddamn freight train. The past slams into the present, and my breath leaves my lungs. What the fuck is she doing here? How the hell is she involved with them ? Did she marry Samuel? Is this some revenge shit? Is she here to take me down?
“What the actual fuck is this?” I snap.
She just looks at me. Calm. Detached. Like I’m nobody.
I look at her.
Then the boys.
Then back.
Twice.
Three times.
And it clicks .
Those are my kids.
Rage consumes me. Not anger. Rage.
My chair crashes to the ground as I leap up. My hands slam onto the table— flip. Wood, metal, and coffee fly. My roar shakes the fucking walls. Brothers rush me. Nitro grabs my chest. Axel locks my shoulders. They’re yelling, trying to talk me down, but I can’t hear them.
That bitch . That fucking bitch .
Seventeen years of silence. Seventeen years of regret. And now this ?
I can’t breathe. My chest’s on fire.
She kept them from me .
And I swear on everything. If she thinks she can walk in here and play this game, she will end up on the wrong side of the grass.
It all happened so fucking fast.
The meeting hadn’t even started. No intros.
No formalities. Just two words out of her mouth—and boom.
Talon detonated like someone lit a fuse inside his chest. Next thing I know, he’s shouting, “You fucking bitch!” shit goes flying, and he tries to climb over the goddamn table like a feral animal.
Church, where we handle business, where we don’t bring bullshit—turned into a war zone in seconds.
And her?
She didn’t even blink.
She just sat there. Calm. Unbothered. That bored expression on her face made it worse.
Like she’s seen this show before. Like my brother, losing his fucking mind was expected.
And those three motherfuckers with her? Locked in and ready for war.
The two younger guys looked like they were itching to make a move, like they wanted a reason.
The big one—Armand—just sat there, still as stone, watching like this was a game of chess and he was ten moves ahead of us.
Talon’s in full-blown rage mode, and I’m the one trying to keep his six-foot-three frame from throwing himself over the damn table.
He’s pure muscle and fury when he gets like this, and I’m using everything I’ve got to keep him in check.
I glance at Nitro—he’s on the other side, just as confused as me, and just as ready to throw hands if it comes to it.
But neither of us knows what the fuck this is.
That’s what makes it worse. We don’t know.
And if there’s one thing I hate more than chaos, it’s chaos I can’t read .
I’ve seen Talon pissed. I’ve seen him lose it. But this? This is different. This is personal . This is years of something buried, unearthed in one second flat. He’s not just mad. He’s wounded like she cut him somewhere deep a long time ago, and just twisted the knife by walking in.
Then I hear it—clicks.
Guns.
The boys flanking her stand up, draw their pieces, and train them right on us.
No hesitation. No bluffing. Trigger fingers are ready .
And my heart doesn’t drop—but my temper surely spikes.
My brothers? They don’t have shit on them.
House rules. No weapons in church. And now I’m thinking we should’ve made an exception today.
But my brothers still rise. Unarmed, but not unready. That’s the difference between us. We don’t need metal to kill. We are the weapons.
I keep a grip on Talon’s shoulder, leaning in close, trying to talk him down with every damn ounce of calm I can muster. But he’s shaking—his body’s radiating pure violence. His breathing’s ragged, his eyes locked on her like she’s the devil herself.
And she just sits there.
Like, none of this is a big deal.
Then—“ENOUGH,” she snaps.
Sharp. Authoritative. Not loud—but it cuts like a blade.
The two boys freeze like she hit a kill switch. They holster their weapons instantly. Gabriella gives them a look that says it all–– not now . That’s the first sign she might actually give a shit about keeping this civil.
Armand, though? He still hasn’t moved. That mountain of a man is lounging in his chair, arms crossed, eyes trained on Talon.
Measuring him. Not like he’s worried—but like he’s curious .
Like he’s wondering what kind of man loses his shit that fast. And from the way he’s just sitting there?
I get the feeling Talon’s not the first wild animal he’s seen.
I feel the shift.
Talon starts to come down—just a little.
His muscles ease under my grip. Not relaxed, but he’s not lunging either.
Still, I don’t move. Neither does Nitro.
We both know better. This is our president.
Our blood. Our brother. We know him and have had to wrestle his demons for him before.
This ain’t new—it’s just a hell of a lot louder than usual.
I step around to face him, keeping my hand firm on his shoulder. His chest is still heaving. His fists are clenched so tight, I wouldn’t be surprised if he starts bleeding. I lower my voice and cut through the storm.
“Talon.”
His eyes snap to me.
“ You good? ”
His stare is wild—feral. But behind the rage, I catch a flicker of the man I know. He closes his eyes, jaw flexing so tight I think he’s going to grind his teeth down to dust. He breathes—slow and sharp—like dragging oxygen through broken glass.
“No. But I will be.”
He says it like it’s a promise.
Not to me—to himself.
He sits down. Hard. Like his body gave out, or he forced himself into that chair before doing something he couldn’t return from.
The table creaks under the tension in the room.
Someone must’ve picked his chair up while he was losing his mind, because it wasn’t there a second ago.
Now it is. Nitro and I sit on either side of him, forming a wall, just in case.
And across from us, Gabriella sits.
Cool as ice.
Like she doesn’t even see the way Talon’s looking at her, like she doesn’t feel the hate coming off him in waves. His stare is a death sentence. If looks could kill, she’d be a chalk outline right now.
And still, she doesn’t flinch.
Doesn’t smile.
Don’t blink.
That’s when it hits me.
She’s not here by accident.
She knew what this would do to him.
She walked into this room, knowing exactly what kind of reaction she’d trigger. And she planned for it. That’s why she brought those two killers with her. That’s why she’s got that tank sitting next to her, pretending to be uninterested.
She’s playing a long game. And it’s got Talon by the throat.
I don’t know their history, but I know my brother. And if Gabriella Barone is connected to the pain, I just saw rip through him like a fucking bullet.
Then she’s dangerous.
And we’re already in too deep.
Minutes earlier
I’ve seen Talon snap before. I’ve seen him bloody men twice his size, leave motherfuckers crying for their mamas.
But this? This is different. This is personal.
And that shit is dangerous. I don’t know who the fuck this woman is, not really.
Gabriella. The name was familiar in a vague, ghost-of-the-past kind of way.
But the second she walked into church, I clocked how Talon stiffened, how the air changed.
The tension got thick enough to choke on, and Talon… he wasn’t himself.
I’ve never seen his eyes like that—wild, tortured, furious. The man looked like he was staring down a ghost that stabbed him in the chest and then smiled while doing it.
And now I know why. Axel may not have clocked it, but I did. Because I remember now, remember her.
Kids. Seventeen. Years old. My brothers.
I feel my fists clenching all over again.
My brother has two sons, sons , and none of us knew.
Gabriella kept that shit under wraps like it was nothing.
And now we’re sitting here, looking at two full-grown boys who look like they belong in our family portrait, except we never even knew they fucking existed.
And fuck me, Talon looks shattered. A walking powder keg.
I’ve been watching him closely ever since we got him to calm down and take his seat, and every tick of his jaw, every breath he drags in through his nose is him fighting not to lose his shit all over again. If he explodes again, this room is going up in flames.
I shift closer to him. Close enough that if I have to get between him and Gabriella, I can. I don’t know what happened between them, but I know pain when I see it. And that woman cracked him open in ways I didn’t think anyone could.
I glance across the table. She’s cool as ice. Beautiful, yeah—but fuck me, that’s not what I see when I look at her. I see danger. I see control. I see someone who knows she’s got the upper hand right now. She knows her sons are armed. She knows we’re outnumbered and off-kilter.
Axel shifts beside me, hands twitching on top of the now righted table. We're ready to throw down if it comes to that. But I don’t want that—not with our nephews in the room.
Jesus… nephews.
That shit keeps slamming into me like a truck.
They’re family. Blood. My kin.
And we didn’t even know they existed.
What the fuck kind of woman hides something like that? I want to be rational, to see both sides—but all I see is red, because this didn’t just hurt Talon, it fractured something in all of us. I could’ve been there. Could’ve known them. Taught them shit. Had their backs.
Instead, they grew up in another world, trained to protect her . Pointing guns at us like we’re the fucking threat.
“Hey,” I lean over and murmur to Talon, low enough for just him and Axel to hear. “We need to keep our heads. We lose control, we lose the room.”
He doesn’t answer me, but I see his fingers twitch, like he's barely hanging on by a thread.
I glance at the boys— my nephews —and the hate in their eyes makes my stomach twist. They see us as the enemy. They see Talon as the bad guy. And that ain’t right. They’re looking at the man who would’ve moved mountains for them if he’d had the chance.
And now he’s got seventeen years of regret sitting in his chest like a bomb.
Whatever happens next, one thing is clear.
This isn’t over.
Not by a long shot.