Chapter One
Raiden
The view from my apartment window has become as familiar as a tattoo machine in my hand.
Every morning, children pour through the gates of the elementary school across the street, their laughter carrying over the rumble of traffic. Parents hurry to work after drop-off, teachers greet students by name, and crossing guards bark cheerful instructions that most of the kids ignore.
To everyone else, it’s just another school. To me, it’s a place worth protecting.
Tonight, the gates are open again, hours after they should have closed. Mid-September, and the heat still hasn’t broken. Parents drift across the parking lot in short sleeves, fanning themselves with the flyers taped to every lamppost on this block for a week. Open house.
A familiar car snags my attention. It’s Drake’s. A burning rage that has simmered for years rises to the surface at the thought of the asshole.
Five fucking years.
That’s how long Drake’s name has sat at the top of our list. Years of surveillance, dead ends, and watching that bastard walk around Atlanta like he owns it.
My grip tightens on the binoculars as I watch him step out of the bulletproof, tinted car. Across the street, parents and children stream into the elementary school. Somewhere inside that school is Drake’s son’s classroom. The reason for his presence.
I adjust the focus of the binoculars, and there he is in an expensive suit, his son by his side, two bodyguards trailing behind. Even from across the street, I recognize the arrogant swagger. Dark blond hair cropped close, his thick neck, and heavy shoulders.
The asshole can’t even attend his kid’s school event without armed escorts.
Not that I expect anything less. Drake is many things, and these things are the reason he’s still breathing.
He is paranoid, violent, and untouchable.
I’ve known that since he killed Fallon, my older brother, in a gang shooting.
Which is just one of his many crimes. “The bastard’s here,” I say quietly.
Drake takes his son’s backpack and nudges the boy toward the classroom door.
Teddy Krane.
Almost six years old, and admittedly small for his age. Always nervous. I hate to see the kid’s name in our reports. No child deserves a father like Drake.
“Anything?” River asks through the headset.
“No,” I say.
I barely glance at the computer monitor beside me.
River, Roman, and Royal are downstairs in the basement.
River made the calls that same night I first mentioned the new shop.
Roman said yes before I finished explaining.
Royal took two days, then turned up with a laptop bag and a list of everything wrong with the building's wiring.
Four men and a condemned building. There's a shop up there turning a real profit now, and a level below it that doesn't appear on any blueprint.
This is just a regular surveillance. You only learn a man’s weaknesses by watching the fuck out of him. And that’s what I’m doing with Drake.
Watching and learning every little thing about him until I know he has no place to hide and nothing to fall back on. I’ll ruin him slowly before ending his miserable life. I lower the binoculars and rest my forearms on the windowsill.
Below me, 4R Ink has closed for the night. The CLOSED sign hangs in the front window, and Nadia’s car is already gone from the curb. Silence blankets the apartment, interrupted only by the distant hum of Atlanta settling into evening.
“You planning to stand in that window all night?” Roman asks, his voice loud in my ear.
I grunt in answer as I lift the binoculars again.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he says.
Royal chimes in through the headset. “I’ve checked the feeds,” he says. “Nothing unusual today.”
I pick up the mug beside me and down the last bits of the already cooling coffee. “He’s getting bolder,” I mutter as I search for him, one classroom to another.
“He always does before he escalates,” River mutters.
Everything quiets. Every man on this channel knows Drake Krane’s file almost by heart. Extortion. Drug trafficking. Witness intimidation. Disappearances. Women who refused him have an unsettling habit of leaving town, or never being seen again.
The police suspect. The prosecutor’s office knows he has his hands in half the crime in this city. Yet nobody can make anything stick. Drake always finds a way around the law. Which is precisely why he’s found himself on 4R’s list.
“I hacked into another burner phone he used last week,” Royal explains through the headset, already starting on his debrief.
I frown as I ask, “Anything useful?”
“He met with one of his lieutenants yesterday. Large cash withdrawal this morning.”
“Payment?” River suggests.
“Maybe,” Royal responds.
“Or someone pissed him off,” Roman says, chipping in.
My jaw tightens. “Either way, we stay on him,” I say.
No one argues. We never vote on targets lightly. Once a name has made the list, it stays there until justice catches up with it, one way or another.
A burst of laughter drifts in through the front windows. Instinctively, I glance across the street. Parents are arriving for the school’s annual open house. Children dart between adults, proudly tugging their mothers and fathers toward classrooms they’d spent the last few weeks in.
I return my focus to searching for Drake and find him framed in a lit classroom window.
It faces the street straight on, and from up here, the glass may as well be a screen.
Another person walks toward him. I refocus my binoculars and see a woman.
She stops before Drake, maintaining a little distance.
In that moment, I forget all about the surveillance, my focus now entirely on her. She is wearing a pale blue summer dress beneath a lightweight cardigan, greeting families with a smile that transforms her entire face.
She’s young. No older than twenty-two to twenty-three, if I have to guess.
Strawberry-blond hair spills over one shoulder, catching the last of the evening light until it looks almost copper. A scattering of freckles dusts her ivory skin, stretching across the bridge of her nose and disappearing beneath flushed cheeks.
Her bright blue eyes soften as she crouches to speak with Drake’s son.
From that little interaction, I assume she’s Teddy’s teacher.
She isn’t trying to command attention, but she has all of mine.
There is something gentle about her—the kind of gentleness that this neighborhood aims to beat out of people.
Without even being around her, I can tell that she’s soft spoken and kind. Not someone who can handle my shit. Yet, I’m completely and irrevocably drawn to her. Her smile is a light, and my darkness wants to bask in its warmth and brilliance.
The need to have her suddenly holds me hostage. It’s a simmering heat that goes straight to my cock. I want to protect her, and at the same time own every part of the curves I imagine she has beneath that dress. The darkness in me stirs, wide awake now.
That I’m familiar with. Yet somehow, this girl—whose name I don’t even know—draws it out anyway. She says something to Teddy, and for the first time since arriving, he smiles. Once he leaves her to sit, she stands, her gaze shifting automatically to Drake.
Drake closes the distance between them. An unmistakable anger and possessiveness rears its head. I don’t need to hear the conversation to recognize discomfort. The teacher’s smile turns polite. She shifts her weight almost imperceptibly, creating space between herself and Drake.
Drake ignores it and leans closer. He sets one hand flat against the doorframe above her shoulder, close enough that she’d have to duck under his arm to get past him.
It’s a small thing. Nobody else in that room would call it anything at all.
But I’ve watched men do it across interview tables, and I know exactly what it means.
He says something that makes her shoulders stiffen.
She glances toward the classroom door as though searching for an escape.
My grip tightens around the binoculars. “I’m going to fucking kill him,” I grit out, forcing myself to maintain a tightly held control.
“What the hell is going on?” River mutters in my ear.
The haze in my vision clears a little, reminding me of where I am. I don’t even know this girl, and she’s already affecting me so deeply.
“Drake’s cornering his son’s teacher,” I answer flatly, making sure to keep my rage hidden.
I’ve seen enough predators in courtrooms to recognize the signs. Drake isn’t interested in the conversation. He is testing boundaries and seeing how much discomfort she’ll tolerate before objecting. The teacher finally excuses herself, gesturing toward another arriving family.
I watch Drake watch her walk away, his eyes tracking her in a way that makes my stomach turn and my madness roar.
River swears softly under his breath, his voice carrying to my ears. “She has no idea who she’s dealing with.”
“No,” I agree quietly. “But we do.”
“You want me to identify her?” Royal asks.
I don’t answer immediately. Because I need to make a split-second decision. I keep watching her as she laughs with two students who tug excitedly at her hands. I realize that I want to hear the sound of her laugh, and I want to protect that innocence and softness that she effortlessly exudes.
Now I’m torn. I want her splayed in bed before me, begging for mercy as I fuck her to oblivion. Yet, I want to protect her so that no one, not even Drake, can set their sights on her. Though one thing is certain. I’ll protect her from Drake, at all costs.
With that thought, I make my decision. “Find out who she is,” I say.
I return to my watch. Drake Krane has just made a mistake. Whether he realizes it or not, he’s drawn the attention of the only men in Atlanta willing to do what the law wouldn’t. And if the young teacher truly has become Drake’s next target…
He’s picked the wrong one.