Chapter Two
RYAN
Pain is the first thing I feel, but it’s not the kind you push through. It’s the kind that drags you under, heavy, suffocating, like my body isn’t mine anymore. Every breath burns. Every inch feels torn open. For a long moment, I don’t know if I’m alive or if this is what dying feels like.
Voices drift somewhere nearby.
Distant and muffled.
“He’s coming around.”
I try to move.
Nothing.
Just a weak twitch, and the effort sends a sharp, brutal pain tearing through my chest. A groan slips out before I can stop it.
“Easy.” Closer now. “Don’t fight it.”
Forcing my eyes open, everything is blurred, too bright, light stabbing through my skull. My throat feels scorched.
When I try to speak, only a rasp comes out. “Where…” I swallow hard. “Where am I?”
Shapes come into focus—white walls, machines, wires, and then a figure steps into view.
Sam.
He looks the same.
And not.
His hair is shorter, with gray specks at the temples, and his jaw is tight. His eyes are still sharp, always watching and calculating, but there’s something new sitting behind all of that.
Something tired.
“Hospital. You’re safe.”
It doesn’t sit right.
Too quiet. Too clean. Letting my gaze move around the room, I take inventory the way I was trained to.
“This isn’t a normal hospital,” I rasp.
A pause, just long enough to confirm what I already know.
“FBI facility. Off the books. Secure.”
My stomach tightens.
“No records. No visitors,” he continues. “As far as the world’s concerned, you didn’t make it out of that fire.”
Dead.
The word lands heavily and stays there.
“You planned this?”
“We prepared for it,” he corrects. “It’s why you’re alive.”
Dragging in a slow breath, I force my head to clear.
“Then get me a phone. I need to call Sophia.”
Sam doesn’t move.
Something in me sharpens instantly.
“No.”
My eyes lock on his.
“What do you mean, no?”
“She thinks you’re dead, Ryan.”
The room stills.
“No.” I shake my head, ignoring the pain that fires through my neck. “You fix that. You call her. You tell her right now.”
“We can’t.”
Anger hits fast and hard.
“My family thinks I’m dead. My girl thinks I’m dead, and you’re just leaving it like that?”
“It’s the only way this works.” His voice is calm and measured. It’s the voice of a man who has already made the decision, and it’s final. “Clemente believes you’re dead. The cartel believes it. That gives us an opening we haven’t had in three years.”
“I don’t give a fuck about openings.”
“And what about Riley?”
The name hits like a fist to the sternum.
Everything in me goes still.
“What about her?”
“She’s already in. Deep undercover. Mexico. Inside Clemente’s operation.”
My jaw tightens.
“No. She wouldn’t…”
“She did.” A beat. “And she’s alone in there.”
Riley comes to me immediately. She’s stubborn, fearless, always pushing more than she should, and always convinced she can handle whatever comes next.
“Why wasn’t I told?”
“Because you weren’t part of this operation. Until now.”
Silence settles between us, thick and heavy.
“She’s in danger?” I ask.
“She’s surrounded by it every single day, and we have no one close enough to get to her, except you.”
Sophia. Riley. My brothers.
Everything collides at once.
Staring at the ceiling, I let it settle.
My eyes drop to my hands on the hospital sheet. I see the compass on my inner left forearm. It’s ghost ink, barely there, the kind of tattoo you get when you want a reminder only you can see.
Still there.
Still mine.
For now.
Everything else is about to change.
Sam leans forward from his chair, elbows on his knees, and his voice drops to something quieter.
“You stay dead. Go in under a new name. Get close to Clemente. Take him down from the inside.”
I let that sit for a moment. “And get Riley out,” I say.
“That’s part of it,” he says, and the qualifier lands like a warning.
“She doesn’t get left behind. That’s not negotiable, Sam. Not even a little.”
He studies me for a long moment.
Then nods. “We bring her out.”
I hold his gaze until I’m sure he means it.
Only then do I exhale.
“They think I’m dead?”
“Yes.”
“And I can’t tell them?”
“No.”
Sophia’s face hits me without warning, the way it always does. The thought of her hearing it, believing it, and breaking under the weight of something that isn’t even true is hard to take in.
“I need to see her,” I say. “Just once. From a distance. That’s all I’m asking.”
Sam is quiet for a long moment, then he exhales slowly. “From a distance. That’s all.”
I study him again, taking in the gray at his temples and the extra weight behind his eyes that wasn’t there before.
“You climbed the ladder.”
A faint smirk crosses his face. It’s the first real thing I’ve seen from him since I woke up.
“Someone had to clean up your mess.”
There it is, that familiar and easy rhythm we always had.
But different now.
He’s not my partner anymore.
He’s the one calling the shots.
And I just agreed to go back under.
As someone else entirely.
Into the heart of the cartel that almost killed me.
For Riley.
For all of them.
God.
***
The car idles a street away from the cemetery.
Close enough to see everything.
Far enough to disappear.
I haven’t moved since we pulled up. I don’t think I can.
My eyes stay fixed ahead. Men are dressed in black, leather cuts marked with the Blood Brothers’ patch. That symbol used to mean everything to me.
It still does.
And I’m watching them bury me.
My coffin sits at the front.
Closed.
It has to be.
“This is where you say goodbye,” Sam’s voice comes quietly from the driver’s seat.
I don’t answer.
I’m not saying goodbye.
I’m sitting here breathing, watching my own funeral, and somehow that feels worse than the fire ever did. Worse than the bullet.
My eyes scan the crowd.
Faces I know.
Brothers I bled with.
And then.
Her.
Everything in me stills.
Sophia stands near the front, dressed in black, holding herself together by sheer force of will. Even from here, I can see the tremor in her hands and the uneven rise and fall of her chest. The way she keeps her chin up, even as everything underneath it is breaking.
God, she’s strong.
Stronger than she knows.
And I did this to her.
Not the fire, the bullets, Clemente, Lawrence, or any of it.
Me.
This pain is mine.
My hands curl into fists against my thighs.
Every instinct pulls toward her to get out, close the distance, tell her the truth, tell her I’m right here, and tell her I’m coming back.
But I don’t move.
I can’t.
My eyes find her without deciding to.
My mother.
Farther back in the crowd, barely standing, she’s clinging to Tate like letting go would shatter her completely. Never have I ever seen her like that. She’s always been the one holding everyone else together, and now she’s the one coming apart.
Because of me.
Tate leans down, says something low near her ear, and steadies her with a hand at her back. He holds her up the way he always has, quietly, without making a show of it and carrying the weight without being asked.
Carrying my weight.
As if he feels something shift, Tate helps her to a seat, his hand lingering on her shoulder just long enough to make sure she won’t fall. Then he turns.
Back to Sophia.
His arm wraps around her shoulders and pulls her in as she sways on her feet, grounding her, anchoring her to something solid when everything else has given way.
She clings to him.
Pride and pain twist together in my chest until I can’t tell them apart.
Because I trust him with my life. With her life. I asked him to look after her, and he’s doing exactly that, standing in the space I left, holding the people I love together.
But God, it should be me standing there.
It should be me.
The service starts, low voices carrying words about the man they think they’re burying, but it all fades to nothing. None of it reaches me.
All I see is Sophia.
She starts to break slowly.
And then all at once.
When they lower the coffin, something in her gives way completely. The sound she makes is quiet, barely audible from where I am in the car, but it tears straight through me like nothing else has.
Her knees buckle.
Tate catches her before she falls, pulling her against his chest as she shakes, one hand at the back of her head, holding her together.
Something in my chest cracks wide open.
I can’t do this.
My hand finds the door handle.
Already moving.
“Don’t.” Sam’s voice cuts through everything.
I freeze.
“You walk out there…” he says, quieter now, “… this is over. For you. For Riley. For all of it.”
Riley.
That name anchors me when nothing else can.
She’s still out there.
Alone inside that operation.
Counting on someone to come.
If I break now, I lose everything.
My hand drops.
Heavy.
Final.
“Drive.”
The car pulls away slowly, and I don’t look away. I can’t. Not while she’s still standing there, my mother is breaking, and my brother stands in my place, holding the woman I love together.
I hold onto that last glimpse until the cemetery disappears from view.
Only then do I lean back, drag both hands over my face, and press hard like I can push back whatever is trying to break through.
“She thinks I’m gone.”
“She has to,” Sam says.
I nod.
I chose this.
My eyes were open, and I was fully aware of what it cost.
But that doesn’t make it easier.
If anything, it makes it worse.
Closing my eyes, I let the silence sit.
Then…
“I’ll come back,” I say quietly.
To all of them.
Sophia. Tate. Mom. Every last one of my brothers.
No matter what it takes.
No matter how long.
No matter what name I’m wearing when I do it.
I am coming back.