“U.S. and Mexican authorities confirm discovery of cross-border tunnel between Tijuana and San Diego.”

Daniel tossed aside the newspaper. When he’d resurfaced from his self-imposed exile, word spread in hushed whispers that he was back to claim what rightfully belonged to the Nietos.

To him.

The throne.

He hadn’t disabused anyone of that notion. In fact, he’d encouraged the rumor himself. But all of that was subterfuge for his real goals. Going back to the life of a cartel leader, running guns, drugs and humans was no longer in the cards for him. Not anymore.

The woman who no longer remembered him, he owed her.

It was her or death. Nothing more. Nothing less.

But even as he got one monster off his back, another one waited in the wings. So he had to deal with that. Felipe Guzmán blamed Daniel for his sister’s demise. Petra’s brother hated that Daniel remained alive and free while his sister was anything but.

Felipe had been one of Daniel’s soldiers, and in Daniel’s absence, his brother-in-law had stepped in to form a new organization, The Ghost Gang.

Felipe hunted Daniel, hoping to draw him out into the open. But Daniel hadn’t gotten to the top of the food chain by letting emotion dictate his actions. He had plans, like that newspaper headline.

A few words whispered in the vicinity of the right people, and the tunnels Guzmán used to bring his drugs into California were now public knowledge.

“¿Jefe?”

He focused on his nephew. His brother, Antonio, never acknowledged his child growing up, but Toro had the Nieto fire in his eyes, and that unquenchable thirst for blood and power they’d all inherited from the old man.

“The package,” he asked Toro in rapid Spanish. “Where is it?”

Toro jerked a thumb over his shoulder, pointing to where a black sedan was parked.

“Show me.”

“Package Two is already acquired,” Toro told him just before he popped the trunk.

Package One occupied Toro’s trunk. Ankles bound. Wrists, too. Mouth taped shut. Head covered with a black shopping bag, with small holes for him to breathe. He moaned, a sound drenched in pain.

Daniel smiled.

Starting a gang war wasn’t that hard. Not if you knew where to poke. Felipe Guzmán’s direct competition were The Perez Boys. One by one he was taking out members of both sects, from the middle out. Kill off the lowly foot soldiers and no one noticed or cared. The corner boys worked for whoever offered up the most incentives. Chop off the head first, and someone else would quickly take his place. But get rid of the middle, the heart of an organization, and you brought the entire thing to its knees.

At his nod, Toro tore off the shopping bag. Their package lurched upright, sounds muffled behind the tape, eyes blinking furiously. His face was battered almost beyond recognition, swollen into a bloodied, puffy mess.

Toro liked his knuckle dusters.

Despite the black and blue eyes that appeared more closed than open, Daniel still saw the moment the man in the trunk recognized him. His nostrils flared and his muffled screams got louder.

That curved his lips. He really did like that sound.

“Sí, soy yo.” He ripped off the tape, and the man screamed, until Daniel grabbed him by the throat.

He wore his black leather gloves, and he wished he hadn’t. The frantic beat of pulse was muted under his touch. Still, he squeezed, and when the man writhed and flailed, Toro was there to hold him down.

Tears ran down a mangled face lined with blood.

“I’d send you back to Perez to deliver my message,” Daniel murmured. “But I think your death is message enough.”

It was second nature, natural reflex, to slide the blade of the knife Toro handed him across Package Number One’s throat. Blood spurted with the severing of the carotid artery, immediately soaking the lower sleeves of his coat and making a mess of Toro’s trunk.

With a deep breath, Daniel stepped back. “Handle this,” he told Toro. “The body and the car, immediately. I want him delivered to everybody.”

Toro cocked his head. “How do you—” He cut himself off with a nod and a small smile. “Sí, jefe.”

A piece of the man in the trunk would be sent to everybody in the upper echelon of the Perez organization. The message there could never be misunderstood.

“And Package Two?” Toro asked.

“Keep him on ice,” Daniel told him. “Nothing until you hear from me.”

Toro nodded solemnly. He understood what Daniel meant, he’d been there before. They’d done this before. They’d do it again. He slid his jacket off his shoulders and tossed it to Toro.

“Get this clean.”

“We should get rid of it, jefe.” Toro frowned at him as if Daniel hadn’t thought of it.

“No.”

“Jefe—”

“I said no,” he snapped, and Toro immediately backed down.

“Of course. Perdón, jefe.”

Nieto watched him closely. He looked so much like Antonio. “When you were younger you called me tío. Why did you stop?”

Toro stared at him. At twenty-six he was young in age, but his experiences working for Daniel were already written on his face, much of it hidden by a full, thick beard. He was very much the embodiment of his nickname, well-muscled and filled with dangerous aggression. He had Antonio’s eyes, always watching, way more intelligent than he wanted you to see. Like his father, Toro had a cocky, devilish outer layer he preferred to show. Much more palatable than what resided just underneath the surface, Daniel knew too well.

“You are the boss,” Toro finally answered Daniel’s question with a careless shrug.

“Sí.” He clapped the other man on the shoulder. “But I am your blood first. And with us—” He motioned between them “With us, blood is everything.” He turned away and headed to his own vehicle. “Take care of that coat. It is my favorite.”

“Sí, jefe.”

Of course, he didn’t tell Toro that Petra had been the one to buy him that coat. The last gift she ever bought him. Sometimes he felt closer to her when he wore the coat. Those were the times he knew for sure that his mind was going and leaving his broken body behind.

Eh.

It was bound to happen.

* * *

Violence.

It settled over Daniel’s shoulders like a warm blanket. Worn. Comforting. Familiar. He let himself smile, allowed his eyes to close for a moment as he savored it. Violence lived in this place where Stavros waited, chained in the cold basement of the brownstone Daniel had procured just for this.

“Sir.” Boyd stood next to him, medical supplies in hand as he awaited Daniel’s instructions. Despite the lab coat turned from white to a light brown with dirt, and the stethoscope hanging around his neck, Boyd wasn’t an MD. Just a man who’d taught himself some things. He was also a man who owed Daniel a favor or three.

He’d called in all his markers for this.

Eyes closed, face calm and arrogant, his prisoner shifted on the slab of cold metal meant to be a floor.

“Back so soon?” Head lifting as he peered through the bars that caged him, Stavros sat up slowly. In deference, maybe, to the beating he’d received the day before.

Henan wore his anger as a talisman around his neck, exposed for Stavros to take note and use against him. Of course, Stavros’ nonchalant attitude only served to egg Henan on. If the guard had his way, he’d put a bullet through Stavros’ skull in a second.

But of course, the prisoner wouldn’t be dying any time soon.

This was Daniel’s world. The Greek’s, too. They were so alike, it was almost comforting. Daniel would kill him. Or perhaps Stavros would get what he’d tried to take those years ago when he’d taken Daniel’s wife instead. He’d take Daniel’s life.

“You missed me, yes?” Stavros smiled. He looked…unconcerned. “It is okay to admit it. I have it, that effect on people.” The wink was almost jovial.

In the aftermath of that bloody night, Daniel had thought the people who’d dared send Stavros after him had to have been insane to bring his ire down on them. He’d been right. But losing his love sent him there, to insanity, so now they all played on an even field.

“Sir.”

Boyd broke Daniel’s close, narrow-eyed study of Stavros.

“He has been fed?”

Boyd nodded. “To your specifications.”

Bread and water. Once a day.

“Come then.” Daniel walked to the cage, opened it with the key on the rosary beads. Petra’s rosary beads. He’d wrapped them around his wrist, a crude bracelet. Her blood was still on it. He’d never bothered to wash it off. Years had gone by, so one would have to really search for those droplets.

Daniel saw them every time he gazed at his wrist.

The cage door swung open with a loud, grating sound and Stavros threw his head back and laughed.

“Come inside…” he murmured, staring at Daniel from under long lashes, tugging on the chains around his wrists.

Three strides brought Daniel to Stavros’ side, and he knelt, gripping his captive’s chin.

Stavros watched him with his patented sneer, daring Daniel. He was a reckless man, courting death with the company he kept. Daniel had watched him long enough to know just how to jolt his prisoner.

As if his thoughts conjured her, footsteps clacked onto the metal stairs leading down to the bunker. If he heard them, Stavros gave no indication. He kept his gaze on Daniel, watching, waiting.

He might have an idea of what was next, but Daniel had never been the predictable sort. The reason he remained alive and breathing today. The clicking of heels brought their visitor closer, and Daniel shifted away from Stavros, dropping his hold on the man’s chin.

Deliberately bringing his gaze to the door of the cage, he nodded to Wilhelmina as she pressed against the bars. She stood tall and statuesque, her mane of dark hair tumbling all over her shoulders like the branches of a walnut tree. She reminded him of that nut as well, her hard outer shell tough to crack despite the wide eyes that pretended at innocence. Black, body-hugging leather hid most of her smooth, sandy-brown skin, but kept her impressive chest on display.

Stavros turned toward her and froze.

She smiled, lips painted red, expression coy as she stepped inside and over to Stavros. Everything about her, from the way she moved, to the way she eyed Stavros, was meant to hypnotize. Daniel watched Stavros take her in with eyes that got wider when she dropped to her knees to straddle him.

“Annika.”

His dead sister. Daniel had watched long enough to know Stavros had loved her. Siblings not by blood, just marriage, he’d loved her.

Yet he’d never had her.

“Annika.” Her name was a shaky breath of sound as Stavros tried to touch her, hug her, except the chains wouldn’t let him.

Daniel wouldn’t let him.

Wilhelmina—Call me Willy, baybee—writhed on the naked Greek, kissing him, leaving smudges of red behind. Not even an inch away, close enough to hear the breath rattle in Stavros’ chest, Daniel sat and observed. She stroked Stavros’ back then buried her fingers in his hair while he returned the kiss with hungry, mournful sounds.

Greedy too, as he took something he’d been denied for years.

Willy circled Stavros’ neck, both hands gentle at first. Like a lover’s touch.

Boyd stepped into the cage for the first time.

Wilhelmina’s grip got heavier, more insistent around the Greek’s neck. Except the man didn’t take heed. Too busy taking what he’d never had before. Like the professional she was, Willy didn’t stop, nor did she falter.

She tightened her hold and squeezed. When Stavros finally figured out what was happening, she head-butted him. His naked body jerked, but her hands remained at his neck.

Daniel didn’t take his gaze away, watching as the beautiful woman took the Greek’s life with delicate hands. She stole it from him, and Daniel was jealous. Irrationally jealous that she knew how it felt, taking Stavros’ life. But he’d wanted this.

He accepted it.

When the body stopped moving, she finally lifted both hands. A kind of surrender. She flexed her fingers, closed her hands into fists then opened them before she met Daniel’s eyes with a small smile, and a shine of sexual lust in her gaze.

“Done.”

“Boyd.” Daniel waved the man over as the woman got off Stavros’ naked body and walked to the door of the cage.

“When you need me,” she purred. “You know where I am.”

Daniel nodded. Toro had her information, since the two of them used to run in the same criminal circles. As she’d already been paid, Daniel dismissed her. “Goodbye, Wilhelmina.”

Her heels sounded, but he’d already brought his attention to Boyd, watching dispassionately as Boyd performed CPR, working to bring Stavros back to life.

He wasn’t allowed to stay dead. Not yet. Daniel kept his face impassive, fingers laced, both indexes touching his lips as Boyd chanted, counting under his breath, sweating. Because he knew, if Stavros didn’t wake up, Boyd would die with him.

Stavros’ body arched off the floor.

His lashes fluttered, lifting as he coughed and groaned. His skin was pale, eyes bloodshot and unfocused. Boyd straightened from his kneeling position and stepped back, heaving a loud sigh. Stavros’ head turned, clouded eyes zeroing in on Daniel as his throat worked.

Daniel smiled. “Welcome back.” He saluted. “The fun starts now.”