Connor slipped in the back door of his parents’ house, nodding to the man who stood guard outside before he shut the glass-paned door that had somehow survived the comings and goings of him and his brothers for thirty-plus years.

He stood still for a moment, his eyes fixed on the small light over the kitchen stove, the only thing illuminating the room, and listened, wondering if his parents had already gone to bed.

A gruff voice came out of the darkness in the corner where the kitchen table sat. “You get that shipment squared away at the docks like I said.”

Connor’s heart did a flip but he knew better than to let his surprise show. Like his brothers, he’d been trained to keep a poker face no matter what. If you didn’t, your face would meet the back of the old man’s hand. He took a deep breath and sauntered over to the table where his father sat in the dark, sipping a tumbler of whiskey.

“Hey, Pop,” he said, reaching for the bottle that sat in front of his father.

“Get a glass, or I’ll wipe those lips off your face,” the old man muttered. Connor couldn’t help but smirk that his father knew him so well. He walked across the kitchen and opened the cabinet to extract another tumbler.

As he returned to the table and sat, he poured a healthy serving and took a long swallow, the top-shelf whiskey burning its way down his throat, helping sharpen his senses, something that was always needed if you were going to have a conversation with Robbie MacFarlane.

A flame hissed to life across the table as his dad lit up a cigar. The orange flame illuminated the old man’s craggy features, his thick shock of white hair standing at odd angles that told Connor he’d come to the kitchen from bed. Probably unable to sleep.

Robbie MacFarlane had immigrated to the US from Ireland at the age of twenty, entering the country on a work visa with an Irish manufacturing company. The manufacturing company was, of course, a front for the Dublin Devils, Irish organized crime, and Robbie and the other young men who’d come in on visas spent more time running backroom gambling operations and dealing drugs than they ever had working the line at the factory.

Over the next two decades, the Devils changed. Robbie worked his way up, and eventually, when the leaders in Dublin decided to scale back and liberate the American arm of the organization, they handed Robbie the reins—for a significant sum of cash, of course—and suddenly, Robbie was forty and in charge of an organized crime network with ties to Ireland and a legion of soldiers at his beck and call.

He’d married the much younger Angela Milligan, daughter of one of Chicago’s old political families, a year later, and she’d borne him four strong boys to carry on the family legacy. Connor, as the youngest, had gotten the least of his father’s expectations and pressure, but he’d felt the force of Robbie’s hand enough times to realize when the old man told you to do something, you did it.

“Yeah, Pop, of course. The shipment’s all stowed, and the guys will send it out to Wisconsin tomorrow.”

“Good. You tell your brother I want that product on the street within ten days? We’re holding on to the damn stuff too long. The longer it’s in our hands, the more time the feds have to track it to us. He oughta know that by now. Some days, I wonder if I’m gonna have to come back and run shit. He’s too fuckin’ soft.”

“Yeah, I told him. He’ll work on it.” Connor felt a prick of unease as he always did when his father talked about Cian. He’d never known the old man to give Cian any praise. Cian never worked fast enough, never worked hard enough. Yet the men respected him deeply and would die for him if they were asked to, and so would Connor, Finn, and Liam. Robbie had enforced his rule with an iron fist. Cian had earned his authority.

“You know, Pop, it wouldn’t hurt to have a little confidence in Cian once in a while. He’s doing a good job.”

His father scoffed quietly before pulling the bottle back toward him and pouring a few fingers into his own glass.

“Cian noticed some feds at the bar this week. You seen any of ’em hanging out around the house here?” Connor asked, trying to move the conversation away from his brother’s perceived faults.

Robbie looked at him from under his bushy white brows. “Bloody bastards have been parked at the bottom of the drive every day for the last two weeks.”

“Dammit,” Connor spat as he banged a fist on the tabletop. “Can’t we do anything about it? It’s harassment. Why aren’t the lawyers filing some kind of restraining orders?”

Robbie stood, throwing back his whiskey in one go. “Nothing the lawyers can do. Feds have us like a bunch of rats in a hole, and that’s why we can’t afford any screwups.”

Connor nodded before his dad said good night and took off to the upper floor of the house. He sat in the silence of his parents’ kitchen and drank the rest of his whiskey, thoughts circling his mind. It was three years ago that Liam and Robbie had been picked up in a raid on one of the MacFarlane distribution warehouses. The place had been full of product, and Robbie and Liam had been in the midst of selling wholesale to a trusted associate from Springfield who, unbeknownst to them, had become an undercover rat, when the DEA had descended, pulling in everyone in the place in the wide net they’d thrown.

Liam and Robbie had been caught red-handed, their sales discussion on tape, the product sitting in plain sight. The entire event was shocking and sloppy, something Robbie never was. Cian, Connor, and Finn had been frantic, desperately afraid they’d be next, and also terrified they’d never get their father and Liam out.

But then, in the midst of a storm of constant media attention, pressure to give each other up to the FBI, and every business associate for five hundred miles cutting off the MacFarlanes like bad karma, the feds had suddenly, with no warning, released both Liam and Robbie.

The lawyers were told an obscure rule regarding chain of possession in the evidence process had been broken, nullifying the entire case. But no one in the MacFarlane family believed that. They feared someone in the organization had turned against them, promising to be an informant from the inside. It would be too tempting for the feds to have the possibility of getting not only Robbie and Liam but all four brothers plus associates. However, nearly three years later, no internal search Cian had done had yielded any results.

In the meantime, Robbie’s heart had nearly given out, and he’d had to hand the business over to Cian to manage. He might not give his oldest son much credit, but Cian had kept things running smoothly with no more arrests, and income was at an all-time high.

But the feds hadn’t faded back into the woodwork. They were like little dogs nipping at the MacFarlanes’ ankles, showing up here, then there, taunting, harassing. So Connor and his family operated as if there was a gun at their heads all the time. And now the feds were poking around yet again. Connor knew it wasn’t a good sign. And damn, he didn’t want to go to prison.

His phone buzzed from the table where he’d laid it. When he picked it up to see the screen, his brother Finn’s name flashed, and Connor couldn’t help but smile. Finn was two years older than him and the real middle son of the four MacFarlane boys. In a family of alpha men boxing, wrestling, and shooting guns, Finn kept up fine with the pack but had little interest in the things that had occupied his brothers growing up. Finn was the genius in the family, the closest to their mother, the technology whiz and family fixer.

Where are you? the text read.

Connor’s thumbs flew across the screen. Pop’s house. You?

Club Destiny. Jess is here. So is Vasquez. You may want to come down.

Connor tipped the chair over in his haste to get out the door. His heart raced as he lunged outside, the door slamming behind him.

“I need men,” he snapped at the guy stationed outside. “Three. One of them needs to be Ricky. Meet me at the car.”

The guard nodded, speaking into his earpiece before Connor could even stride through the cobblestoned courtyard. He swung open the iron gate that led to the driveway, and by the time he reached his Range Rover, there were three of his father’s best men jogging to catch up.

“You’re shotgun,” Ricky said as Connor moved toward the driver’s side. He nodded and backtracked to the passenger side while the other two henchmen piled in the backseat.

“Where’re we going, and what’s happened?” Ricky asked as he started the car and backed out of the driveway, crusher fines flying beneath the big tires.

“Club Destiny,” Connor answered, his heart racing. “Vasquez is there, and so is Jess.”

Ricky just nodded, moving a hand to his inside breast pocket in reflex. Connor knew a Glock rested there, as did one in the waistband of his own jeans. He hoped they wouldn’t need to use them, but when it came to Jess’s safety, he wouldn’t pause to think about it. He’d never killed, but he would in a hot second for the only woman he’d ever loved.