She looked hollowed out. Dark circles bruised the pale skin beneath her hazel eyes. Her dark hair was escaping from its practical braid in frantic, frizzy wisps. But wrapped around her right hand, tied in a perfect, surgical knot, was the antique linen handkerchief.
Carefully, she touched the embroidered E.
Twelve years.
Everyone in the North End knew the whispers about Victor Malenkov. He was the phantom of the shipping docks, the silent shareholder behind the commercial fleet, the undisputed head of the Bratva network that ran New England from Portland down to Providence.
And everyone knew the tragedy that had turned him into stone: twelve years ago, a car bomb outside an Italian restaurant in the Back Bay had pulverized his newlywed bride, Elena, along with whatever humanity Victor had possessed. Since that winter night, no woman had been seen at his side. No server was allowed within arm’s reach of his table. The men who dealt with him claimed he conducted business behind three layers of bodyguards, utterly indifferent to pleasure, wealth, or mercy.
Until tonight.
Until an exhausted waitress tripped over an out-of-place mahogany chair, tumbled into his lap, and left her blood on his skin.
Aliyah ran cold water over her wrist, carefully avoiding the linen. She didn’t want to untie it. The idea of peeling away the cloth felt like tearing off a scab that went far deeper than skin.
“Because after tonight, you will never bleed for another man in this city.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to drown out the echo of his voice. She couldn’t afford distractions. She had an advanced pharmacology exam at eight in the morning, a tuition installment overdue by seven days, and a mountain of unpaid medical bills waiting on her kitchen table for her sixteen-year-old brother, Leo.
She pulled a clean roll of medical tape from her canvas bag, reinforced the knot over her palm, and pushed open the back alley door into the bitter November night.
The alley was pitch-black, smelling of wet asphalt and rotting cabbage from the restaurant bins. Rain hammered down in icy sheets, instantly soaking through her thin wool coat.
She pulled her hood up and turned toward the subway entrance two blocks away.
Click.
The sound was faint, barely louder than a snapping twig, but Aliyah’s instincts flared.
From the shadows behind a commercial dumpster, two silhouettes stepped into her path. They weren’t wearing suits. They wore hooded nylon track jackets, the collars pulled high, their hands buried deep in oversized pockets.
“Well, well,” the taller one rasped, stepping under the faint yellow glow of a broken streetlamp. “Look what came out of Malenkov’s back door.”
Aliyah stopped dead in her tracks, her hand tightening around the strap of her tote bag. “Get out of my way.”
“Feisty little thing,” the shorter man chuckled, stepping to her left to cut off the street. A glint of polished steel flickered in his right hand—a heavy switchblade. “The Don doesn’t clear a room for just anybody, sweetheart. The O’Sullivans want to know what a slip of a girl was doing whispering in the Russian’s ear.”
The O’Sullivans. The Irish syndicate controlling the Charlestown rail yards. The bloodiest rivals the Malenkov empire had.
“I’m a waitress,” Aliyah said, her voice shaking despite her best efforts to sound defiant. “I dropped a bowl of soup. That’s it. Let me pass or I scream.”
The man with the blade laughed, stepping forward, reaching out a dirty, gloved hand toward her throat. “Scream all you want, darling. Down here, nobody—”
He never finished the sentence.
A sound like a cracking whip echoed through the wet alleyway.
The man with the knife jerked violently backward, his head snapping to the side as blood sprayed against the brick wall. He collapsed into the filthy puddle at Aliyah’s feet with a heavy, wet thud, motionless.
The second man froze, his eyes widening in pure terror as he scrambled to pull a weapon from his jacket.
Before his fingers could clear his pocket, a towering figure materialized from the darkness behind him like an avenging wraith.
A gloved hand locked around the man’s throat from behind, lifting his boots clear off the wet asphalt.
Victor Malenkov stepped into the sickly yellow beam of the streetlamp. His face was entirely devoid of expression, but his pale gray eyes burned with a cold, apocalyptic fury that stole the air from Aliyah’s lungs.
With a single, effortless twist of his forearms, a sickening CRACK echoed off the brick walls.
Victor dropped the limp body into the mud as if discarding an empty cigarette carton.
Aliyah pressed her back against the brick wall, her breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps. The rain washed over her face, mingling with the cold sweat prickling her forehead.
