Prologue—Aiden, Nine years ago

“Boss, you’ve got to get back here,” Sasha blurts. He’s speaking so fast I can barely make out his words.

“What’s going on?” I press the phone to my ear and pick up my pace.

“Your house is on fire.”

Fuck! Fucking fuck. I jump in the car and gun the engine, tearing out of the parking lot as fast as I can.

“Are Gabriella and the baby safe?”

“I don’t know. Vincent and Caleb went over to check on them, but I heard gunfire. I’m in the pool house.”

“What the fuck happened?” I bellow as if I don’t already know what happened.

I know, and it’s my fault.

“Men came in and started shooting up the place.”

“Jesus Christ.”

No one can just get onto my property and start shooting up the place. It’s a heavily guarded fortress with armed guards at the front, back, and sides. Anyone who would attempt it has a death wish.

Or has more power than me.

Fuck. So ... it is them.

The Order.

It fucking must be them.

This means they know the truth. They know what I did, and this is my punishment.

This is what you do to get to a man like me.

Me, Aidan Romanov, the infamous Obshchak of the Voirik Bratva, one of the most powerful groups in L.A.

You get to me by going after my weaknesses—my woman and my child.

Clearly, I was being watched, and those fuckers have just been waiting for the right moment to strike.

I thought keeping Gabriella and Aleksei in the house would be safer. But, like everything else lately, I am wrong.

I’m fucking wrong.

Sasha winces in pain. “Boss, I’ve been hit. I’m not going to make it. I’m not—”

He doesn’t get to finish. The echo of a bullet pierces through my ears along with his shouts of anguish.

Then the line goes dead.

I run every traffic light and get to my house in ten minutes. The blaze of the fire was visible from way down the road. Now that I’m here, it looks like a miniature version of the sun.

God in Heaven.

The entire house is on fire. And there doesn’t look like there will be a way where I’ll make it in or out alive.

I rush out of the car, and the sight of my guards strewn out on the lawn with blood and bullet holes all over their bodies makes me stop in my tracks. In the mingle of the moonlight and the wild orange blaze of the fire, the image before me looks like a scene from a horror film.

As I stare, the sickening thought hits me that there’s not a face I don’t recognize.

All are my men. All are men I’ve known for years. Some I grew up with and treated like family.

The crackle of flames snaps my attention back to the real nightmare which might be inside the house.

My Gabriella and Aleksei.

My soul weeps when I imagine my wife and child inside the hellish flames.

They must have gotten out.

This cannot be their fate.

Not because of me.

Aleksei is only a month old. A baby.

I’m his father. It’s my job to protect him from danger.

How could I have been the one to cause this?

Sirens wail in the distance and get closer, but I already know they’ll get here too late and won’t be able to do anything.

Panic pushes through my soul, and I run around the corner of the house, trying to find a way in. I have to make sure my family got out.

Movement on the terrace catches my attention, and a masked man throws a rock at the kitchen window, smashing it. When he sees me, however, he runs in the opposite direction.

With a savage growl, I launch myself forward, vaulting over the balcony as he runs down the stairs.

I knock the fucker to the ground and land a fist in his face, punching in his mask, but it doesn’t come off.

He’s strong, though. He manages to dodge my next blow and escape my hold.

Just as he was about to make a run for it like a fucking coward, I grab his arm and yank him back to me, tearing the sleeve off his shirt. As it comes off and my gaze lands on the tattoo on his forearm of the dagger with the snake going around the handle, I realize I’m right.

This is about the Order. The tattoo marks him as a member.

I stare at the fucking tattoo for a few seconds too long, tightening my grip on his arm.

Above the tattoo is a deep knife scar. He’s about to get another one.

I pull my knife from my back pocket and ram it into his stomach.

He cries out, doubles over, and makes a gurgling sound.

I don’t give him the chance to feel the pain. I have more to deliver his way.

Grabbing his neck, I hoist him into the air.

“Where are my wife and child?” I shout in his face.

“Inside. Inside the house,” he sputters, and something inside me dies.

The same something that warned me I’d be my own destruction. A guy like me should never have gotten involved with a woman like Gabriella. Everything I had with her was too good for me—everything, including our baby.

I did this to them.

A banging sound catches my attention, and I look up to the second floor to see Gabriella knocking on the window. I drop the guy and run across the grass, getting closer to the flames.

The flames are so high, all around and before me, warning me away from the danger.

But I won’t leave her.

I push forward, keeping my gaze trained on my wife. Against the flames, her obsidian hair flows out behind her like a cape, and those champagne-colored eyes widen with terror.

In my mind’s eye, I remember the day we met, the day we got together, and those who tried to keep us apart.

I’m nearly there. Nearly to the mouth of Hell.

The window opens, and she starts calling for me to help her.

“I’m coming,” I shout.

“Aiden, help me. Save me!”

I ready myself to run through the fire, but the second I take my next step, I’m blasted back into the cruel, foreboding darkness when everything explodes around me, and the world ends.

My world ends.

My wife.

My child.

I couldn’t save them.